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Pravas Deria, associate professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Sciences at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, is trying to develop a more efficient and targeted way of using light to drive chemical reactions, with $418,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health. The new technology could pave ways to prepare important organic compounds for use in medicines.

It was dark Down Under in April, and Southern Illinois University Carbondale faculty and students were on the scene to study it when the moon obscured the sun, in a practice run for the 2024 total solar eclipse back home.

When you’re a Southern Illinois University Carbondale student doing research far from home, sometimes discoveries happen in unexpected ways. Take the recent case of an opossum, a Burmese python and a GPS collar in a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service-funded study that may lead to better tracking and removal of the invasive species.

It has been home to Native American tribes, French explorers and traders and early American settlers. It saw prosperity and wars and was mostly wiped away by flooding 150 years ago. But researchers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale think much of the lost community of Kaskaskia can still be found and locating it could teach us important lessons about our history.

A Southern Illinois University Carbondale team has launched a 2-year project to help educators around the state find effective ways to help students with disabilities and behavioral concerns stay in school rather than face disciplinary action such as suspension or expulsion, thanks to a $5.841 million Special Education Behavior Assessment Training (BAT) Project contract with the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE).

A virtual reality simulator in Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s criminology and criminal justice program will provide students greater insight into law enforcement challenges, while also providing a research mechanism to study aspects of police work.