School of Information Sciences

Faculty receive promotions

The iSchool is proud to announce the following appointments: 

  • Masooda Bashir has been promoted to professor, 
  • Madelyn Sanfilippo has been promoted to associate professor with indefinite tenure, 
  • John Weible has been promoted to principal lecturer, and 
  • Elizabeth Wickes (MSLIS '16) has been promoted to senior lecturer. 

The new appointments became effective August 16, 2026.

Bashir's research focuses on the human dimensions of privacy, security, trust, and AI, with the goal of understanding how sociotechnical systems can be designed to better align with human values and societal needs. Her research played a central role in Lopez v. Apple Inc., a case addressing the intrusive recording of private conversations by Apple's Siri voice assistant that was one of the most significant consumer privacy settlements in recent history. She is a faculty affiliate with the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, and the Information Trust Institute at the Coordinated Sciences Laboratory. She holds a PhD in psychology from Purdue University.

Sanfilippo's research empirically explores governance of sociotechnical systems. Using mixed-methods, including computational social science approaches and institutional analysis, she addresses research questions about participation in and legitimacy of sociotechnical governance; alignment between sociotechnical governance and public interest; privacy, misinformation, and social outcomes in sociotechnical systems; and differences between policies or regulations and sociotechnical practice. She is an affiliate of the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University, co-principal investigator of the Workshop on Governing Knowledge Commons, and series editor for Cambridge Studies on Governing Knowledge Commons. In June, the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) recognized Sanfilippo with its 2026 Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award. She holds an MIS and PhD in information science from Indiana University Bloomington. 

Weible's research focuses on entrepreneurship and commercialization, IT management, digital library systems, systems architecture and integration, applications development, database design, efficiency/performance analysis, algorithms for deductive logic puzzles, and project management, especially the use of Monte Carlo simulations. He has consistently been named to the University of Illinois' list of Teachers Ranked as Excellent for the past five years. Since 2010, he has served as president and founder of Sharp Moon, Inc., a technology company dedicated to systems support, development, and management for libraries. He holds an MS in engineering technology from Pittsburg State University.

Wickes has consistently been rated as excellent by students since 2020. Her research interests include data curation, research data management, and research programming. A software carpentry instructor with a background in programming and data management, she has organized Python training sessions for educators, including for the Bolashak International Scholarship Program. She co-presented at the 2018 Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School: "Hands-On Humanities Data Curation," an introductory workshop on useful tools, methods, and perspectives for managing, organizing, cleaning, and processing data in humanities projects.

School of Information Sciences

501 E. Daniel St.

MC-493

Champaign, IL

61820-6211

Voice: (217) 333-3280

Email: ischool@illinois.edu

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