New Faculty , Ido Golding featured on the front page of News Gazette.

Seven professors with more than $28 million worth of research power will join the University of Illinois faculty this year under a new program designed to recruit some of the world's best and brightest to the Urbana campus

They were hired under the President's Distinguished Faculty Recruitment Program

The three-year, $60 million initiative was created in 2017 to fund startup packages to recruit faculty of national and international stature — and counteract attempts by other schools to lure away top UI scholars.

"We are seeking the best minds worldwide to reimagine how we teach and learn new skills and how to innovate in a world where change is coming faster than ever," President Tim Killeen said in a prepared statement. "The investment we are making will pay dividends for years to come, shaping the lives of students and the breakthrough research discovery that drives progress."

Ido Golding, a physics professor who will return this year to the College of Engineering from Baylor College of Medicine. A biophysicist and expert in single-molecule and single-cell measurements of transcription, his research focuses on the diverse phenotypes exhibited by genetically identical cells.

His lab has made multiple contributions to understanding the processes of transcribing DNA to RNA, and of viral infection at the single-cell level. He also won an NSF Career Award in 2013 and has received more than $5.2 million in research funding. He was a founding member of the NSF Center for the Physics of Living Cells at the UI, where worked from 2007 to 2009.