Life changing advancements since 2011.

Rohit Bhargava speaking at bioengineering discussion

The Cancer Center at Illinois, also known as the CCIL, began in 2011 as the Cancer Community, led by current Director, Rohit Bhargava, and a group of over 50 Illinois faculty. These initial members started to organize regular activities and enabled interactions among faculty through symposia, workshops, and thematic research groups. Within a decade, the community had grown to over one hundred Illinois faculty and several hundred postdoctoral researchers and Illinois students.

Since its inception, the CCIL has sustained progress in planned multi-year phases, including the growth of membership, initiation of research and student programs, regular symposia and meetings, increased multi-disciplinary collaboration, and the growth of shared laboratory resources. As a result, the CCIL has made significant progress in multi-principal investigator activities, cancer funding, and faculty hiring in cancer research across the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. CCIL educational programs and members have also served to start new internal and external collaborations, including those with Carle Foundation Hospital, Mayo Clinic, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and more.

Researcher Inspecting Sensor

The goal then and now is to unite biologists and technologists, behavioral scientists and computational scientists, chemists and engineers — all with one mission: to relieve the burden of cancer.