Markazi receives 2023 Graduate Student Leadership Award

Daniela Markazi

Informatics PhD student Daniela Markazi has been named the doctoral student winner of the 2023 Graduate Student Leadership Award from The Graduate College. The award recognizes two graduate students (one master's and one doctoral) who have exhibited outstanding services that have positively impacted the UIUC campus and wider communities.

Markazi has over a decade of leadership championing diversity in STEM. Highlights of her work include serving as chair of the central Illinois chapter of the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) and providing mentoring and coaching to local high school students in areas of coding and robotics. Additionally, Markazi has demonstrated outstanding leadership through her efforts as the student leader of the UIUC Puerto Rico Disaster Relief Program. In this role, she has taken UIUC students on trips to Puerto Rico to engage with different communities and learn about cultural competence. These efforts led to the creation of a new course at UIUC titled "Community-Based Design and Management for Disaster Resilience." The Graduate Student Leadership Award selection committee extended praise to Markazi for "making an impact that will extend years beyond her graduation." 

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Spectrum Scholar Spotlight: Leslie Lopez

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 Leslie Lopez graduated from the University of North Texas with a BA in psychology.

Leslie Lopez headshot

Nominations invited for 2024 Downs Intellectual Freedom Award

The School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign seeks nominations for the 2024 Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award. The deadline for nominations is March 15, 2025. The award is cosponsored by Sage Publishing.

SafeRBot to assist community, police in crime reporting

Across the nation, 911 dispatch centers are facing a worker shortage. Unfortunately, this understaffing, plus the nature of the job itself, leads to dispatchers who are often overworked and stressed. Meanwhile, when community members need to report a crime, their options are to contact 911 for an emergency or, in a non-emergency situation, call a non-emergency number or fill out an online form. A new chatbot, SafeRBot, designed and developed by Associate Professor Yun Huang, Informatics PhD student Yiren Liu, and BSIS student Tony An seeks to improve the reporting process for non-emergency situations for both community members and dispatch centers.

Yun Huang

New digital collection sheds light on queer nightlife in Champaign County

Adam Beaty decided to pursue an MSLIS degree to combine his love of history, the arts, and community-centered spaces. This combination of interests culminated in a 244-item digital collection that showcases digitized materials depicting nearly thirty years of queer nightlife in Champaign County. 

Adam Beaty_headshot

Get to Know Deekshita Karingula, MSIM Student

After graduation, Deekshita Karingula would like to build data pipelines, automate workflows for greater efficiency, and use data to transform healthcare. She views the MSIM program as the "ideal way" to connect her computer science and technical skills with data management skills, helping her reach her goals.

Deekshita Karingula