With an impressive performance at the National All-Girls Tournament, 14-year old Miranda Liu becomes the first Illinois female junior to achieve the US Chess Expert title in recent times. As of the official June 2016 ratings, she comes in at 2015.  Congratulations to Miranda!

An observant reader of the ICA site wrote in to correct a previous erroneous posting that Miranda was the first ever. Yelena Gorlin became an Expert in 1999 as a high school sophomore at Niles North. Sadly, it appears Ms. Gorlin stopped playing rated chess as of the 2002 Pan American Collegiates in Miami when Yelena was presumably a freshman in college. She went 3.5/6 to raise her rating to 2169. The event also included Yury Shulman, Jennifer Shahade, Eugene Perelshtyn, Irina Krush, and Alexander Onishchuk. It was also Illinois-based NM Hugo Padilla's first USCF-rated event.

A "Google Search" for Ms. Gorlin brought up this stanza from the US Chess archives: 

"Yelena Gorlin was born ... in Minsk, Belarus. Although her father taught her the game by the time she was five, she was ten before she played her first tournament. Her family moved to the U.S. in August of 1997 and Yelena has represented the U.S. in the multiple World Youth Chess Festivals. Yelena also enjoys the challenges of Mathematics and Track and Field."

Today she appears to be a post-PhD researcher in Germany working on fuel cell technology with expertise in Spectroscopy and Electrochemistry and an impressive array of technical publications. Who ever said that a strong chess background can't lead to other amazing accomplishments!

Complete table is listed below including 47 Illinois players.

Rank		Name	Rating
Age 7 and Under
2		Mardov, Dimitar (15205818)	1682
30		Emrikian, Aren C (Age 6)	1378
53		Rugg, Aaron Michael	1220
70		Kong, Ryan (15737945)	1123
Age 8
15		Yong, David (15273720)	1655
25		Zhao, Alex (15335115)	1589
36		Wang, William (15270976)	1473
65		Elgat, Adam (15552450)	1322
82		Friedman, Andrew Charles (15582135)	1255
Age 9
16		Xu, Arthur Zihan (14968896)	1862
90		Cahill, William (15096335)	1449
Age 10
45		Gan, Aaron X (14678952)	1688
Age 11
10		Turgut, Aydin (14284734)	2108
48		Bareket, Adam (14949325)	1832
55		Zheng, Peter (15075977)	1815
100		Parthasarathy, Madhav (14766234)	1688
Age 12
23		Daniels, Jason Scott (14107163)	2042
26		Wang, Ricky (14403974)	2036
48		Acharya, Siddharth (15165476)	1921
57		Carey, Aidan M (14949435)	1873
Age 13
5		Peng, David	2335
54		Bareket, Tom	1939
57		Li, Marissa	1935
58		Mangalam, Shreya	1932
74		Ganesan, Ishaar	1893
89		Ho, Kevin	1866
99		Zhang, Edward	1826
Age 14
9		Furfine, Jacob (13089315)	2294
25		Do, Vincent (13666696)	2137
31		Kalghatgi, Akhil (13797215)	2112
46		Hao, Hanson (13858968)	2048
50		Kalghatgi, Nikhil (13797221)	2039
57		Liu, Miranda (14042343)	2015
90		Rai, Tej (14712050)	1897
Age 15
18		Bian, Alex (13257335)	2218
33		Bronfeyn, Daniel (13720325)	2141
35		Stevens, Matthew James (13788934)	2137
64		Narayanan, Rishi T (13949428)	2043
69		Curcio, Jack Thomas (13451367)	2030
Age 16
10		Li, Zhaozhi (13646954)	2330
40		Adve, Anshul (13296020)	2163
41		Bartochowski, Nicholas J (13216472)	2159
87		Fei, Andrew Yueyang (14064411)	1952
100		Wei, James (13577813)	1902
Age 17
29		Hrach, Jonathan Matthew (14094872)	2179
35		Lehmann, Spencer (13457744)	2133
57		Holecek, Zachary (12933315)	2057
85		Denby, Caleb Sean (14361200)	1986
Age 18
34		Guan, Bradley (12935418)	2147
78		Spann, Nabil J (13979063)	1969
80		Holzmueller, Nathan (13899472)	1961