With topics like printmaking, weaving, and Minecraft 3D, it isn't surprising that summer camps offered by the Champaign-Urbana (CU) Community Fab Lab fill up so quickly. Throughout seven weeks this summer, the Fab Lab, a makerspace that supports campus and public community members, will hold 26 week-long camps for youth aged 10 to 15. This summer marks the tenth anniversary of the Fab Lab summer camps.

A new project led by a team of researchers from four universities aims to create and evaluate language models that represent past historical periods. The project, "Artificial Intelligence for Cultural and Historical Reasoning," was recently selected for a 2025 Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI) award from Schmidt Sciences. The $800,000 grant will be split among four institutions: Cornell University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, The University of British Columbia, and McGill University. Professor Ted Underwood will serve as the principal investigator for the portion of the project at Illinois.

Professor and Associate Dean for Research Dong Wang and PhD student Ruohan Zong will present their research at the 19th ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM 26), which will be held from February 22–26 in Boise, Idaho. WSDM is a premier international conference in web search, data mining, and AI, known for its highly selective acceptance rates. This year, the acceptance rate for the main track of the conference was only 16 percent. 

Wayne A. Wiegand, the F. William Summers Professor of Library and Information Studies Emeritus at Florida State University, will deliver the 2026 Gryphon Lecture on March 4. Sponsored annually by the Center for Children's Books, the lecture features a leading scholar in the field of youth and literature, media, and culture.

A new National Science Foundation (NSF) award will support an innovative effort in the School of Information Sciences to strengthen research security by using structured role-playing games (RPG) to model the threats facing academic research environments. The project, titled "REDTEAM: Research Environment Defense Through Expert Attack Modeling," addresses a growing challenge: balancing the open, collaborative nature of academic research with increasing national security risks and sophisticated adversarial threats. 

The iSchool at Illinois is pleased to announce the publication of Library Trends 74 (3) "Data Literacy: Navigating the Shift from Hype to Reality." Guest editor and Library Trends editorial board member Ben B. Chiewphasa (MSLIS '19) uses this issue to examine the intersection of technological hype and practical reality in librarianship through the lens of data literacy. 

In his role with the University of Illinois Alumni Association, Sid Patil (MSIM '24) turns data into connections with alumni and students. Patil developed this human-centered thinking through his studies at the iSchool.

The School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign seeks nominations for the 2025 Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award. The deadline for nominations is April 14, 2026. The award is cosponsored by Sage.

Growing up on the south side of Chicago, BSIS student Devon Reynolds always saw his future in technology. He discovered the information sciences program during his senior year of high school and was drawn to its balance of challenging coursework. Choosing the iSchool at Illinois felt like a natural next step. 

Eight iSchool master's students have been named 2025–2026 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association. This "Spectrum Scholar Spotlight" series highlights the School's scholars. MSLIS student Mariana Guerrero earned a bachelor's degree in Spanish language and literature from Rockford University.