Associate Professor Yun Huang, as well as PhD students and iSchool affiliate faculty, will present their research at the 29th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2026), which will be held Oct. 10–14 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The online portion of the conference takes place Oct. 1. 

Diane Kelly, the Louis Round Wilson Distinguished Professor in the School of Data and Information Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will deliver the 2026 Otlet Lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 7. The lecture will begin at 2 p.m. in Room 126, 501 E. Daniel Street, and on Zoom. A reception will follow. Admission is open to all.

Professor and Associate Dean for Research Dong Wang and students from his Social Sensing and Intelligence Lab are presenting two papers on information integrity at the 2026 ACM Conference on Human-AI Complementarity and Alignment (HCOMP 2026). The conference takes place Sept. 27–30 in Alexandria, Virginia.

It’s been a big year for Nicky Martin (MSLIS '26). After graduating in May, he spent the summer as a junior fellow at the Library of Congress, which ended just in time for him to start a new position at the Claremont Colleges. 

Professor Catherine Blake was selected from faculty across the University of Illinois System to participate in the 2026 cohort of the University of Illinois Faculty Entrepreneurial Leadership Program. The program seeks to foster a vibrant university entrepreneurial ecosystem by supporting faculty innovators in realizing the commercial and/or social impact of their research and scholarship.

Several iSchool faculty, staff, and students will participate in the Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy (TPRC54), which will be held from Sept. 25–26 in Washington, DC.

This year marks the sixth cohort of the iSchool's Postdoctoral Research Associate Program. The program prepares candidates for tenure-track assistant professor or other appointments inside and outside of academia. The iSchool welcomes four new postdocs in the 2026–27 academic year.

In its fourth year, the research seed grant program at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology will fund one research project beginning in 2026. Led by Assistant Professor Haohan Wang; Nien-Pei Tsai, professor of molecular and integrative physiology and neuroscience; and Aleksei Aksimentiev, professor of bioengineering and physics, as well as the John Bardeen Faculty Scholar for physics; the selected research team will create a Center for Orchestrated Agentic Biology. 

Three iSchool faculty are named on four National Leadership Grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS): Professor Jiangping Chen; Sara Schwebel, professor and director of the Center for Children's Books (CCB); and Assistant Professor Kahyun Choi.