Each fall, an interdisciplinary team of students at the University of Illinois comes together to create an escape room. The class project is the culmination of a collaboration between two courses: Designing Immersive Adventures – Escape Rooms (Theatre 402/Game Studies and Design 490) and Makerspace – Escape Rooms (Informatics 418). 

PhD student Meng Li's research focuses on neuro-symbolic AI, with an emphasis on using syntactic analysis and large language models (LLMs) to understand Python notebooks. This cutting-edge research keeps Li "super busy" for much of the term, but in August, she took a brief break from her work and shifted her focus to designing the winning entry for the iSchool T-shirt contest.

While the idea of the design "just popped into my mind," Li has been thinking about the contest for years.

PhD candidate Xiaoliang Jiang successfully defended his dissertation, "Identifying Place Names in Scientific Writing Based on Language Models, Linked Data, and Metadata," on November 10. 

Professor Jingrui He's lab received an outstanding paper award at the Multi-Modal Reasoning for Agentic Intelligence Workshop, which was held during the International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV 2025) last month in Honolulu, Hawaii. 

Quinn Kennelly joined the iSchool on November 3 as an office support specialist. She will serve as the primary receptionist on the fourth floor of the iSchool building at 614 E. Daniel Street and will also provide administrative support to Director of Informatics Programs Lisa Bievenue and the Informatics team. 

Informatics PhD student Sepehr Vaez Afshar has been named a Student Scholar by the Association for Preservation Technology (APT). Each year, around ten students are selected worldwide for the scholarship program based on the quality and innovation of their research abstracts, as well as their contribution to the field of preservation technology. Scholars are paired with mentors from the APT College of Fellows, prepare and present their research during the association's annual conference, and enjoy opportunities for long-term professional networking and mentorship within the preservation community.

Aisaiah Pellecer had originally planned to attend graduate school after earning his bachelor's degree in information sciences + data science (BSIS+DS). His plans changed after learning about the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals, a fellowship that annually provides 65 American and 65 German young professionals the opportunity to spend one year in each other’s countries—studying, interning, and living with hosts on a cultural immersion program. 

iSchool faculty, staff, and students will participate in the 88th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), which will be held on November 14-18 in Arlington, Virginia. ASIS&T will also host a Virtual Satellite Meeting on December 11-12. 

As an MSIM student at the iSchool, Zhanchen Kang is passionate about helping people make sense of the overwhelming amount of information in their daily lives. Kang earned an undergraduate degree in information systems in China before coming to the University of Illinois to further explore how technology, data, and people intersect. 

Students from The Stu/dio, the University of Illinois student-led game production studio, are preparing to take the stage at MDEV 2025, which will be held on November 7-8 in Madison, Wisconsin. One of the Midwest's most popular game industry conferences, MDEV celebrates innovation and collaboration in game development by bringing together game designers, developers, and enthusiasts from across the region for panels, workshops, and networking.