Nicole A. Cooke, assistant professor and MS/LIS program director, has received a Provost's Initiative on Teaching Advancement (PITA) grant, worth $7,500, for her proposal, "Inspiring Culturally Responsive Pedagogy." PITA grants support the implementation of teaching innovations and enhancements at the University of Illinois. 

The Board of Directors of the Illinois Library Association (ILA) unanimously approved the hire of Diane Foote (MS '06) as the organization's next executive director.

Master's student Sara Benson, copyright librarian and assistant professor at the University Library, and Harriett Green, affiliated faculty member and head of scholarly communication and publishing at the University Library, have been invited to present at the 2017 Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute (SCI 2017).

Senior Lecturer Maria Bonn is sharing her research on scholarly communication with scholars, professionals, practitioners, and educators through two major, education-focused conferences, the  14th Annual Open Education Conference and the Charleston Conference.

A multidisciplinary group from the University of Illinois and the University of Washington at Tacoma (UW Tacoma) has developed a novel platform to diagnose infectious disease at the point of care, using a smartphone as the detection instrument in conjunction with a test kit in the format of a credit card. 

Imagine a Facebook app that instantly predicts the likelihood of skin cancer. Waya.ai, a technology startup based in Champaign, has developed this open source app and is working on its next product—a smartphone app that can detect if a person has suffered a concussion. Ravijot Narang, a student in the iSchool's MS/IM program, is working on product strategy, product validation, market analysis, and customer development for the new company, which is dedicated to improving healthcare through the use of artificial intelligence and big data.

Allen Renear, dean of the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will step down from his role in August 2018 and return to the iSchool faculty.

The HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) will host its 2018 UnCamp on January 25-26 at the University of California, Berkeley. The primary venue will be the newly renovated Moffitt Library with breakout events in nearby campus locations, including the Berkeley Institute for Data Science, Morrison Library, D-Lab in Barrows Hall, and Academic Innovation Studio. Registration is now open.

Visiting Assistant Professor Melissa Ocepek has received the 2017 Elfreda A. Chatman Research Award for her research proposal, "An Exploration of Everyday Information Behavior." The award is presented by the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Special Interest Group (SIG), Information Needs Seeking and Use (USE).

Several iSchool faculty and students will participate in the 2017 Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Annual Meeting, which will be held October 27-November 1 in Washington, D.C. The meeting, now in its 80th year, is the premier international conference dedicated to the study of information, people, and technology in contemporary society. This year's theme is "Diversity of Engagement."