School of Information Sciences

iSchool represented at Women in Data Science conference

iSchool faculty and students will present their research at the Women in Data Science Urbana-Champaign Conference (WiDS), which will be held on March 6 at the University of Illinois. The event, which is organized by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and cosponsored by the iSchool, is one of over 200 WiDS conferences being held worldwide.

Professor and Dean Eunice E. Santos will be a speaker on the panel, "Creating Meaningful Impact: Opportunities for Women in the Data Science Revolution." Santos is an accomplished scholar and researcher whose expertise includes computational social science, with an appreciation for the social and human aspects of the information sciences. Her recent research focuses on using computationally intensive methods to understand the behavior of social networks and communities.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Associate Professor and PhD Program Director Jana Diesner, whose research in human-centered data science, computational social science and responsible computing combines the benefits of machine learning, AI, network analysis, and natural language processing with the consideration of social science theories, social contexts, and ethical concerns.

Diesner also serves on the WiDS poster session committee with Lecturer Elizabeth Wickes, Postdoctoral Research Associate Alaine Martaus, and PhD students Shadi Rezapour, Jessica Cheng, and Ly Dinh. The poster session is co-organized by the UIUC Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)-Women student chapter, which was founded at the iSchool in November; with Rezapour and Cheng serving as chair and co-chair, respectively.

"The poster session allows graduate and undergraduate students to share their latest research in data science with colleagues, collaborators, and industry stakeholders across the campus and in our community," Rezapour said.

iSchool posters include:

  • "Robust Imitation Learning from Observation," presented by Computer Science PhD students Xue Hu and Zhenyi Tang, and Associate Professor Jingrui He.
  • "Python Can Be Tidy Too: Pandas Recipes for Normalizing Data," presented by MS/LIS student Jenna Jordan.
  • "Sentiment-Based PageRank to Infer Hierarchical Structures in Social Networks," presented by Dinh, Rezapour, MS/IM student Lan Jiang, and Diesner.
  • "Adversarial Perturbations to Manipulate the Perception of Power and Influence in Networks," presented by doctoral candidate Shubhanshu Mishra, MS/IM student Tiffany Lu, PhD students Nikolaus Parulian and Mihai Avram, and Diesner.
  • "Best Practices in Entity Detection and Relation Extraction," presented by Informatics PhD students Janina Sarol and Pingjing Yang, Electrical and Computer Engineering PhD student Xiujia Yang, and Diesner.
Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

iSchool researchers present at CSCW 2025

Several faculty, students, and recent grads will present their research at the 28th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2025), which will be held October 18–22 in Bergen, Norway. The online portion of the conference will be held on October 10. 

Get to know Jade Carthans, BSIS student

Jade Carthans is interested in how human-centered design, machine learning, and data analytics can come together to solve critical problems that impact organizations and individuals. She gained firsthand experience in these areas through internships with Microsoft and State Farm.

Jade Carthans

iSchool faculty and staff present at AISLE annual conference

Join the iSchool for the Association of Illinois School Library Educators (AISLE) annual conference, held October 5–7 at the I Hotel and Conference Center in Champaign, Illinois. The theme for the conference is “Libraries Build Connections.”

Downie appointed executive associate dean

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Professor J. Stephen Downie has been appointed executive associate dean. In this role, he will work closely with Interim Dean Emily Knox to realize the iSchool's strategic goals and objectives. He also will provide leadership for the internal administration of the School, coordinate the work of associate deans and assigned staff, and facilitate faculty affairs.

Stephen Downie

School of Information Sciences

501 E. Daniel St.

MC-493

Champaign, IL

61820-6211

Voice: (217) 333-3280

Fax: (217) 244-3302

Email: ischool@illinois.edu

Back to top