Associate Professor Masooda Bashir will present her research on trust formation in human-agent collaboration at the Intelligent Systems Conference (IntelliSys) 2019, which will be held September 5-6 in London. The conference, which brings together researchers and practitioners from diverse fields, focuses on areas of intelligent systems and artificial intelligence and how they apply to the real world.

Our School is grateful for talented and dedicated staff, who contribute greatly to our teaching and research excellence. This "Get to Know" series highlights our staff, sharing their friendly faces and stories of professional success. 

Two iSchool alumni have received the Up and Comer Award from ATG Media. Aaisha N. Haykal (MS '11), manager of archival services at the Avery Research Center of African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston, and Paolo P. Gujilde (MS '09), assistant head of acquisitions at Northwestern University, are among the fifteen individuals who were selected for the award, which is intended for early-career librarians and information professionals.

Associate Professor Carol Tilley shared her comics research at two conferences this summer: 6th International Comics Days, held at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, and the 2nd Annual Conference of the Comics Studies Society, held at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. At the latter event, she received an unexpected honor acknowledging her efforts to support comics scholars.

The iSchool is pleased to announce the appointment of David Hopping as a new visiting lecturer. He was most recently employed as an adjunct lecturer with the iSchool and Illinois Informatics Institute at the University of Illinois.

Associate Professor Victoria Stodden has been appointed to the Board of Trustees of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS), a nonprofit institution that conducts statistical science research. NISS was established in 1990 by the national statistics societies and Research Triangle universities to foster high-impact, cross-disciplinary, and cross-sector research involving the statistical sciences.  According to NISS Director James L. Rosenberger, Stodden's addition to the board greatly strengthens the institute’s expertise and connections within the arena of statistics in data science.

Garrick Sherman successfully defended his PhD dissertation, "Document Expansion and Language Model Re-estimation for Information Retrieval," on August 22.

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Judith Pintar is now a teaching associate professor. In her new position, in addition to teaching core courses in the BS in information sciences (BS/IS) program, she will develop and teach courses related to game studies and interactive narrative design for both undergraduates and graduate students.

Doctoral candidate Jacob Jett successfully defended his dissertation, "Towards a General Conceptual Model for Bibliographic Aggregates," on August 12.

Historian and children's literature scholar Sara L. Schwebel has been named director of The Center for Children's Books (CCB) and professor of information sciences at Illinois. She previously served as a professor of English and women's & gender studies at the University of South Carolina (USC). Prior to her academic career, she taught English and history to middle school students in Connecticut and Virginia.