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The National Academy of Sciences announced today the election of their 2017 members, including three from the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The academy is the most prestigious scientific society in the U.S., established under a congressional charter signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Including the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine, the NAS provides science, technology and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.

Seven Illinois researchers rank among the world’s most influential

Seven University of Illinois researchers have been named to the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers list for 2015.

The list includes “some of the world’s most influential scientific minds,” according to a statement from Thomson Reuters. “About 3,000 researchers earned this distinction … ranking among the top 1 percent most cited for their subject field and year of publication, earning them the mark of exceptional impact.”

How can we meet the accelerating food needs of the world’s population, without increasing the amount of land used for farming? By making plants better neighbors, and borrowing molecular tricks from other species to make their use of light and carbon more efficient, researchers hope to improve the photosynthetic efficiency of crops and give a much-needed boost to food production.

Yield Limits in the Corn Belt Topic of Latest Science Perspective

Don Ort, Professor of Plant Biology, with Stephen Long, Professor of Crop Sciences and Plant Biology, discuss corn belt yield limits in a recent perspective in Science magazine.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has received a five–year, $25-million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to improve the photosynthetic properties of key food crops, including rice and cassava. The project, titled “RIPE – Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency,” has the potential to benefit farmers around the world by increasing productivity of staple food crops.