Twelve iSchool master's students were named 2024-2025 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services. This "Spectrum Scholar Spotlight" series highlights the School's scholars. MSLIS student Armaan Singh Kalkat graduated from the University of Florida with a BA in linguistics and BS in psychology (with an emphasis on neuroscience).

iSchool faculty, staff, and students will participate in the 87th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), which will be held on October 25-29 in Calgary, Canada. The theme of this year's conference is "Putting People First: Responsibility, Reciprocity, and Care in Information Research and Practice." The meeting is the premier international conference dedicated to the study of information, people, and technology in contemporary society.

Professor Ted Underwood will give an invited lecture on artificial intelligence (AI) and the humanities on October 23 at the Wolf Humanities Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The lecture is part of the center's "Forum on Keywords" programming for 2024-2025.

The highly technical language used in biomedical publications makes it difficult for nonexpert audiences to fully understand their content and draw insights. The BioLaySumm competition focuses on making biomedical research publications more accessible to lay audiences. This year, the winning team was a group from Associate Professor Halil Kilicoglu's research lab: PhD students Zhiwen (Jerome) You and Shufan Ming and Computer Science master's student Shruthan Radhakrishna. 

This semester, the iSchool welcomed Craig Evans as a new lecturer. Evans will be the primary instructor for Introduction to Database Concepts and Applications (IS 206), a required course in the iSchool’s undergraduate programs.

As a digital consultant for Caterpillar, Kirti Tyagi (MSIM '23) helps people make informed, data-driven decisions that have a tangible impact on the business. Prior to joining Caterpillar full time, she served as a digital intelligence intern for the company. 

Join iSchool faculty, staff, and students for the annual conference of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), which will take place from October 14-17 in Portland, Oregon. The theme of the 2024 conference is "Ethics and Evolution of Truth and Information."

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Yaoyao Liu joined the faculty as an assistant professor on September 5, 2024. He most recently served as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University.

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Yue Guo joined the faculty as an assistant professor on August 16, 2024. She recently completed her PhD in biomedical and health informatics at the University of Washington. 

The School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is pleased to announce the publication of Library Trends 72 (1). This issue, "Indigenous Librarianship," examines the current state of Indigenous librarianship. Ulia Gosart and Rachel Fu served as guest editors. Library Trends, in partnership with the guest editors and select authors, will host a virtual webinar featuring lightning talks based on articles from the upcoming issue.