NIU Today

Finding new ways to prevent and treat disease. Improving incubators for premature babies. Inventing a new type of solar cell. These are just a few of the exciting innovations of NIU faculty and staff who were honored recently during the Research and Innovation Partnerships Recognition Ceremony on campus. “We are pleased to highlight the incredible...

The NIU Department of Communication is preparing to raise the curtain on its popular Reality Bytes Independent Student Film Festival in Cole Hall 100. Free and open to the public, the 15th annual festival will feature student-film screenings from 9 to 11 p.m. Tuesday, April 5, and Wednesday, April 6. Actor, filmmaker and producer Kevin...

Leyla Nora Puskar, a junior art + design education major from Sycamore, is the winner of the NIU President Doug Baker’s 2015 Holiday Card Contest. Puskar hand-painted her design, called “The Gift of NIU,” in acrylic paint and edited it with PicsArt digital media. She wanted to keep her design simple and playful to excite...

Recently NPR ran a rather interesting competition of man versus machine. This 21st century version of the John Henry legend pit NPR reporter Scott Horsely against Automated Insights’ Wordsmith, an algorithm designed to assemble original news stories by accessing data residing in the cloud. What this little experiment demonstrated is not what you might expect....

Northern Illinois University will host the 23rd annual Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language, and Media (MCLLM) on Friday, March 27, and Saturday, March 28. Faculty, graduate students and, for the first time in the conference’s history, undergraduate students will share their research related to this year’s theme, “Ctrl, Alt, Delete.” Presenters will explore the concepts...

The NIU Department of Communication and the NIU Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) will host the 2014 Albert Walker Dinner and Lecture at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 28. This year’s lecturer is Kevin Saghy, communications manager for the Chicago Cubs. He served as the national PRSSA president and is currently an advisory board...

Northern Illinois University graduate Mark Valadez began writing fiction in high school and knew that he wanted to become a writer. Now at 44, he is credited for writing the episode that airs at 8 p.m. (CST) Thursday on the new Fox show “Gang Related.” The series, which premiered May 22, is about Ryan Lopez,...

The daughter of a businessman in the rubber and plastics industry, Mary Lynn Henningsen once considered working as a chemist at the company where her father was employed. Instead, she decided to follow in the footsteps of her mother and grandmother. Growing up in a family of educators, Henningsen was exposed to their shared passion...

When Kimberly Gatz was growing up on a farm in nearby Malta, she had thoughts of someday becoming an author. She enjoyed telling stories, hearing stories and writing stories. She loved reading about early settlements and women throughout history. She decided to enroll in the University of Illinois, where she focused her studies on the...

One is a documentary filmmaker whose works have screened internationally, the other a physicist who has made his mark on some of the world’s most ambitious experiments. Their disciplines couldn’t seem more different. But what Laura Vazquez and David Hedin share is an uncommon drive, along with a passion for immersing students in their work...

Paul Palian, NIU’s director of media and public relations, talked to honors students this week about its networking opportunities. The NIU Alumni Association sponsors “Souper Wednesday” each week at the Campus Life Building so honors students can meet successful alumni and relax with their peers during a soup lunch. “The Honors Program is why I...

Emani Brinkman can’t exactly say what prompted her to attend an informational meeting about Sycamore High School’s SpartanTV broadcasting club. “I just went,” the 14-year-old freshman says. “I started doing graphics for the basketball games, and it was really cool and fun.” Given that same opportunity Feb. 7 inside the NIU Convocation Center for the...