Renear to serve as special advisor on Provost’s leadership team

Allen Renear
Allen Renear, Professor

Professor Allen Renear, School of Information Sciences, will join the Provost's leadership team as special advisor for strategic initiatives. Renear will be working closely with other University academic and research units to provide analysis, guidance, and leadership with the planning, coordination, and launch of selected strategic initiatives in the University's Strategic Plan, The Next 150. Priority will be given to activities and programs in support of the digital transformation initiative; graduate, professional, and continuing education at the intersection of disciplines; and, workforce-development strategies across the public and private sectors through the Discovery Partners Institute and the Illinois Innovation Network.

"As a land-grant public university, we are committed to helping people prepare for the rapid changes now underway in our workplaces and communities, and, as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, we are well positioned to come through on that commitment—we are doing much already, and now we will do even more. I am proud that our campus keeps the land grant agenda its top priority," said Renear.

Renear joined the University of Illinois in 2001, later served as associate dean for research, and, from 2012 to 2019, as dean. Prior to his appointment at Illinois, he was director of the Scholarly Technology Group at Brown University. Renear has served as president of the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH), visiting fellow at the Oxford University Humanities Computing Unit, member of the advisory board of the Text Encoding Initiative, first chair of the Open eBook Publication Structure Working Group (the predecessor to ePUB, now the standard data format for eBooks), and chair of the North American Region of the iSchools Consortium. He is the interim director of the Illinois Informatics Institute and has an affiliate appointment in the Department of Philosophy. Renear received an AB from Bowdoin College and a PhD from Brown University.

At the iSchool, Renear has taught courses on data curation, information modeling, and document modeling. His research focuses on the development of formal ontologies for scientific and cultural objects and the application of those ontologies in information system design, scientific publishing, and data curation in the sciences and humanities. His publications include articles in Science, Communications of the ACM, the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, and elsewhere. 

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Spectrum Scholar Spotlight: Dalia Ortiz Pon

Twelve iSchool master's students were named 2024–2025 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services. This "Spectrum Scholar Spotlight" series highlights the School's scholars. MSLIS student Dalia Ortiz Pon earned her bachelor's degree in Latina/Latino studies from San Francisco State University. 

Dalia Ortiz Pon

Debnath datafies "The Bulletin"

MSIM student Tan Debnath, whose interests span data mining, statistical modeling, text mining, and digital humanities, joined the Center for Children's books as a research assistant. He was tasked with building curation processes that would datafy seventy-five years' worth of archival issues of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, one of the nation's leading children's book review journals.

Tan Debnath stands casually with his hands in his pockets and smiles broadly at the camera. It's a sunny day

iSchool undergraduates selected as 2025 Community-Academic Scholars

The Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute (IHSI) has selected BSIS student Dhanvi Puttur and BSIS+DS student Lara Terpetschnig as 2025 Community-Academic Scholars. Representing nineteen majors and nine minors in eight colleges and schools at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and two additional universities, the eighteen scholars in this cohort encompass diverse fields of study, from community health to graphic design to statistics. 

BSIS+DS student Lara Terpetschnig and BSIS student Dhanvi Puttur

He receives Amazon Research Award to improve monitoring of Earth’s ecosystem

A new project led by Professor Jingrui He aims to help scientists monitor disruptions to the Earth’s ecosystem, such as climate change. She recently received support for her work through an Amazon Research Award, which includes $60,000 in cash and an additional $40,000 in Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits.

Jingrui He

Scholarship provides validation, motivation for Martinez

BSIS+DS student Fabian Martinez chose his major because he wanted to learn how to help people understand and interpret data and information. While his immediate plans include finding a job in data analytics, business analytics, consulting, or product management, his ultimate goal is "to create meaningful relationships and help make a meaningful impact in the world" in whatever way he can.

Fabian Martinez graduation