BS/IS student Bastian Sanchez has used the knowledge he gained from iSchool courses and campus internships to acquire post-graduate employment. He recently moved to Seattle to begin work as a systems support engineer with Legwork, a software development company.
Sanchez joined the BS/IS program as a senior after taking several iSchool courses. He has especially enjoyed learning about network systems and security.

A record fifteen iSchool master’s students were named 2020-2021 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. MS/LIS student Megdi Abebe holds a BA in journalism from Michigan State University.

Thanks to the generosity of Edward Koval and his family, MS/LIS student Claudia Farris can stop worrying about finances and simply focus on their studies. Farris is a recipient of the iSchool's Anna Mae Koval Scholarship, a need-based scholarship for students interested in youth services and literature.

Professor Ted Underwood, PhD students Wenyi Shang and Yuerong Hu, MS/IM students Anirudh Sharma and Shubhangi Singhal, and English PhD student Peizhen Wu will present their research at the Workshop on Computational Humanities Research (CHR2020), which will be held virtually from November 18-20. The purpose of the workshop is to "foster the formation of a community of humanities scholars that rely on a wide range of computational approaches" and to serve as a stepping stone toward the creation of a research-oriented, open-access computational humanities journal.

PhD student Linh Hoang will present her research with Assistant Professor Jodi Schneider and Assistant Professor Nigel Bosch at the AMIA (American Medical Informatics Association) Annual Symposium, which will be held virtually from November 14-18. The symposium showcases the latest innovations from the community of biomedical informatics researchers and practitioners.

Doctoral candidate Beth Bloch successfully defended her dissertation, "The Values and Ethics of Biomedical Engineering Practices in The Design of Novel Biotechnologies," on November 13.

Associate Professor Halil Kilicoglu and PhD student Linh Hoang will present their research at the AMIA (American Medical Informatics Association) Annual Symposium, which will be held virtually from November 14-18. The symposium showcases the latest innovations from the community of biomedical informatics researchers and practitioners.

MS/IM student Jinal Mehta credits her iSchool experience with helping her develop the skills she needed for a successful internship with ROKMETRO, creator of the Safer Illinois app. Safer Illinois, the official COVID-19 app for the University of Illinois, provides pandemic resources to support community health and safety. Mehta found out about the internship at ROKMETRO, a startup at the University of Illinois Research Park, through her involvement in Illinois Business Consulting.

A paper coauthored by Assistant Professor Yun Huang and PhD student Si Chen received an Honorable Mention Award at the 23rd ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2020), which was held virtually on October 17-21. Approximately 1,000 papers were eligible for consideration for Best Paper awards, with the top one percent recognized as Best Papers and five percent as Honorable Mentions. Coauthors included Xinyue Chen, an undergraduate at Peking University, and Xu Wang, a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University.

Doctoral candidate DeAnza Williams successfully defended her dissertation, "BlackBoyYALit: Seeing Black Boys in 21st Century Young Adult Literature," on November 5.