UIC Magazine Fall 2023

Fall 2023

Connecting Alumni and Friends to the University of Illinois Chicago

Walking the Talk Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda renews UIC’s commitment to students, research, community and social justice.

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I was motivated to contact so many prospective students because I wanted them to know how wonderful UIC had been to me when I was an undergrad.

—Karen Keesing BS ’96

contacted more than 5,000 admitted students in 2023

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Walking the Talk

New Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda renews UIC’s commitment to students, research, community and social justice.

BY STEVE HENDERSHOT

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ILLUSTRATION: YINGTANG LU BDES ’20

Intelligent Revolution

UIC researchers explore the potential of artificial intelligence while safeguarding against risks.

BY CINDY KUZMA

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PHOTO: UIC LIBRARY

Our History, Heard

A transformative gift amplifies diverse historical voices and opens access to UIC Library’s Special Collections.

BY SAMUS HADDAD

PHOTO: MARY RAFFERTY

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2023 Alumni Awards

Every year the UICAA proudly recognizes a few of our remarkable UIC alumni.

BY JEREMY OHMES

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From the Chancellor

@UICAlumni @UIC_Alumni

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UIC Today Achievements, breakthroughs and an Amazon series.

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The Promise of Lucy Sprague A family legacy of public service.

@UICAlumni go.uic.edu/linkedin

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Uniquely UIC A selection of notable alumni achievements.

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Letter to Alumni Engage, connect and renew.

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Closing Note Mohammed Haq believes nothing is unattainable if you work hard.

CONTENTS

PHOTO: MIKE FAN

IN THIS ISSUE

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CONNECTING ALUMNI AND FRIENDS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS CHICAGO

EDITORIAL BOARD Jacqueline Carey Sherri McGinnis González Caryn Schultz Korman Jessica Olive MANAGING EDITOR: Bridget Esangga ART DIRECTOR AND DESIGNER: Yingtang Lu BDes ’20 COVER PHOTO: Jenny Fontaine

CONTACT US 312-413-8272 ADVANCE.UIC.EDU UIC MAGAZINE: uicmag@uic.edu UIC ALUMNI ASSOCIATION: uicalumni@uic.edu OFFICE OF THE VICE CHANCELLOR FOR ADVANCEMENT: advance@uic.edu ADDRESS CHANGES: uicmag@uic.edu

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Fall 2023

Like so many of you, I am a Midwesterner.

My parents immigrated to the U.S., and I grew up in Detroit in a home where every evening my extended family gathered around the table for dinner. We were fortunate in many ways, even without extensive financial resources. It’s an experience no doubt familiar to many in our community.

I believe public institutions have an important role in shaping the future.

UIC, in particular, addresses the many issues society faces and will educate generations of students from widely varying backgrounds. Since becoming UIC’s chancellor in July, I have witnessed firsthand the stunning courage, collaboration and commitment of remarkably talented students, faculty, researchers, caregivers and community partners who affirmatively choose our institution’s mission every day.

I am confident with them at the forefront, and with your backing, UIC will help shape a more just and sustainable world.

As chancellor, my immediate priorities will focus on fostering belonging and connection among our students and ensuring more of them earn their degrees, allowing them to compete globally and live meaningful lives. We will build upon

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our record $509 million research funding in fiscal year 2023 to continue creating reasons for hope. We will partner across the city to reimagine the urban, sustainable communities many of you populate and expand engagement and employment opportunities for students. We will also work to ensure our faculty and staff feel seen, heard, valued and motivated.

I’ll leave you with two things to take away from this issue of UIC Magazine. First, UIC lives its equity and social justice mission through its people and its research every day. See how we’re using and studying artificial intelligence to improve health care, reduce inequalities and make businesses more sustainable, and read about our featured alumni who, at the pinnacle of their fields, are living out a commitment to social justice and equity. Second, I believe strongly that if we work together, what we do here will be transformative.

—MARIE LYNN MIRANDA CHANCELLOR UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS CHICAGO

chancellor@uic.edu 312-413-3350 @uicchancellor chancellor.uic.edu

FROM THE CHANCELLOR

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t is with great pride that I write my first letter to you as chancellor of the University of Illinois Chicago. I have spent the past months meeting the people who make UIC the academic and research powerhouse it is: students, faculty, staff, community members and you – our fiercest supporters. I am grateful you chose to stay connected, and I am deeply inspired by the role UIC plays in your stories.

PHOTO: JENNY FONTAINE

A Call to Action

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UIC TODAY

The newly renovated East Campus Quad provides students with a beautiful place to engage. Combining function and sustainability, the quad now features a large, central grassy area and a stage for events and activities, and integrates native plants, shade trees and an underground detention vault to divert storm water. This renovation is part of the UIC Master Plan, a multi-year strategy of infrastructure updates designed to enhance the experiences of the UIC community. —Samus Haddad

PHOTO: JENNY FONTAINE

PHOTO: CARLOS SADOVI

PHOTO: IAN BATTAGLIA

A Smoke Detector for Viruses?

The COVID-19 pandemic spiked anxiety about the invisible threat of airborne viral particles. Now, two UIC scientists have collaborated on a device where pathogens could be detected in the same manner as smoke or carbon monoxide.

UIC TODAY

Michael Caffrey, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and Igor Paprotny, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, created BioAerium, a device similar to a smoke detector that could dramatically improve disease surveillance and research on viral particles. For the project, the duo received the 2022 Inventor of the Year award from the UIC Office of Technology Management.

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BioAerium combines the expertise of both faculty members: Caffrey studies the structure of viruses, while Paprotny designs microfluidic systems, including devices that detect aerosols from air. While existing virus detectors are bulky and expensive, BioAerium uses lab-on-a-chip technology to create small, low-cost and customizable detectors that can be programmed to detect influenza, SARS-COV-2, RSV and other common pathogens.

“We’re looking at this project as preparing for the next pandemic,” Paprotny said. “We may even be able to tell whether we are detecting a variant that people are vaccinated against or a different strain. Making those distinctions can be especially important.”

—Rob Mitchum

UI Health Opens Spanish Language Transplant Clinic More than 160 patients seeking a new kidney and who primarily speak Spanish have signed up at UI Health’s new Spanish Language Clinic. The clinic opened to treat the growing number of Spanish-speaking patients who are seeking a new kidney within the UI Health Kidney Transplant Program.

UI Health has a long history of treating Spanish-speaking patients and is a leading hospital that provides transplant services to this population, said Samantha Mok, transplant outreach coordinator at UI Health. With the growing number of Latino patients on transplant lists, UI Health officials decided that a clinic serving the population in their native language was due.

Dr. Jorge Almario Alvarez, a physician surgeon at UI Health and assistant professor of clinical surgery in the College of Medicine, said the entire team in the clinic speaks Spanish — the nurses and doctors, the nutritionists, the financial advisers and the social workers — so that evaluations of transplant candidates are done entirely in Spanish.

“When I see patients in the Spanish Language Clinic, we speak Spanish about the surgery and about the process, and we will all have a better understanding of what will happen,” said Almario, a native of Colombia.

—Carlos Sadovi

Fall 2023

Using recycled wastewater to avert a water crisis in Illinois There is a looming crisis over freshwater just west of Chicago, where a massive aquifer is collapsing.

Joliet, Ill., has already contracted with the City of Chicago to supply water from Lake Michigan. Eventually more communities on the aquifer will do the same. But at some point, due to limits set by the U.S. Supreme Court, Chicago will need to say no.

“You don’t want to get to the point where, ‘oh my gosh, this community has no water,’” explained Rachel Havrelock, founder of UIC’s Freshwater Lab, a humanities-based initiative focused on research, teaching and public awareness about the Great Lakes.

PHOTO: JENNY FONTAINE

The Freshwater Lab, in partnership with UIC’s Great Cities Institute, has a proposed solution: supply industrial sites with treated, recycled wastewater, while reserving drinking water for the taps that really need it — those running into homes, health care facilities and other places that require potable water. This will help meet the area’s drinking water needs, divert wastewater out of our rivers and help support the region’s industrial growth.

“There’s no reason we should be using drinking water for industrial use when we have a viable alternative,” said Teresa Córdova, director of the Great Cities Institute.

—Emily Stone

Alumni Named CGIU Fellows A UIC-piloted research and advocacy project led to Clinton Global Initiative University fellowships for two alumni.

Former Honors College members Sonya Gupta and Ryan Zomorrodi transformed their interest in Geographic Information Systems into an undergraduate initiative to improve health infrastructure within Chicago.

They launched the GeoAdvocates workshop series in 2022 to help others use GIS software to better understand Chicago health disparities, create evidence-based solutions and improve health policy, while addressing structural violence, social and environmental factors of health, and data literacy through maps.

PHOTO: RYAN ZOMORRODI AND SONYA GUPTA

Through the Clinton Foundation’s project development program, they plan to expand the series, which has been presented in primarily academic settings and to local organizations. Reflecting on the initiative’s growth, the pair credits the support received at UIC. “Many faculty members were willing to let us debut the workshop in their classes.

Their support was immensely valuable and greatly contributed to the development and growth of the project,” said Gupta, who earned degrees in biological sciences and Russian studies from LAS in 2022 and is pursuing a master’s degree at Harvard University.

Zomorrodi, who received a bachelor’s in biological sciences last May, added, “We will be forever grateful to the community at UIC.” —Brian Flood

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UIC Business Launches Full Circle Scholarships The UIC College of Business Administration has established the Full Circle Scholarship Program, which supports undergraduate students before, during and after their UIC Business studies. The fund is composed of three groups: the UIC Full Circle Scholarship Recruitment Fund, the UIC Full Circle Scholarship Retention Fund and the Get to Graduation Fund.

Each fund helps underrepresented students achieve their collegiate goals and connect with business leaders around Chicago. The scholarships are made possible by a generous contribution from alumna Carol Josefowicz, BS Management ’77, and her husband, Greg Josefowicz.

PHOTO: CAROL AND GREG JOSEFOWICZ

“UIC, located in the vibrant city of Chicago and recognized as a global business hub, has provided us an opportunity to continue our educational pursuits,” Carol Josefowicz said. “Hopefully our gift, and others like it, will lessen the burden and pressure that many students feel. UIC Business can help students follow their dreams and expand their minds as part of their own life journey.”

The initial scholarships will be awarded during the fall 2023 semester. To learn more about the fund, visit go.uic.edu/UICBusinessFullCircleScholarships.

—Marilyn Koonce

UIC’s ‘College Tour’ Episode Debuts on YouTube

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PHOTO: MAUREEN WOODS

UIC TODAY

An episode of “The College Tour” that highlights the student experience at UIC is now available to watch on YouTube.

The episode, which also aired on Amazon Prime in October, spotlights 11 students who share how UIC helped them fit in and find their passion through activities inside and outside of the classroom. The Center for Student Involvement hosted an outdoor viewing party of the episode this fall.

Film crews visited UIC in March to produce the 30-minute episode. Scan the QR code for more information about “The College Tour.”

—Christy Levy

Fall 2023

PHOTO: ARANI MUKHOPADHYAY, ANISH PAL, CONSTANTINE M. MEGARIDIS

UIC’s annual Image of Research competition offers graduate and professional students a chance to showcase the beauty of their research in a single image, video or animation. Pictured here is a nanoneedle floral bloom from Arani Mukhopadhyay, Anish Pal and Constantine M. Megaridis from the mechanical and industrial engineering program. It won an honorable mention in the 2023 awards.

PHOTO: RALF-FINN HESTOFT

Lee and George Sprague (right) surrounded by family and recipients of the Lucy Sprague Public Service Award at the unveiling of a donor wall dedicated to the memory of their daughter, Lucy.

Delivering on

The Promise of Lucy Sprague

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he Sprague family remained true to its legacy of public service when it established the Lucy Sprague Public Service Award at UIC Law. Lucy was murdered while attending what is now UIC Law. Her mother, Lee Sprague, and late father, the Honorable George Sprague, created the scholarship to honor and memorialize her after her death. Lucy’s intention to serve women, underserved populations and people who are indigent was cut short, but her promise is carried forward by more than two decades of Sprague Scholars. The Sprague family’s scholarship allows UIC Law students to commit to careers serving the greater good, regardless of salary. Over almost three decades, the Sprague family has created a tight-knit community of Sprague Scholars who serve the interests of individuals traditionally underrepresented in the legal system. The lives the Sprague Scholars have touched because of the Sprague family’s generosity are countless.

Photo of Lucy Sprague.

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Fall 2023

Sprague Scholars’ Stories Karina Giron-Munoz, JD ’22

Karina Giron-Munoz’s background is one of her driving forces behind pursuing a public service career. She saw those with few resources who needed help left with no support. She wanted to pursue a career advocating for those individuals.

“Thousands of people around the country have been touched and supported by Lucy’s legacy...”

Sandi Tanoue, JD ’19

Sandi Tanoue won in litigation when representing her father who had been injured. It influenced her to pursue a career in public service. Prevailing at trial and witnessing the same relief from a victim that she witnessed in her father is among the most satisfying aspects of her career.

“I can only hope that my actions help other people and live up to the exemplary standards of Lucy and the Sprague family.”

Oluchi Ifebi-Egemuka, JD ’17

Oluchi Ifebi-Egemuka chose a career in public service to answer her love of and passion for helping people who sometimes can’t help themselves.

“Thanks so much for the opportunities provided through your scholarship!”

Joe Cook, JD ’06

Being able to represent victims of crime as well as the public as an attorney is the most satisfying part of Joe Cook’s career.

“The Sprague family has also impacted my life with their friendship, support and example of what good people do with grief.”

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PHOTO: MIKE FAN

Walking the Talk New Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda renews UIC’s commitment to students, research, community and social justice.

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he University of Illinois Chicago’s 10th Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda prefers walking to work. She intentionally chose to make the West Loop her home so she could be steps away from campus.

“You’re part of the community in a different way when you’re walking,” Miranda says. “When you’re driving, it’s like you arrived on campus through a mail tube. You might be driving past things, but you’re not really experiencing them.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Miranda fell in love with UIC while on a walk.

was a place where the social justice mission was fully apparent — not a component of the university’s mission, but front and center.”

But it’s one thing to read about a mission, and another to feel it.

As Miranda traversed campus that day, she felt it. Her husband, Chris Geron, and their three adult children, Thompson, Mariel and Viviana, could see that UIC’s mission aligned with the priorities Miranda was so passionate about, and they told her so. A couple of months later, she became UIC’s chancellor.

Last fall, after a search firm approached her about the “UIC serves a diverse population, is already doing good chance to lead UIC, she visited campus to wander it and work and has big aspirations,” Miranda says. “That’s very exciting for me.” take it all in without anyone knowing.

“I got this wonderful feeling right away of the diversity, the warmth and a sense that this is a place that provides broad opportunities,” Miranda says.

And as she continued her stroll into Greektown, Little Italy and Pilsen, neighborhoods surrounding UIC, Miranda noticed the global vibrancy of the food, languages and accents. Miranda says she saw, “a reflection of people’s own cultures, and a reflection of their embrace of other cultures.”

After officially starting work in July, Miranda is beginning to steer the university on a course she believes will position it to continue to excel as a social impactfocused research hub and a force for delivering a worldclass education to all students. She is at UIC because she believes the university has exactly what it takes to lead during the next era of American higher education: excellence in research; excellence in educating a broad and diverse mix of students; and excellence in serving its city and state as a health care provider across income levels.

That day she was attempting to confirm a hunch: that UIC’s mission, culture and urban setting uniquely “The public institutions that understand and successfully educate the full demographics of the United position the university to lead on social justice issues.

States are the ones that are going to shape that future,” Miranda already knew about UIC’s dual status as a Miranda says. world-class research institution and a university where the majority of undergraduate students are eligible to receive need-based federal aid. She also knew about its location in Chicago’s urban center. And, she says, “UIC

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Miranda’s Vision, Methods and Priorities Miranda’s insight regarding public education marks a change of direction, considering her prior academic roles have mostly been at private universities. She spent 20 years on the faculty at Duke University, where she earned her undergraduate degree in mathematics. Her PhD and master’s are from Harvard University, and she served as provost of both Rice University in Houston and the University of Notre Dame. Her time as a dean at the University of Michigan was the most formative in her leadership arc and eventually led her to rethink her priorities while at Notre Dame.

“The pandemic made me spend time thinking about what was important to me — how I wanted to spend my time, what I wanted to work on and how and why that work was meaningful,” Miranda says.

Miranda’s highly successful research career is laser-focused on social issues, and her research team is best known for its work on childhood lead exposure (see sidebar on page 17). Even as she emerged as an administrative star, first as dean of the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, and then at Rice and Notre Dame, she found herself frustrated that she was not able to spend the majority of her time on the things that were most important to her. She became determined to find and lead a public university where her leadership skills would serve a social justice mission.

That place, of course, is UIC. As Miranda gets settled on campus, the university already is on an upward trajectory. This fall, the university welcomed its largest-ever freshman class and saw increases in first-generation freshmen as well as Black students.

UIC received $509 million in research funding during its 2023 fiscal year, its fifth-straight record-breaking year. The university also climbed in rankings. The Wall Street Journal named UIC as No. 13 among public universities and No. 8 for “social mobility” — a reflection of a school’s ability to enroll and graduate students who receive need-based federal financial aid. U.S. News & World Report ranked UIC in the top 40 for ethnic diversity and top 50 for innovation. Campus Pride ranked UIC as a top 30 university for LGBTQ+ students. Likewise, UIC’s health care practices serve as crucial examples of UIC’s mission in action, training a diverse population of next-generation expert clinicians while also providing care to people in need across Chicago and Illinois.

“We have exquisitely good researchers on our campus — I would match our faculty up in many, many, many areas against the best faculty at any university,” Miranda says. “UIC faculty have trained at the best places, they’re doing world-class research, and they’re at UIC because they choose to be at a university with the kind of mission that we have.”

Miranda wants to build upon UIC’s research pedigree while also improving graduation and retention rates, increasing the number of students who earn undergraduate degrees within four years of enrollment and reducing the disparities in graduation and retention

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rates among students from different backgrounds. She wants to ensure deeper support for UIC’s graduate and professional school students. She wants to strengthen the alumni community by encouraging lifetime engagement with UIC, especially through mentoring students. As an interdisciplinary scholar whose research program — the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative — relies on con­ tributions from health care scholars, geospatial analysts, statisticians and economists, Miranda also is keen to identify and expand research collaborations that cross departmental boundaries.

“To get to the next level in terms of research productivity, we need to be more successful at collaborative research — grants where you have multiple faculty working together on different components of a larger project,” Miranda says.

Identifying and fostering those collaborations requires vision, diplomacy and humility. The key, according to Miranda, is to listen closely to faculty research presentations and other campus initiatives in order to spot opportunities for cross-disciplinary research partnerships.

“It’s kind of like you’re discovering teams instead of building teams because sometimes people just need help being connected,” Miranda says.

Miranda is excited about the primacy of UIC’s social justice mission not only because of its potential to benefit society, but because it represents a unifying common thread that runs throughout the university community. She said her early conversations at UIC inevitably turn to the university’s mission, whether she’s meeting with faculty or alumni, attending a basketball game or chatting with a groundskeeper.

“If an organization wants to make a big difference in the world, the very first thing it needs is a set of shared values,” says Miranda. “UIC already has that shared set of values around social justice, and there’s no greater first asset to have.”

These photos share a glimpse of Chancellor Miranda’s investment in connecting with UIC constituents across campus: A) Greeting UIC donors. B&C) Warming up with UIC alumni and students before a basketball game. D) Helping students move into UIC’s residence halls. E) Posing with Sparky at a faculty and staff ice cream social. F) Engaging with community contacts. G) Connecting with foundation and corporation leaders.

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PHOTO: IAN BATTAGLIA

Leadership Informed by Mentorship and Family Miranda is the first American-born child of immigrant parents and grew up in Michigan, where her father landed his “dream job” at the University of Detroit, now called Detroit Mercy. She loved dance and mathematics. Sports drew her in, and during high school she would take her physics homework to basketball games at her father’s university, working on problem sets during timeouts and halftime.

Later, when Miranda enrolled as an undergraduate at Duke, she and her college roommate were hired as student managers to support the basketball team under its new head coach Mike Krzyzewski, or “Coach K,” who went on to become a Hall of Fame coach and a renowned motivator.

He also became one of Miranda’s first mentors. She credits him with instilling in both his players and student managers a powerful sense of community and belonging that she hopes to replicate at UIC. After she finished her doctoral work at Harvard in 1990, Miranda married her husband, and they built a family. “I feel that my identity as a leader is deeply tied to my family, and I talk about my family as I lead in ways that many others do not,” she notes.

Miranda’s stories about fishing with her husband, coaching her son’s baseball games, discussing geospatial health with her middle child (“That apple didn’t even fall off the tree,”

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says Miranda.) or caring for her youngest daughter as she battled cancer, make powerful connections with people. She is at once an ivy-league graduate who has risen to the pinnacle of university leadership and also a daughter who followed in her father’s footsteps, a wife who enjoys tending to her bees with her husband on their farm and a working mother who is deeply devoted to her children.

As an academic leader, Miranda draws upon these experiences not only when building relationships, but also when brokering compromises and de-escalating burgeoning conflicts.

In those instances, Miranda says she looks for points of agreement and connection as a starting point toward building greater consensus: “Where’s our point of common ground here? What small postage stamp of common ground can we both put our toe on and work from there?”

Miranda’s low-key, even-keel approach to defusing high-temperature conversations also derives from her former boss and current executive coach, Mary Sue Coleman, who was president of the University of Michigan while Miranda served as a dean there. While at Michigan, Miranda marveled at how Coleman kept her cool in a variety of situations — and how her kindness and composure ultimately led to positive outcomes.

The lesson learned for Miranda is to listen empathetically and engage consistently so that during difficult conversations, “You might not give people exactly the answer that they want, but you’re always interacting with people in a way that they feel respected, they feel heard.”

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Loop, Little and Italy Miranda is a nature-lover. She sits on the Environmental Defense Fund’s board of trustees, and she and her husband own an Indiana farm called Orange Belton Sugars, named after the family’s English Setters. It’s the place where Miranda practices her second career as a beekeeper.

The greenness of UIC’s campus and the panoramic view of Lake Michigan from her office helps her feel connected to the environment.

But it’s the family of peregrine falcons that lives atop University Hall, immediately above Miranda’s office, that most delights her.

She’s named them Loop, Little and Italy, in honor of some of the communities visible from their shared perch, with a high, southernand eastern-facing view so vast that she never tires of it.

That view, along with Miranda’s experience of rural life — she and her husband are keeping the farm, which is less than two hours away — also informs her sense of the scope of UIC’s mandate, a constant reminder that the school’s mission is rooted in Chicago, but stretches across the state. (For example, UIC provides care for complex dental cases across Illinois, and its colleges of medicine, nursing and pharmacy have campuses across the state in Rockford, Peoria, Springfield, Urbana and the Quad Cities.)

That broad sphere of influence is another component of what makes UIC appealing to Miranda.

“You don’t have to pick, ‘Am I going to work on urban social justice issues, or am I going to work on rural social justice issues?’ Simply make the choice that ‘I’m going to commit my professional life to working on social justice’ — that’s the decision you have to make,” she says.

It’s a vision that she’s excited to share with the UIC community, and one that she believes can have an extraordinary impact.

“If it all comes together, these things will be true: UIC is a place where you can get an education that will allow you to compete globally and lead a meaningful life,” Miranda says. “UIC researchers are tackling the most intransigent problems and giving people reason for hope.

UIC is deeply engaged and embedded in its home community of Chicago, and moving the needle on key problems for our home city.

And UIC is broadly perceived as a resource for everyone.”

As Miranda settles into a new home that seems perfectly aligned with her own priorities, she is brimming with vision, optimism and enthusiasm for the road ahead.

It’s a road she plans to walk, rather than drive.

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•

Interdisciplinary Scholarship in Action Miranda’s renowned environmental healthfocused research group comes to UIC. Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda’s University Hall office is just one floor above the headquarters of another new campus addition: the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative (CEHI). Miranda, who still calls herself a data scientist despite her leadership position, founded this interdisciplinary research group that is dedicated to environmental justice in 1999.

CEHI combines geospatial data with health and population records to identify specific areas where children are at greatest risk of suffering environmental harm — and identifying solutions. For example, CEHI’s recent research shows that living in a racially segregated neighborhood puts Black children at a higher risk of having elevated blood lead levels, and this association has persisted over more than two decades. The study, published in Pediatrics, analyzed data from the early 1990s and from 2015 blood lead level tests of more than 320,000 children younger than 7 in North Carolina.

Researchers found that while overall lead levels for non-Hispanic Black children decreased over those 25 years, levels were higher in both time periods if they lived in segregated neighborhoods, even when adjusting for socioeconomic status. Racial segregation — and the environmental and social burdens that accompany it — creates tangible and long-term health impacts.

CEHI received the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Award in 2008, and has garnered more than $70 million in grant funding. Miranda believes CEHI is well-matched with its new university home.

“We let too many unacceptable things happen to children in our country,” she says. “One of the things that I love about UIC is that people here also find them unacceptable, and so many people are working on behalf of children.”

In addition to caring deeply about the work, Miranda also values her ongoing connection to CEHI because it maintains her first-hand relationships with faculty and student researchers. And it enables her to shift gears mentally.

“Going to work with my research team is the human equivalent of a dog shaking itself to get realigned and warmed up,” says Miranda. “I can run down to CEHI’s offices, breathe that different air and use my brain in a different way, even for a short period of time, and then come back up re-energized and excited.”

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Intelligent Revolution

UIC researchers explore how to maximize the potential of artificial intelligence to create a better, more efficient world and safeguard against potential risks.

By Cindy Kuzma

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his article was reported and written by a human. As recently as last year, that disclaimer might have seemed nonsensical.

But with the public release of highly sophisticated chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard this spring, artificial intelligence (AI) took a dramatic leap forward. Now, these so-called large language models can generate prose rivaling a professional writer’s.

neural network. More recently, scholars in law, communications, computer science and other disciplines have been at the forefront of addressing concerns about ethical AI. Others are exploring AI’s tremendous potential to improve health care delivery and solve tough problems related to refugee resettlement and the environment.

AI’s ascendance has fueled visions of fully autonomous vehicles, robotic assistants and more personalized health care — but also has raised fears about job losses and inequities. Prominent industry leaders have warned that AI poses an extinction risk on par with nuclear war and pandemics.

As an urban public research university with a commitment to social justice, UIC is uniquely positioned to explore AI’s possibilities and mitigate the perils. Administrators encourage interdisciplinary collaboration, inclusivity and applying academic work to reallife problems, all essential for understanding this technology’s impact. For medical applications, the university’s health enterprise, UI Health, treats many patients typically underrepresented in research. And UIC’s campus, nestled within Chicago, puts students and faculty near industry leaders, regulators and other important voices.

Like many advances, AI can seem akin to magic. However, the algorithms underlying AI technologies like machine learning and natural language processing aren’t dramatically different from many that have long been used, says Mesrob Ohannessian, UIC assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Advances in the way they’re designed and executed have improved their ability to identify patterns, make decisions and learn.

UIC faculty have been studying and using AI-based tools for years, even as far back as 1943, when Dr. Warren McCulloch, associate professor of psychiatry in the UIC College of Medicine, published what is considered by some the first mathematical model of a

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That’s significant because in a field as fast-changing as AI, “there’s no way we are all going to know everything, and there’s no way we’re all going to know the right questions to ask,” says Steve Jones, UIC distinguished professor of communication. “The more people we can bring together to probe these things, the better.”

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Improving Health Outcomes AI is already making a difference in the medical field. For years, decision-making tools have prevented errors and tracked critical data such as medication allergies, says Dr. Karl Kochendorfer, assistant vice chancellor for health affairs at UIC and chief health information officer at UI Health.

Now, improvements in AI technologies such as neural networks (the interconnected series of nodes through which ChatGPT and similar systems process information) have opened new possibilities, including improving doctor-patient communication. Patients at UI Health send more than 15,000 messages monthly through MyChart, the health system’s online patient portal. In partnership with electronic health record vendor Epic Systems, UI Health plans to pilot using ChatGPT to draft responses. Doctors will still review answers for accuracy, but editing instead of writing could free up overburdened clinicians to spend more time delivering care, says Kochendorfer, who is also professor in clinical family medicine at the College of Medicine.

Health systems across Chicagoland face similar challenges, such as health disparities — inequities based on factors such as race or class — and information integration. To centralize AI-based solutions, Kochendorfer and a regional team launched an initiative called CREATE WISDOM in 2020; the effort received one of the first grants from the Discovery Partners Institute, a technology research and innovation hub led by the U of I System.

The CREATE WISDOM team began by building predictive models for COVID-19. Now, members are working on early detection of pancreatic cancer and improving connectivity so clinics and practices can share data safely and efficiently. They’ve also partnered with Break Through Tech Chicago, a program in UIC’s Department of Computer Science that advances the careers of women and nonbinary students in tech, on projects such as an AIbased information retrieval service for clinicians called 1-Search.

UIC researchers are also using AI to pursue precision medicine, tailoring treatments to individuals’ genetics, lifestyle and environment. Pharmacy Professor Yu Gao partnered with Dr. Kent Hoskins at UI Health and the University of Illinois Cancer Center on a clinical trial of a combination therapy for stage 4 breast cancer patients. “Some patients responded to the treatment, and some didn’t,” Gao says. What if patients could find out which group they were in before they took the drugs?

In the past, researchers hoped to pinpoint a single protein or other biomarker in the blood to predict a patient’s drug response.

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“It turns out that the biological system is much more complex than that,” Gao says. His team used a graphical neural network to quickly assess and identify patterns within a wide range of different biomarkers, including proteins released by exosomes, tiny extracellular vehicles that cancer cells secrete.

Using just a few drops of blood taken at the beginning of the trial, their model predicted with up to 90% accuracy which patients would respond to the combination therapy. The pilot study was small, but Gao is now working with pharmaceutical companies and other researchers to expand it to hundreds of thousands of participants. The strategy represents a win-win for patients and pharmaceutical companies, he says. Cancer patients could save precious time by avoiding ineffective treatments and receive more precise and personalized treatment. Meanwhile, incorporating such screening into clinical trials is in line with the NIH and FDA’s goal toward precision medicine, which could accelerate FDA approvals.

In the future, similar protocols could be applied to other diseases, biomarkers and prevention. Gao sees a world in which diagnostic testing could identify a wide range of health problems before they begin, allowing patients to more easily choose — and stick to — effective prevention habits.

Solving Social Problems UIC Business faculty like Brad Sturt, assistant professor in the Department of Information and Decision Sciences, frequently use AI-based technologies such as optimization and machine learning when consulting with corporations — but it isn’t all about the bottom line. Their work aids industry, government agencies and nonprofits in balancing competing interests to create a more just future.

Sturt defines optimization as a “specific, rigorous way” of considering three parts of any problem: the decision to be made, the objectives to minimize or maximize, and the constraints that limit it. Through machine learning, algorithms can consider those variables and find the best solution. “By using optimization in a thoughtful way, we can get to a society that works better for all of us, without making it worse for any of us,” he says.

Most recently, Sturt has used this approach to work on an important social issue: refugee resettlement. Agencies around the world must decide which cities to send each of the estimated 2 million-plus refugees seeking new homes in the next year alone.

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Algorithms have already been widely used to predict each person’s likelihood of finding gainful employment in their new city, a widely used integration measure.

But existing methods have shortcomings, including a failure to incorporate fairness — a legal requirement in European countries and an ethical obligation worldwide.

“It’s easy to imagine scenarios where the optimal thing to do would be highly unfair,” Sturt says. For example, people from large countries might get priority over those from smaller nations. So, he and his colleagues designed a dynamic algorithm that incorporates fairness, in a way that can be defined by the official using it.

Down the hall, Associate Professor Selva Nadarajah is using AI to address the transition to clean energy and a net-zero economy, one that reabsorbs as many greenhouse gasses as it emits. Getting there requires a significant investment — about $9.2 trillion in annual spending by 2050, according to McKinsey & Company.

The result benefits humanity. But along the way, some individuals and communities will lose out, as factories close and new jobs in renewable energy aren’t available immediately or in the same areas.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty, and these are decisions with long-term implications,” Nadarajah says. “You can use AI to manage those complex trade-offs in a transparent way.” For example, by combining an approach called multiobjective reinforcement learning with ideas from financial risk management, computers learn to create policies that optimize many desired outcomes at once — in this case, fiscal responsibility, social responsibility and climate goals.

Using these techniques, Nadarajah and his colleagues recently helped a large aluminum manufacturer properly time plant shutdowns to minimize the impact on the surrounding communities, without incurring significant costs. In another line of research, he’s shown that when energy companies are more aggressive in setting emissions goals, they end up spending less overall to reach them.

Companies should be able to harness AI without having to know how to write algorithms, Nadarajah believes. His research group aims to develop solutions businesses could easily tailor to their needs. And, he’s facilitating discussions among stakeholders involved in financing and executing these decisions by hosting workshops, creating policy papers and offering ongoing education.

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Meanwhile, in the College of Engineering’s computer science department, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Barbara Di Eugenio is harnessing AI to offer a literal helping hand to those in need. Di Eugenio’s research focuses on natural language processing (NLP), which allows computers to process and manipulate language in the way it’s commonly spoken or written. NLP is why you can ask Alexa or Siri to play your favorite song using everyday language, or how Google Translate can instantly turn Korean into English and vice versa.

Eventually, NLP may also enable older adults and people with disabilities to interact naturally with assistive robots that help with cooking, cleaning and other daily tasks. Through a project called RoboHelper, Di Eugenio collaborates with Miloš Žefran, UIC professor and associate dean for faculty affairs, department of electrical and computer engineering, to bring this idea to life.

They began by mapping real-life interactions between older adults and human helpers, components of which went well beyond the spoken word. Say the helper asks the older adult if they’re thirsty, then brings them a glass of water. That interaction involves a verbal question and answer, but also gestures, vision and haptics, or the perception of force — the sense used to understand when the recipient has a firm enough grasp that the helper can let go of the glass.

Solving these problems requires developing abstract models that consider all these different signals, which her roboticist colleagues translate into action, Di Eugenio says.

And that’s only one way Di Eugenio is exploring what she calls “NLP with a purpose.” Others include a conversational assistant that helps patients with heart failure manage their health at home.

Throughout her work, Di Eugenio has stayed focused on diversity and inclusivity. In part, it’s woven into the projects themselves. Most heart failure patients using the assistant are African American and Latino, and one goal is making the tool culturally appropriate — using terminology familiar to patients and staying sensitive to their concerns. Having collaborators with lived experience of these identities or deep knowledge from interactions with these communities is essential, she says.

Fall 2023

Guiding Ethics and Policy Although Di Eugenio appreciates the way ChatGPT and similar technologies fuel excitement about AI, she points out ethical concerns with their development and release.

Unlike her projects — which train NLP models on specific data sets appropriate to the audience who will use them, such as heart failure patients — large language models use massive amounts of publicly available data. Not everyone who created that data agreed to have it used for profit.

Plus, using it indiscriminately may perpetuate existing disparities and biases.

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Other faculty members are exploring those potential risks and downsides. Jones, the communications professor, has long been fascinated by how we talk to machines, and he studies the degree to which communication influences our trust in AI. Throughout history, humans have tended to place significant trust in technology, warranted or not. And because AI systems are programmed to please us, their responses may increasingly skew toward what we want

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to hear, sometimes to the detriment of truth or objectivity.

As a result, we may overtrust AI — in other words, place too much faith in its knowledge or capabilities, Jones says. He studies these issues by conducting surveys and interviews, as well as having study participants talk to robots and digital voice assistants in the lab.

scenarios, such as AI taking over nuclear codes, should be considered until they’re proven impossible. “We are in some pretty uncharted territory with this technology, and I think not a day is going to go by, for the foreseeable future, when we’re not surprised by something AI is doing,” he says.

In some cases, the consequences of overtrust are minor, such as watching a different recommended show on a streaming service. But if AI gives incorrect health advice or enables the creation and dissemination of disinformation — easier than ever with content-producing generative AI — the implications are far more serious.

To further these discussions among academics of different disciplines, Jones co-founded a Human-Machine Communication Interest Group within the International Communication Association and co-edited The SAGE Handbook of Human–Machine Communication, published past summer.

About a week after OpenAI released GPT-4, Jones signed onto an open letter calling for AI labs to pause the training of future giant AI experiments for six months. In that time, labs and independent experts should create safety protocols and governance systems, the letter implored.

Across the highway at UIC Law, scholars grapple with AI’s intersection with existing legal frameworks and policies. Generative AI and large language models raise important questions about patents and copyrights, says Gary Friedlander, interim director of the UIC Center for Intellectual Property, Information & Privacy Law. Much of the data ChatGPT and similar models were trained on is copyrighted, so courts must decide which protections apply both to those inputs and the output AI produces.

The letter and similar petitions have inspired discussions about the implications of these technologies — conversations Jones welcomes. Even far-fetched

In addition, the evolution of AI technologies exacerbates long-held privacy concerns. Besides preexisting biases, algorithms may introduce errors, sometimes called “hallucinations.” Some are due to compression: think of the differences between a full-sized digital photo and a JPEG, which reduces file size by removing some of the information in pixels from images. Due to the limits of processing power or other constraints, algorithms lose small, fine points as well. “You’re missing details, and those details can be very important,” Friedlander says.

Depending on how AI is used, errors could significantly impact people’s lives — affecting credit scores or the ability to get a loan, or mistakenly landing someone on a no-fly list. Ideally, companies would have considered more of these consequences before releasing these technologies, Friedlander says. Now, recognizing and addressing harms is even more urgent.

“I think law schools can best help by being a neutral party and facilitating discussions from all sides, so we can come to a rational course of action,” he says. And of course, schools play a key role in educating law students on these topics.

Fall 2023

Making AI Responsible If it were up to Lu Cheng, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, ethical solutions would be embedded within AI algorithms themselves. Cheng’s research focuses on socially responsible AI. By this, she means technologies that are fair, transparent and reliable even in uncertain conditions; they also protect privacy and are interpretable, meaning humans can understand why they respond the way they do.

One issue Cheng explores in her lab — the Responsible and Reliable AI Lab — is uncertainty, and how AI models could better quantify and convey it. Consider the difference between ChatGPT and a regular search engine.

If you Google a term that doesn’t appear online, you’ll get a page that indicates there aren’t many, or any, great matches. ChatGPT, meanwhile, generates answers with the same confidence regardless of supporting data.

Cheng envisions an uncertainty quantification method that would allow AI models to respond with something like: “‘I’m not sure, or I’m not confident about my answers.

You should give this question or give my output to human experts,’” Cheng says, increasing AI’s trustworthiness.

Computer scientists can develop algorithms to facilitate many responsible AI practices — Cheng has addressed cyberbullying and online hate and the detection of fake news, among other topics. But successfully implementing responsible practices requires collaboration with people from other disciplines, including social scientists and policymakers.

Common language can bridge gaps between fields. Cheng recently co-authored a book, “Socially Responsible AI: Theories and Practices,” in which she and her co-author Huan Liu, from Arizona State University, propose a common framework for cross-disciplinary discussion.

Cheng also teaches a course on socially responsible AI, which she hopes instills these values in students and encourages more of them to pursue research in this area.

Ohannessian — the assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, who last year earned a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation — also focuses on issues of fairness within algorithms. In fact, he leads a research group called

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Data, Information, and Computing, Equitably.

His students work on both the theory and practical applications of competitive algorithms — those adapting to the structure of data — and non-discriminatory algorithmic decisions. “When we talk about fairness in machine learning, we don’t want it to be only an academic question; we want to make sure it’s useful and relevant,” he says.

Student projects have focused on vaccine distribution and discrimination in credit card algorithms, and recently Ohannessian helped the city of Chicago audit response times to 311 calls to ensure they were equitable.

With his CAREER grant, Ohannessian also focuses on education, teaching AI and data science at all levels.

In doing so, he has two goals. Of course, he wants to encourage students to become researchers in this area — but he also hopes to engage the broader public. “People are scared of AI; often, people get scared of things they don’t really know,” he says. “Dissipating some of the vagueness can alleviate that fear.”

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How a transformative gift amplifies diverse historical voices and opens broad access to UIC Library’s Special Collections

By Samus Haddad

Our History, Heard

PHOTO: YINGTANG LU BDES ’20

ACADEMIC ARCHIVES

The UIC Library System Special Collections department houses rare books, original manuscripts and the historical papers of prominent local figures and community organizations — from labor activist and organizer Rudy Lozano, to pioneering female politicians like U.S. House of Representatives member Cardiss Collins, to the Daley family. These records are primary sources for students and researchers at UIC — and around the globe — amplifying diverse historical voices into today’s discourse. Until recently, they were constrained by the limitations inherent to print materials. So how is the UIC Library enhancing the impact of these significant documents?

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Fall 2023

PHOTO: YINGTANG LU BDES ’20

PHOTO: YINGTANG LU BDES ’20

PHOTO: YINGTANG LU BDES ’20

PHOTO: YINGTANG LU BDES ’20

IMAGE COURTESY: EVOFEM BIOSCIENCES

ELECTRONIC EVOLUTIONS

Enter the Library’s Digital Imaging Studio, made possible by a generous gift from Herb Paaren BS ’71, MS ’73, Ph.D. ’76 and Denise Marino through the Single Step Foundation.

Their investment in cutting-edge technology renders UIC’s preservation capabilities equivalent to the Smithsonian Institute and the Library of Congress. State-of-the-art digital cameras improve the integrity of captured images while increasing digitization output by over 1,000%. Meanwhile, new Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software rapidly converts digitized text documents into searchable data, and a digital asset management system makes the materials easy for researchers to discover and access. In just days, a hidden rare tome becomes available to all at the click of a button.

PHOTO: UIC LIBRARY

IMAGE COURTESY: EVOFEM BIOSCIENCES

LEGACIES LIFTED

This image of a 1966 rally for equal education comes from the collections of the Chicago Urban League, a century-old organization seeking economic and racial equity for Black Chicago, and is one of 500,000 images and documents being archived for a new generation. “An idea, a protest, a march, a movement — from the Great Chicago Fire to the cries for social justice — library digitization preserves the events of the past and transforms them for future impact,” shares Rhea Ballard-Thrower, dean of libraries. Empowered with this technology, the UIC Library is equipped to preserve and propagate the elaborate tapestry of Chicago’s history.

PHOTO: MARY RAFFERTY

THEIR HONOR I

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IS OURS

2023 ALUMNI AWARDS

By Jeremy Ohmes

E

very year the University of Illinois Chicago Alumni Association proudly recognizes a few of our remarkable UIC alumni.

These individuals have achieved extraordinary success in their respective fields and have made notable contributions to their communities.

Each of these alumni come from different disciplines: endodontics, genetics, orthodontics, physical therapy, social work and oral sciences. But what binds them together is their UIC experience and their commitment to meaningful change. These achievers, humanitarians and rising stars embody their alma mater’s commitment to create a better world for all. The UIC community is honored to call them alumni.

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MSW ’12, Social Work Jane Addams College of Social Work

H

ow are good leaders made? For Jenifer Nyhuis, it is a combination of education and experience — with a healthy dose of the unexpected. Only five years after graduating from the UIC Jane Addams College of Social Work (JACSW), Nyhuis became CEO of the behavioral health hospital, Aurora Vista del Mar — at the age of 34. Three years later, she was recruited to lead Havenwyck Hospital in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and oversee three other behavioral health hospitals throughout the state.

She attributes her meteoric rise through the ranks of the health care field to the people skills she learned at UIC. The alumna says, “A lot of leading is just focusing on people and advocating for their needs. Those fundamentals are often overlooked, and UIC helped instill in me those values of dignity, respect and looking at that whole-person perspective.”

RISING STAR AWARD

During her social work studies, Nyhuis interned for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, mostly working with LGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness and advocating for state funding to address the crisis.

The legendary JACSW field instructor Barbara Coats recognized Nyhuis’ leadership abilities and helped her secure a director position with the Salvation Army Head Start childcare program. In that role, the 29-year-old Nyhuis oversaw several teams in all areas of social, disabilities and mental health services — creating positive changes in the organizational culture and in turn fostering positive outcomes for Head Start clients.

Those experiences set the stage for the UIC alumna’s transition to behavioral health care and prepared her for two unexpected life-changing challenges. Six months after Nyhuis became the CEO of Aurora Vista del Mar hospital in Ventura, California, the catastrophic

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PHOTO: MARY RAFFERTY

JENIFER NYHUIS

Thomas Fire blazed through the community. Embers and ash fell around the hospital. When she called 911, Nyhuis was told there were no first responders available to help. She took decisive action and personally led the evacuation of all 70 patients and 25 staff members. No one was injured, and the patients were safely placed in other hospitals; however, half of Vista del Mar was destroyed. Nyhuis helped reopen the hospital within 10 months, an accomplishment that earned her a Distinguished Service Award from the California Hospital Association and Woman of the Year from the California Senate.

Two years later, Nyhuis would lead the same hospital through another once-in-a-lifetime challenge, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today, as she leads a state-wide health care community, she calls on her learning, growth and transformational moments to bring compassion and attention to the people who count on her most.

Fall 2023

PhD ’14, Oral Sciences College of Dentistry

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hallmark of UIC alumni is the ability to see the humans behind data. Dr. Kaitrin Kramer embodies this characteristic — continually building upon her scientific expertise and research with the understanding that real people exist within the numbers.

As a clinician-scientist, Kramer brings this empathy into every facet of her career, from the classroom to the laboratory to the hospital room. During her six years at UIC studying for her PhD, she focused on cancer biology research. She and her team studied breast cancer and its relationship with the genes that help prevent cancer. This project ignited her passion for research. However, an interaction with a breast cancer survivor during Kramer’s first year at UIC made her realize her work serves a greater purpose. She recalls, “I’m telling a woman all about my research, and she said, ‘That’s great. How are you going to prevent

KAITRIN KRAMER

me from having breast cancer again, or my daughter from having breast cancer?’ It still gives me chills. She put everything that I think about from that day forward into the perspective of the person I’m trying to help.”

While earning her doctorate at UIC, Kramer also finished dental school at the University of Michigan, commuting back and forth between Chicago and Ann Arbor. While cancer biology and dentistry may seem like an unlikely connection, Kramer points out that understanding the molecular processes of cancer overlaps a lot with developmental processes. Always up for the next challenge, she turned her attention to a post-doctorate at Michigan where she focused on craniofacial development and then an orthodontics residency at Ohio State University. Her research related to the mechanism behind craniosynostosis, meaning premature fusion of skull bones, and

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PHOTO: MARY RAFFERTY

RISING STAR AWARD

hypophosphatasia, an inherited disease which causes skeletal defects and is associated with a number of craniofacial and dental problems, including premature loss of teeth. This inspired her to pursue a fellowship in craniofacial orthodontics at the University of Michigan.

Today she bridges the gap between bench and bedside in her role at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, treating children with cleft lip, cleft palate and other craniofacial differences. Every day brings new challenges, and every day she calls on the lessons in patient care she learned at UIC. She says, “I love helping my patients get to a place where they feel empowered and to use the training and skills I have acquired to help my patients reach their goals.

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Advanced Certificate ’72, Endodontics College of Dentistry

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n a specialized field such as endodontics, there are only a few rock stars. Dr. James Gutmann is one of them. An internationally renowned endodontist, Gutmann understands the inside of our teeth like few others, and he has dedicated his life to sharing that knowledge with others.

At age 29, Gutmann was appointed chair at the University of Maryland. He served as a tenured professor, department chair, graduate program director and professor emeritus at Texas A&M’s Baylor College of Dentistry. He has presented more than 800 lectures in 55 countries on six continents; he has authored or co-authored more than 400 articles and three textbooks.

ALUMNI ­A CHIEV EMENT AWARD

His work has been recognized with an honorary professorship at Wuhan University, an honorary fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens.

In addition, he served as president of the American ­Association of Endodontists and received its two highest honors — the Edgar D. Coolidge Award and the I.B. Bender Lifetime Educator Award. He is presently Editor of the Journal of the History of Dentistry.

Gutmann attributes much of his success to his education at UIC, where he was one of the early graduates of the Clinical Specialty Program in Endodontics. The budding endodontist was attracted to UIC’s focus on biological principles, not just technical know-how. “You had to be able to explain treatments scientifically,” he notes. “It wasn’t just, ‘I achieved this goal clinically and that’s it.’ UIC asked you to go much further than that.”

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PHOTO: MARY RAFFERTY

JAMES GUTMANN His UIC mentors continually challenged and raised the bar for their students — an approach that Gutmann has carried forth through his more than five decades of teaching, writing and lecturing. He says, “Whomever you’re mentoring, give them a chance to be more than they ever thought they could be. Important people had that impact on me and maybe that’s why I have achieved at the level I’ve achieved.”

Fall 2023

BS ’69, Biological Sciences College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

R

odney Rothstein knows a lot about yeast; however, he is neither a baker nor brewmeister. He’s an internationally renowned expert on yeast genetics. Why yeast? Saccharomyces cerevisiae, baker’s or brewer’s yeast, is one of the simplest single-​ celled organisms with a nucleus that contains DNA packaged in chromosomes (a eukaryote). Yeast was the first eukaryote to have its genome sequenced, and yeast possess many of the cellular components that are found in humans. In fact, more than 20% of human genes known to mediate disease have counterparts in yeast. In other words, studying yeast can provide important insights into diseases ranging from cancer to coronavirus infections. Rothstein says, “It’s a very simple system and a great model organism for understanding basic genetics that apply to humans as well.”

RODNEY ROTHSTEIN

After graduating from UIC, Rothstein focused on how DNA is repaired after it is broken — a process essential for preserving genome integrity in all organisms. He developed a one-step method of “knocking out” yeast genes to learn their function. This gene-editing method has since been successfully applied to either remove or insert DNA sequences into specific positions within the genome of many other organisms, including human cells. He used this technique to create yeast strains to identify and isolate genes important for genome stability and the cellular repair of DNA breaks. Rothstein notes, “These mutant yeast strains allow us to study the DNA damage response, which is fundamental to cancer and aging.”

In 2009, Rothstein was awarded the Genetics Society of America’s Edward Novitski Prize, which recognizes the highest levels of creativity and ingenuity in solving significant problems in genetics research. He

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PHOTO: MARY RAFFERTY

ALUMNI ­A CHIEV EMENT AWARD

is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is a professor of genetics and development at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons, where he has mentored the next generation of geneticists since 1984. Rothstein credits his time at UIC for nurturing his interest in genetics, especially his classes with the influential biologist Eliot Spiess. UIC fostered his curiosity and provided the foundation for his lifelong passion. The values of scholarship and scientific investigation, and of one’s personal ability to make the necessary commitments to the pursuit of excellence, are not always apparent to undergraduates. Rothstein emphasizes that “the faculty at UIC conveyed that message and inspired me to pursue my rewarding career in genetics.”

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BS ’87, Physical Therapy College of Applied Health Sciences

H

elping others is at the heart of everything Marie Jarrell does. Helping an amputee improve strength and movement. Helping a cancer patient run their first marathon. Helping a struggling family pay their rent. Through her many professional and personal roles, Jarrell is always putting the needs of others first — whether it’s as a physical therapist, a volunteer endurance training coach or a founder of a grassroots charity. “I’m a helper. That’s just who I am,” she says.

This propensity toward compassion and giving is one of the main reasons Jarrell chose UIC for her undergraduate studies. She knew she wanted to pursue a degree in physical therapy, and in addition to UIC’s science- and research-based program, the College of Applied Health Sciences emphasizes the humanity involved with physical therapy. During the application interview, UIC professors presented Jarrell with a situation where she is working with an injured child who will never walk again. The mother asks, “When will my child walk?” They asked Jarrell how she would approach that scenario. “My answer was you have to use a combination of honesty and empathy,” she remembers. “That’s what UIC appreciated, and that’s why I was drawn to it.”

That charity is the Sunbow Foundation, a grassroots effort to help others in need with small acts of kindness. “With the foundation, I call on my community of friends to be that sunshine to end the rain and to bring some relief to people who are going through a hard time,” says Jarrell. From providing daycare funds for a mother going through chemotherapy to paying taxes that kept a family from losing their home to buying a prom dress for a young woman who otherwise couldn’t afford to go to prom, the Sunbow Foundation helps people lift a burden with small, yet significant acts of support.

The UIC alumna says, “It’s not a huge gift, it’s not the universe, but it’s like a million dollars to someone who really needs it.”

Jarrell’s many forms of humanitarianism embody the UIC spirit of service to others and demonstrate that every act of generosity, no matter how big or small, can have a meaningful impact.

For more than 30 years, she has worked as a physical therapist in just about every clinical setting. Her helping nature eventually led Jarrell to two major charitable activities in her life. In 2003, she became highly involved as a long-distance athlete and volunteer with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team In Training, which fundraises for cancer research through endurance events. She has raised more than $100,000, and since 2008, she has been a training coach, helping hundreds of athletes raise money and train for their first marathon, half-marathon or triathlon. Jarrell says, “Team In Training provided me with an education in fundraising. And it gave me a family of giving people who helped me realize my dream of starting my own charity.”

MARIE JARRELL

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Fall 2023

PHOTO: MARY RAFFERTY

HUMANITARIAN AWARD

BS ’82, Dentistry; MS ’84 Orthodontics; DDS ’86, Dentistry College of Dentistry

D

r. Barry Booth has created thousands of smiles over the course of his 35-year dental career.

There are the beautiful, healthy smiles that are the result of his quality orthodontic treatment and care. And, there are smiles of deep gratitude that exist because of his generosity and service to those in need.

As an orthodontic specialist in Homer Glen, Illinois, since 1986, Booth founded Smile for a Lifetime of Southwest Chicagoland, which provides orthodontic scholarships to underprivileged youth in need of braces or other dental care. The patients, between the ages of 11 and 19, must follow the treatment plan and be willing to complete 10 hours of community service as a way to “give back to the community that gave them this opportunity.”

Over the years, Booth has given back to UIC in countless ways. As a board member of the Orthodontic Alumni Association of Illinois, he helped fundraise for the complete rehabilitation of the UIC Department of Orthodontics. His leadership has allowed residents in the department to treat more adolescent and adult patients in the Chicago area. Booth has also mentored many UIC orthodontic residents, providing advice and insight as they enter into their professional work. Recently retired from his orthodontic practice, the UIC alumnus plans to keep giving back to his community and making more smiles along the way.

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Booth credits his time at UIC and the school’s focus on service as an inspiration for his own philanthropy. He says, “UIC gave me opportunities to help underserved patient populations, and I found the experience highly rewarding.” After acquiring a DDS and MS from the UIC College of Dentistry, Booth joined a surgical orthodontic team at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, treating accident and trauma victims as well as patients with congenital dental deformities. He also started his own private practice.

BARRY BOOTH

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PHOTO: MARY RAFFERTY

DISTINGUISHED SERV ICE AWARD

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COURTESY: SOL SAVCHUK BS ’18

Medical Maverick

U

UNIQUELY UIC

IC alumna Sol Savchuk BS ’18 was a medical student at Stanford University when war broke out in her native country. She was born and raised in Zabolotiv, a small town in western Ukraine.

Not long after Russian tanks and troops rolled into the country, Savchuk sprang into action, organizing a group of medical and computer science students to found TeleHelp Ukraine, a no-cost health care provider that serves hundreds of individuals in Ukraine and Poland.

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“The value of having a community, and being able to mobilize it to work together toward a common goal otherwise unachievable, is something I learned at UIC and have carried both through my work at TeleHelp and many other projects and endeavors,” she says.

Savchuk first came to UIC to study neuroscience through the Honors College and prepare for medical school. She says she received a solid foundation in science that has served her throughout her training, and upon graduation, she headed west to Stanford’s campus to become a doctor.

Two months after launching TeleHelp Ukraine, Savchuk and the team of volunteers (there are now more than 100 who manage TeleHelp’s operations) had overcome countless cultural, legal, logistical and other hurdles to offer health care in an active war zone. In May 2023, TeleHelp had its 1,000th appointment.

Today, TeleHelp is growing its network of in-country partners to reach the less technologically literate and those without electricity and internet. The nonprofit also plans to set up additional Starlink satellite internet service and pop-up clinics to offer medical care, medicine and lab work for some who have gone months without care.

The expansion adds costs, and the need to raise additional funds.

“There are a lot of exciting projects we’re growing toward – we’re very much on the rise and planning for the long haul,” says Savchuk, who will step aside as executive director as she moves into her third year of medical school. “There are people to take over the torch and continue growing this.”

—Matt Beardmore

Fall 2023

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Visionary Healer

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At UIC, she learned the “get to yes” mantra for resolving conflicts, which fueled her passion for service.

During the pandemic, she accepted a position as the executive director of case management, social work, aging adult services, and spiritual care at Stanford Medicine Health Care. In 2022, she made history by becoming the first African American woman to hold the position of vice president of population health and care management at Atrium Health Care, which is part of Advocate Health, the nation’s fifthlargest acute care provider in the nation.

Victor-Castleberry also celebrates her roles as a wife, mother, active member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and an alumni board member of several organizations, including UIC. She is most proud of being recognized with the Beckers Hospital Review Award in 2023, which honors Black leaders for their dedication to the health care industry.

She remains committed to optimizing and supporting the highest level of care for patients. As she says, “I serve where I am needed.” —Jen Cullerton Johnson

ADVANCE.UIC.EDU

PHOTO: ABHINAV SINGH

iffany Victor-Castleberry DNP ’18, a health care leader with a vision, earned her Doctorate in Nursing in 2018 from UIC. She was drawn to UIC’s diversity and its mission to transform health care, which aligned with her devotion to patients.

Dream Doctor

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s a medical student in Mumbai, Abhinav Singh MPH ’02 helped eradicate polio, a catalytic experience that ignited his passion for preventive medicine and public health and led him to enroll at UIC for his Master’s in Public Health.

He specialized in sleep management and did his research at the UIC Center for Narcolepsy, where he learned lessons he still carries today about leadership, management and teamwork.

After graduation, Singh was awarded a prestigious residency fellowship at Northwestern University. His focus was primary care and building a sleep clinic, which led him to move to Greenwood, Indiana, to become facility director at Indiana Sleep Center, which has helped more than 7,000 patients sleep better.

Dr. Singh is a preeminent sleep physician and widely quoted in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and an NBA sleep coach to the Indiana Pacers. He is most proud of the first award he received in the U.S. from UIC, the Watamull Award in recognition of academic excellence and achievement in his field.

His book, Sleep to Heal: 7 Simple Steps to Better Health, was published in June 2023 with co-author Charlotte Jensen.

—Jen Cullerton Johnson

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UIC Connected This virtual networking platform, exclusive to UIC, is a place for alumni and students to connect and grow.

• Create connections, build networks.

• Mentor students.

• Seek advice or expertise.

• Customize involvement to meet your needs.

Visit go.uic.edu/connected to learn more.

COURTESY: CARYN SCHULTZ KORMAN

Engage, Connect, Renew Dear UIC Alumni,

We shared our vision for a reorganized UIC Alumni Association with the new chancellor, and we’ve been working hard to create an experience that keeps you engaged and informed, aligns with your preferences, and makes you proud. Here are a few activities designed to do that: Join UIC Connected: Connect and mentor fellow alumni and students through our exclusive online networking platform.

Become an alumni admissions volunteer: Help shape the future of UIC by engaging with prospective students.

Embrace alumni career services: Explore opportunities for career growth and development.

Share your story: Update us on your achievements and milestones.

Attend alumni events: Participate in our diverse range of in-person and virtual events.

Join affinity networks: Connect with alumni who share your experiences and passions.

ADVANCE.UIC.EDU

Advocate for change: Make your voice heard through the Illinois Connection on the state and federal levels.

Enjoy alumni benefits: Use the benefits and services available to you as a UIC graduate.

Share your feedback: Shape the future of your alumni association with your insights and suggestions.

Along with UIC Magazine, find updates on our program in the UICAA eNewsletter.

(Not receiving it? Let us know.) Common among your journey and UIC’s, I think, is a desire to move forward with purpose, unity and a commitment to building a stronger community. So let’s support each other along the way as we build the next phase of UIC alumni engagement together.

Thank you for being an integral part of UIC. Your contributions, both past and present, are what make our university exceptional.

— CARYN SCHULTZ KORMAN ASSISTANT VICE CHANCELLOR FOR ALUMNI AND DONOR ENGAGEMENT UIC ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

uicalumni@uic.edu facebook.com/UICAlumni twitter.com/UIC_Alumni @UICAlumni go.uic.edu.linkedin go.uic.edu/alumni go.uic.edu/connected

LETTER TO ALUMNI

A leadership change is a natural time to reflect on our direction and purpose. It has been energzing to see UIC through Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda’s perspective as she begins her tenure. Her excitement for the future reminds us of the powerful sense of purpose that unites the entire community, including alumni. In fact, one of the first groups she met with was our alumni board.

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Passionate Polymath

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IC senior Mohammed Haq believes that nothing is unattainable if you work hard, and his guiding principle is to always do things he’s passionate about. That’s what set him down the path toward two terms as the student representative on the University of Illinois Board of Trustees and a future in dentistry.

Here’s what he has to say about life at UIC and where he hopes it will take him.

CLOSING NOTE

WHAT IS YOUR MAJOR? I’m majoring in biological sciences because I’ve had a passion for science from a very young age and it aligns perfectly with my pre-dental pathway. UIC College of Dentistry is my top choice, and so this field of study is the perfect foundation for me to become a dentist.

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WHY DENTISTRY? As a child, I was fascinated when visiting the dentist, and I’ve always wondered why.

I went to a clinic to figure out what this profession is, and I began to explore it. Last year, I had a chance to shadow a dentist and a surgeon, and I saw myself being able to do it. We had a patient who covered her mouth when she came in. She wasn’t comfortable in her own skin. We walked her through the process of a complete restructure. She was nervous, but we got her through the procedure, and when she saw her teeth, she burst into tears. That moment is when I realized, this is what I want to do. I want to be in a position where I can give someone’s confidence back.

PHOTO: YINGTANG LU BDES ’20

WHY UIC? I want to be in a place that is welcoming and open and gives me the ability to explore and figure out what works for me and what doesn’t, and that’s what UIC is.

UIC represents diversity, excellence and a drive towards racial justice. UIC’s identity resonated perfectly for me, both personally, and professionally. And in my time here, I’ve cultivated my skills and gained platforms to have life-changing experiences and build a passage toward my desired future.

WHAT IS YOUR STUDENT GOVERNMENT ROLE? I am the representative of the UIC graduate and undergraduate student body to the Board of Trustees, which is composed of 13 members. Ten are appointed by the governor and three are selected by each university in the University of Illinois system. My job is to provide a student perspective. I advocate on issues including tuition, campus safety, mental health resources and capital projects.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU? I want to become a dentist in my own practice and put smiles on people’s faces. I’d also love to be involved in the political arena in some capacity. I’m not sure exactly, but the things I’ve done in this field gave me the bug to go after policy work, advocacy work or maybe even working in higher education.

—Bridget Esangga

Fall 2023

Alumnus Stephen Irwin MD ’77 established the G. Stephen Irwin Deanship in the College of Medicine. It allows the College of Medicine dean to invest in student training and transformational research that enhances health for everyone.

It also makes Executive Dean Dr. Mark I. Rosenblatt the first holder of a named deanship at UIC. Dr. Irwin’s contribution recognizes the quality education and training he received at UIC, and he hopes it will inspire others to give back.

PHOTO: DIANE M. SMUTNY

THANK YOU

Office of the Vice Chancellor for Advancement University of Illinois Chicago Student Center East 750 S. Halsted (MC 100) Chicago, IL 60607

Thank you, Jiri and Ana Jonas for supporting UIC students and faculty with a generous gift.

“The university gave us amazing opportunities to grow in our professions and to prosper. Now we wish to share with new generations of students and young faculty the opportunities we were given.”

Visit advance.uic.edu to learn more about this gift.