“Moore is much more likely to be the author than Livingston,” Illinois Tech Professor Shlomo Argamon concluded, and “it’s more likely authored by either Moore or Livingston than any of the other guys.” How certain is he? “If there was a way of knowing the truth, I would definitely bet on Moore,” Argamon said. “Would I bet $1,000? No. Would I bet $100? Yes.”
Illinois Institute of Technology was among 18 academic institutions to receive more than $100 million combined through the U.S. National Science Foundation. The new funding — $6 million over four years — will support the institute's TechForward initiative, which in part looks to develop a more diverse workforce in high-growth tech sectors.
“I’ve always tried to focus on mobility and challenging environments,” said Matt Spenko, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology. “I worked on my post-doc on climbing robots and then transitioned into multimodal robots that could both fly and have terrestrial locomotion. I’ve had a side interest in ecology, and it’s sort of melding with robotics and field work.”
Nancy Kim, a Chicago-Kent College of Law professor who is an expert in online contracts, said if 23andMe was attempting to shield itself from fallout from the data breach, it's unlikely that most courts would uphold such an effort. Kim said updating terms is usually perfectly legal if consumers are given reasonable notice and the option to opt-out. But, she added, 23andMe will likely struggle to prove it provided both to its customers.
“It’s definitely interesting to see this series moving toward having a woman protagonist,” said Professor Carly Kocurek, a historian of video games and new media technologies. “There’s been controversy, in particular there’s been a lot of representation of sex workers that isn’t particularly thoughtful or particularly nuanced. There’s fewer women leads in these kinds of story in general, and so it’s interesting. We’ll see what they do.”
“So we’re seeing this kind of, like, really banner year for releases and for attention from the media and critical acclaim,” said Carly Kocurek, a professor of digital humanities and media studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology. “At the same time, we’re seeing people who are the people that made those games kind of get thrown out on their tails over and over again.”
Richard Kling, a professor at Chicago–Kent College of Law, said the question of whether a second round of charges against actor Jussie Smollett violated his agreement with Cook County prosecutors may be interesting enough for the state Supreme Court to consider, noting that actor Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction was overturned by Pennsylvania’s highest court on similar arguments. “I think that’s (Smollett’s) strongest argument and best chance,” Kling said.
“The Sims ready pose, right? Where the Sim is just kind of standing there doing this weird wavy dance, waiting to do things? How many of us feel like we spend huge chunks of our life weirdly waiting for things to happen? Where it's like, I'm waiting for a call. I'm waiting for the doctor's office. I'm waiting for the traffic light. I'm waiting for the mail. Almost like you're in this liminality all the time in day-to-day life because we don't have as much control over our own time as most of us would like. And yeah, it feels like you're in a weird little micro-limbo between activities,” said Professor Carly Kocurek, who teaches in Illinois Tech's Game Design and Experiential Media program.
The key question to watch in the next year is whether the UAW’s deals with the automakers and the Teamsters’ agreement with UPS can be converted into organizing victories, said Martin Malin, founding director of Chicago-Kent College of Law's Martin H. Malin Institute for Law and the Workplace in Chicago. “Under its prior leadership, the UAW failed miserably in organizing the nonunionized auto sector,” he said. “We’ll see if (UAW President) Shawn Fain and his team can do better.”
To make hands-on learning more accessible and unified across the institution, Illinois Tech created Elevate, which provides one central location for all experiential learning offered at the university and for support resources to students. Elevate makes it easier for students to be aware of available opportunities and for Illinois Tech to track outcomes, with a majority of students landing a job within six months of graduation.
