Events at Beckman

Events at Beckman

New-to-Beckman tours

Join outreach specialist Lexie Kesler for a tour of the building.

Gather in the atrium

Informal conversation and coffee in the Beckman Atrium with director Nadya Mason.

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Group walks from the Beckman Atrium to the Beckman Café

Cookie Collab

Join Beckman Director Nadya Mason for coffee and treats in the Beckman Atrium. Held on the third Thursday of every month.

Director's Seminar Series

Beckman faculty members and postdocs share their research.
View the Director's Seminar Series page

Yoga at Beckman

Join us for a free hour of yoga Wednesdays at the Beckman Institute in the fifth-floor tower room. Everyone is welcome. Bring your own mat.

See all yoga events
A group of people doing yoga in the fifth-floor Tower Room at the Beckman Institute

Upcoming events

Beckman Institute Blood Drive

Urbana ImpactLife Donor Center, 1408 W. University Ave., Urbana

Contact name: Meg Dickinson
Contact email: megd@illinois.edu

Join the Beckman community in giving blood at ImpactLife Donor Center. Schedule in advance (using code #71263) and receive a voucher for a 20-can cooler or a $10 gift card. Appointments are required and you must sign in at the front desk upon arrival. Please eat before donating and bring a photo ID.

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Today

2023 Beckman Institute Open House: Saturday

Beckman Institute, 405 N. Mathews Ave

Contact name: Lexie Kesler
Contact email: lkesler@illinois.edu

The Beckman Institute Open House is scheduled for 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday, March 31 and 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, April 1. 

Community members of all ages are invited to do interactive demos and activities, solve the science scavenger hunt, and learn about the institute’s diverse research portfolio, which includes human health and medical imaging; clean energy and green plastics; and even artificial intelligence and insect-inspired robots. 

Guests can travel to locations throughout the building to:

Take a selfie with the first-ever human MRI scanner.

Learn how advanced medical imaging transforms cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Tour an inclusive maker space where assistive technologies are developed by and for athletes with disabilities.

Construct molecules from scratch with the Digital Molecule Maker.

Engage with molecules like DNA in virtual reality.

Each experience brings guests one step closer to solving the science scavenger hunt, which can be completed by downloading the Beckman app or with a pen-and-paper kit that visitors will receive upon their arrival.

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Gather in the Atrium

Center atrium during fall and winter months

Contact name: Stacy Olson
Contact email: srolson@illinois.edu
Contact phone: 217-244-8373

Join Director Nadya Mason and your colleagues this fall for informal conversation and coffee in the Beckman atrium.

This Gather in the Atrium Series will be from 10-10:30 a.m. every Tuesday through the spring semester. When the nice weather returns in the coming months, we will move these coffee sessions outside to the Beckman west garden.

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iOptics Seminar: Brian Smith

Beckman Institute Room 3269 (3rd Floor Tower Room)

Contact name: Benjamin Nussbaum
Contact email: bn9@illinois.edu

Title: "

Spectral-multiplexed entangled photon pairs for quantum information science."

Entanglement, the correlations displayed between sub-systems of a multipartite quantum system, is one of the most distinctive properties of quantum physics and a significant resource for quantum information science and technology. Entanglement swapping is a protocol that enables the entanglement of quantum systems that have never interacted. This protocol underpins efforts to realize large-scale quantum networks as the core element of quantum repeaters. Entanglement swapping between entangled photons has been experimentally demonstrated using photons entangled in their polarization, spatial, and temporal degrees of freedom. Here, Dr. Smith focuses on encoding information in the spectral-temporal mode of single photons. This allows for a multiplexed approach to entanglement swapping that can generate many different entangled two-photon states. The entanglement swapping protocol relies on multimode entangled photon-pair sources and the ability to perform spectrally-resolved single-photon detection. Experimental results demonstrating the generation of 5 nearly-orthogonal two-photon states are presented and he outlines future applications that utilize such spectral and temporal multiplexing.

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Graduate Student Seminar: Kou, Wang

1005 Beckman Institute and Zoom

Contact name: Chaimongkol Saengow
Contact email: saengow@illinois.edu

Two graduate students will present their research at the fourth Beckman Graduate Student Seminar of the spring 2023 semester: Zhengchang Kou, electrical and computer engineering; and Zepeng Wang, bioengineering.

The event takes place Wednesday, Apr. 5 at noon in 1005 Beckman Institute and on Zoom. Register in advance to attend in person or on Zoom.

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Yoga at Beckman

Beckman Institute Room 5269-5th Floor Tower

Contact name: Elena Romanova
Contact email: romanova@illinois.edu

Join us at noon on Wednesdays this spring for restorative yoga with a view! All sessions are free and will be held in Beckman's fifth-floor tower room. All are welcome bring your own mat! 

Access Illinois

Beckman Institute Room 1025-Auditorium

Contact name: Leslie Sherman
Contact email: leslies@illinois.edu

Access Illinois is a hybrid event celebrating accessibility and inclusion at the University of Illinois. An optional lunch will be provided to in-person attendees. 

Keynote Speaker: Nizam Arain, Associate Vice Chancellor for Access and Equity, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.

 

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New-to-Beckman tour

MRI Exhibit

Contact name: Lexie Kesler
Contact email: lkesler@illinois.edu

Come find out more about the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology! Learn about the barrier-busting interdisciplinary research facility and community of innovation. Tours will be offered the first Thursday of the month from 10-10:30 a.m.

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Inclusive Lab Leaders

Beckman Institute Room 4269

Contact name: Elahe Ganji
Contact email: elaganji@illinois.edu

The Inclusive Lab Leaders is a program to help those in STEM and beyond develop the skills and strategies to effectively communicate with mentors, students, and peers. This program offers a justice-oriented approach to learning how to navigate issues of power and conflict, through a mix of preventive strategies and just-in-time approaches. Racism, sexism, and more are continuing challenges rather than relics of the past, and ILL is designed to give you the introductory tools to become more aware of how they show up in science, and how you can imagine and implement a more just future. 

Session 3: Recognizing and navigating power dynamics in research. Friday, April 7

th

from 9-11am. 

Facilitators: Katy Heath and Kate Clancy

This session will address the different types of power and how they can manifest in a research team, from positional power by way of one’s academic rank, to systemic power from one’s identity groups, gender, race, and/or ethnicity. All members of a lab need to recognize the situations where they have coercive power and protect others from it; conversely nearly everyone also experiences low power moments where they need to protect themselves or solicit help.

During this session you will learn to:

Own the power you do have, and take responsibility for it.

Practice navigating challenging conversations with people who have power over you.

Seek solidarity when addressing more intractable power imbalances.

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Biological Physics (iPoLS) Seminar: Fang Huang

Beckman Institute Room 3269 (3rd Floor Tower Room)

Contact name: Sharlene Denos
Contact email: denos@illinois.edu

Title: "Ultra‐high resolution structural and molecular imaging of cells and tissues."

Since Robert Hooke’s first description of a cell in Micrographia 350 years ago, microscopy has played an important role in understanding the rules of life. Far-field fluorescence microscopy is a powerful approach in biological and biomedical research due to its live cell compatibility and molecular specificity. A major hurdle over the last century has been the limited resolution due to the diffraction of light. Super-resolution microscopy methods, such as single-molecule localization microscopy, overcome this fundamental barrier to improve the resolution limit (250-600 nm, lateral-axial) down to a few nanometers. The development and application of SMLM majorly focus on fixed cells in thin samples and cellular structures that lie on/close to the coverslip surface and therefore, the profound impact of SMLM on biophysical, medical, and biological research has yet to fully unfold. Dr. Huang will discuss some of his team’s most recent projects which explore newly available sensors/devices such as high-speed sensors and deformable mirrors, analytical methods such as deep learning, and novel optical instrumentation to allow SMLM imaging in live cells and tissue specimens. He will show the capabilities of these new imaging systems in revealing the fine details of subcellular structures from a diverse set of biological systems including viruses, bacteria, yeasts, mammalian cells, and brain sections.

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Gather in the Atrium

Center atrium during fall and winter months

Contact name: Stacy Olson
Contact email: srolson@illinois.edu
Contact phone: 217-244-8373

Join Director Nadya Mason and your colleagues this fall for informal conversation and coffee in the Beckman atrium.

This Gather in the Atrium Series will be from 10-10:30 a.m. every Tuesday through the spring semester. When the nice weather returns in the coming months, we will move these coffee sessions outside to the Beckman west garden.

Read more

Yoga at Beckman

Beckman Institute Room 5269-5th Floor Tower

Contact name: Elena Romanova
Contact email: romanova@illinois.edu

Join us at noon on Wednesdays this spring for restorative yoga with a view! All sessions are free and will be held in Beckman's fifth-floor tower room. All are welcome bring your own mat! 

Gather in the Atrium

Center atrium during fall and winter months

Contact name: Stacy Olson
Contact email: srolson@illinois.edu
Contact phone: 217-244-8373

Join Director Nadya Mason and your colleagues this fall for informal conversation and coffee in the Beckman atrium.

This Gather in the Atrium Series will be from 10-10:30 a.m. every Tuesday through the spring semester. When the nice weather returns in the coming months, we will move these coffee sessions outside to the Beckman west garden.

Read more

Beckman Institute SmithGroup Lecture: Light, materials, interfaces: The complex dance that allows CLIP-based 3D printing.

Beckman Institute Auditorium, Room 1025

Contact name: Stacy Olson
Contact email: srolson@illinois.edu

Joseph DeSimone, a professor at Standford University and Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, Professor of Translational Medicine and Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, will present "Light, materials, and interfaces: The complex dance that allows CLIP-based 3D printing." For more information, visit 

https://desimonegroup.stanford.edu/.

The production of polymer products relies largely on age-old molding techniques. A major reason for this is that additive methods have not delivered meaningful alternatives to traditional processes—until now. In this talk, I will describe Continuous Liquid Interface Production (CLIP) technology, which embodies a convergence of advances in software, hardware, and materials to bring the digital revolution to polymer additive manufacturing. CLIP uses software-controlled chemistry to produce commercial quality parts rapidly and at scale by capitalizing on the principle of oxygen-inhibited photopolymerization to generate a continual liquid interface of uncured resin between a forming part and a printer’s exposure window. Instead of printing layer-by-layer, this allows layerless parts to ‘grow’ from a pool of resin, formed by light. Compatible with a wide range of polymers, CLIP opens major opportunities for innovative products across diverse industries. Previously unmakeable products are already manufactured at scale with CLIP, including the large-scale production of running shoes by Adidas (Futurecraft 4D); masscustomized football helmets by Riddell; the world’s first FDA-approved 3D printed dentures; and numerous parts in automotive, consumer electronics, and medicine. At Stanford, we are pursuing new advances including digital therapeutic devices in pediatric medicine, new multi-materials printing approaches, recyclable materials, and the design of a high-resolution printer to advance technologies in the microelectronics and drug/vaccine delivery areas, including novel microneedle designs as a potent vaccine delivery platform.

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Yoga at Beckman

Beckman Institute Room 5269-5th Floor Tower

Contact name: Elena Romanova
Contact email: romanova@illinois.edu

Join us at noon on Wednesdays this spring for restorative yoga with a view! All sessions are free and will be held in Beckman's fifth-floor tower room. All are welcome bring your own mat! 

New Discoveries in Extracellular Vesicle Therapies

5602 Beckman Institute

Contact name: Marni Boppart
Contact email: mboppart@illinois.edu

Extracellular vesicles represent an important mechanism for cellular communication, yet our understanding of the biosynthesis, detection, and delivery of EVs is just starting to emerge. The 

mission

of the Beckman Institute EVIT Working Group is to bring together our university community focused on the investigation of EVs in the context of both disease and health. Our 

goal

 

is to introduce 

innovation

into the traditional workflow of isolating and characterizing EVs, which requires synergistic efforts from faculty in multiple disciplines.

This workshop will provide the opportunity to learn more about EVs while becoming acquainted with innovative research currently underway at UIUC. The poster session will provide an informal venue for exploring collaborative efforts with colleagues. All faculty, staff, postdoctoral students, and graduate students are welcome to join us for this half-day workshop.

See the registration form for full agenda and speaker bios. Registration deadline is April 14.

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Gather in the Atrium

Center atrium during fall and winter months

Contact name: Stacy Olson
Contact email: srolson@illinois.edu
Contact phone: 217-244-8373

Join Director Nadya Mason and your colleagues this fall for informal conversation and coffee in the Beckman atrium.

This Gather in the Atrium Series will be from 10-10:30 a.m. every Tuesday through the spring semester. When the nice weather returns in the coming months, we will move these coffee sessions outside to the Beckman west garden.

Read more

Yoga at Beckman

Beckman Institute Room 5269-5th Floor Tower

Contact name: Elena Romanova
Contact email: romanova@illinois.edu

Join us at noon on Wednesdays this spring for restorative yoga with a view! All sessions are free and will be held in Beckman's fifth-floor tower room. All are welcome bring your own mat! 

Cookie Collab

Beckman Institute Atrium

Join Beckman Director Nadya Mason and other members of the Beckman community for coffee and cookies in the Beckman Atrium.

 

Gather in the Atrium

Center atrium during fall and winter months

Contact name: Stacy Olson
Contact email: srolson@illinois.edu
Contact phone: 217-244-8373

Join Director Nadya Mason and your colleagues this fall for informal conversation and coffee in the Beckman atrium.

This Gather in the Atrium Series will be from 10-10:30 a.m. every Tuesday through the spring semester. When the nice weather returns in the coming months, we will move these coffee sessions outside to the Beckman west garden.

Read more

Graduate Student Seminar: Finnegan, Hsieh

1005 Beckman Institute and Zoom

Contact name: Chaimongkol Saengow
Contact email: saengow@illinois.edu

Two graduate students will present their research at the final Beckman Graduate Student Seminar of the spring 2023 semester: Megan Finnegan, psychology; and Pei-Hsuan Hsieh, bioengineering.

The event takes place Wednesday, May 3 at noon in 1005 Beckman Institute and on Zoom. Register in advance to attend in person or on Zoom.

Read more

Yoga at Beckman

Beckman Institute Room 5269-5th Floor Tower

Contact name: Elena Romanova
Contact email: romanova@illinois.edu

Join us at noon on Wednesdays this spring for restorative yoga with a view! All sessions are free and will be held in Beckman's fifth-floor tower room. All are welcome bring your own mat! 

Yoga at Beckman

Beckman Institute Room 5269-5th Floor Tower

Contact name: Elena Romanova
Contact email: romanova@illinois.edu

Join us at noon on Wednesdays this spring for restorative yoga with a view! All sessions are free and will be held in Beckman's fifth-floor tower room. All are welcome bring your own mat! 

Yoga at Beckman

Beckman Institute Room 5269-5th Floor Tower

Contact name: Elena Romanova
Contact email: romanova@illinois.edu

Join us at noon on Wednesdays this spring for restorative yoga with a view! All sessions are free and will be held in Beckman's fifth-floor tower room. All are welcome bring your own mat! 

Yoga at Beckman

Beckman Institute Room 5269-5th Floor Tower

Contact name: Elena Romanova
Contact email: romanova@illinois.edu

Join us at noon on Wednesdays this spring for restorative yoga with a view! All sessions are free and will be held in Beckman's fifth-floor tower room. All are welcome bring your own mat! 

Yoga at Beckman

Beckman Institute Room 5269-5th Floor Tower

Contact name: Elena Romanova
Contact email: romanova@illinois.edu

Join us at noon on Wednesdays this spring for restorative yoga with a view! All sessions are free and will be held in Beckman's fifth-floor tower room. All are welcome bring your own mat! 

Kate Clancy speaks at a lecture in one of Beckman's Tower Rooms with a white board behind her.

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A research group talks over lunch catered in Beckman's fifth-floor tower room.

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