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A: I’ve also wondered about this, after noticing that every time I drive past Beckman, my Apple CarPlay malfunctions. I did some asking around on the north side of campus, which led me to the computer science professor Kirill Levchenko, ’01 LAS, who...

When I first arrived at Illinois to do my Ph.D. in chemistry with Walter Klemperer, he gave me a task: to make a perturbation on an existing molecule using a simple reaction. It took me a whole year of failures and doubts.
When I thought I’d finally succeeded, I put the lovely, orange sample in the analysis machine and got something unanticipated: a disgusting, brown gunk. A postdoc suggested I throw it away, but I didn’t want to toss a year of work. Instead, I set it...

Sam Walder combined his love of music and knowledge of computer engineering to create the music-teaching software Trala. (Image courtesy of courtesy of Sam Walder)
Thank god for the HoHo.
Thank god for that rickety, wooden house on Oregon Street, which kept me in school and gave me friends, love, education, and a great place to cry (the basement)....

It’s a truism that the Illinois campus empties out during the summer months, but every year there are thousands of students who decide to stay put, whether it’s for a summer job, a summer class, or the sweet, sweet independence of living on one’s own...