Associate Professor Kate McDowell will present the keynote at the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA) Spring Meeting on March 4 in Washington, D.C. COSLA is an independent organization whose membership consists of the top library officers of the states and territories, variously designated as state librarian, director, commissioner, or executive secretary.

Even as a customer relationship management (CRM) analyst, Payal Narvekar (MSIM ’23) still finds herself referring to her class notes on Python when she needs inspiration. When not building dashboards or reports, Narvekar is most likely building Lego sets.

BSIS student Saloni Gore is passionate about community service, especially projects related to sustainability and social impact. It is this commitment to making a difference that prompted her to start a project to help provide clean water to rural communities in India and led her from Singapore to the iSchool, where she can learn how to use data and technology to benefit the world.

An internship with Discover Financial Services led to a full-time position at the company for Terence Frank Njekeu (BSIS '22). He enjoys helping provide solutions for his company’s analytics needs in his role as senior operation strategy analyst.

Doctoral candidate Zachary Kilhoffer successfully defended his dissertation, "Human Factors in the Standardization of AI Governance: Improving the Design of Risk Management Standards for Ethical AI," on January 24, 2025.

Through her work at California State University, Fresno (Fresno State), Shuyi Liu (MSLIS ’19, CAS ’23) aims to bridge gaps in health literacy, especially for underserved populations. She recently developed an innovative health informatics course with Medical Library Association certification.

As a legal operations analyst for UC Legal, Andrew Stranahan (MSLIS ’23) helps make pertinent information easy to find, access, and use. He credits the iSchool’s Competitive Intelligence and Knowledge Management (IS 595) course, among others, with giving him the skills he needs for his work as well as the confidence to apply for the position.

Doctoral candidate Kanyao Han successfully defended his dissertation, "Natural Language Processing for Supporting Impact Assessment of Funded Projects," on January 7, 2025.

The School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is pleased to announce the publication of Library Trends 72 (4). This issue, "Community Librarianship," discusses the evolution of the roles and responsibilities of libraries to support and serve the communities in which they exist. Anna Maria Tammaro and Crystal Fulton served as guest editors. All articles are open for public access.

Isiah Pettigrew started wrestling in his junior year of high school in Palatine, Illinois. He advanced in the sport quickly, placing fourth in his weight class at the state wrestling tournament in his senior year. He signed on with the Illini Wrestling team in 2020 as a freshman and has been wrestling throughout his academic career, which includes earning a bachelor's degree and beginning a master's degree at the iSchool.