School of Information Sciences

Deng receives CALA President's Recognition Award

[image1-right:resize-180w]Sai Deng (MS ’05) is a recipient of a 2013 President’s Recognition Award, given annually by the Chinese American Library Association (CALA). She is one of three award winners—including Maria Fung and Michael Bailou Huang—who were recognized with honorary plaques during CALA's 40th Anniversary Celebration and Awards Banquet on June 30, 2013.

Deng joined CALA in 2006 and has since served on many of the association’s committees, including the Publications Committee and the 2011-2012 Presidential Initiative Taskforce. She created CALA’s first video for YouTube and was a co-founder of the CALA Facebook page. Deng has played an instrumental role in CALA’s diversity-related outreach efforts and was a co-creator of CALA’s award-winning poster, Promoting Library Advocacy, Diversity, Family Literacy, and Global Outreach. Since 2009, she has served as co-editor of the CALA Newsletter, the association’s biannual professional publication. She also is among those recently elected to serve on CALA’s Board of Directors.

Deng currently works as a metadata librarian at the University of Central Florida. Her research interests include digital libraries, metadata, data curation, institutional repositories, and scholarly communication.

“I am very happy to have the opportunity to recognize Sai’s contributions to CALA through this award,” said CALA President Esther Lee. “Sai has made significant contributions to CALA’s strategic goals through her active services and participation in many CALA projects. [Her] contributions to CALA’s publications are especially noteworthy. Sai has set up a wonderful role model in serving CALA with her big heart, her passion, and her expertise.”

Research Areas:
Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Nguyen receives Critical Language Scholarship

MSLIS student Christine Nguyen has been awarded a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) to study Japanese this summer. She is one of four University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign students who received full scholarships to spend 8-10 weeks abroad and study one of 14 critical languages. The program is part of an initiative to expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages and cultural skills to enable them to contribute to U.S. economic competitiveness and national security.

Christine Thuy Minh Nguyen

iSchool researchers to present at CHI 2026

iSchool faculty and students will present their research at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2026), which will be held from April 13–17 in Barcelona, Spain. The conference, considered the most prestigious in the field of Human-Computer Interaction, attracts researchers and practitioners from around the globe.

Dahlen selected as juror for 2026 Kirkus Prize

Associate Professor Sarah Park Dahlen has been selected as one of six jurors for the 2026 Kirkus Prize, given annually in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers' literature. The prize is one of the richest in the literary world, with awards of $50,000 in each category.

Sarah Park Dahlen

Liu receives support for AI project through NVIDIA Academic Grant Program

Assistant Professor Yaoyao Liu has been awarded a grant through the NVIDIA Academic Grant Program. NVIDIA, a world leader in accelerated computing and AI, established the program to advance academic research by providing world-class computing access and resources to researchers. Liu has received 32,000 A100 GPU-hours on Brev, an AI and machine learning platform that empowers developers to run, build, train, deploy, and scale AI models with GPU in the cloud. 

Yaoyao Liu

Uba receives 2026 Illinois International Graduate Achievement Award

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Illinois International are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2026 International Achievement Awards. The International Achievement Awards recognize outstanding alumni, faculty, and students whose exceptional work, service, and/or scholarship have made a significant, global impact.

Ebubechukwu Uba

School of Information Sciences

501 E. Daniel St.

MC-493

Champaign, IL

61820-6211

Voice: (217) 333-3280

Email: ischool@illinois.edu

Back to top