PhD student Smit Desai will discuss his research with Assistant Professor Jessie Chin at the ACM Conversational User Interfaces conference (CUI 2021), which will be held virtually from July 27-29. The goal of the conference is "to further develop a collaborative community around human-computer interaction issues in speech and language technology, with a specific interest in theory-based and applied scientific issues in the field of speech and text-based conversational user interfaces."

Doctoral candidate Shadi Rezapour successfully defended her dissertation, "From User-generated Text to Insight; Context-aware Measurement of Social Impacts and Interactions Using Natural Language Processing," on July 20. Her committee included Associate Professor Jana Diesner (chair); Professor Ted Underwood; Roxana Girju, professor of linguistics; and Karrie Karahalios, professor of computer science.

In celebration of its 75th anniversary, the Center for Children's Books (CCB) has published a digital exhibit highlighting defining moments from its past.

"The history of the Center for Children's Books provides an excellent window into the history and evaluation of U.S. children's books more broadly—and for a period when both the quality and quantity of youth literature published increased tremendously," said CCB Director and Professor Sara L. Schwebel, who worked with a team of graduate assistants to design and publish the multimedia site.

When she is not working as a library assistant at Clive (IA) Public Library or taking care of her large family (four boys!), Megan Okesson is pursuing her MS/LIS degree through the iSchool's Leep (online) program. After graduation, she would like to work as a public or academic librarian but would also be thrilled to receive a job offer from the Library of Congress.

Jade Roberts, of Woodridge, Illinois, was awarded the inaugural Fulbright-Aalto University Graduate Award to complete a master's degree at Aalto University in Finland. Roberts earned a bachelor's degree in May from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences with a major in individual plans of study and a minor in informatics. She focused her self-designed major at the intersection of artificial intelligence and linguistics, conducting research on auditory and cognitive neuroscience. At Aalto, Roberts plans to explore the root of biased technology and artificial intelligence algorithms through a master's degree in acoustics and audio technology.

Health care workers often don't adopt new guidelines for best practices in medical care until well after those guidelines are established. A team of researchers led by Eunice E. Santos, the dean of the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has developed a new computational modeling and simulation framework to analyze decision-making and identify effective dissemination strategies for medical guidelines.

MS/LIS student Anthony Martínez presented his research at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Division IV webinar, Projects in the Libraries - Ideas, Innovations, Initiatives, which was held on May 26. The goal of the webinar series is to provide a place for LIS students to share their projects, research, and ideas about different topics related to libraries.

PhD student Malik Salami has been accepted into the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science in Chicago (SICSS-Chicago), which will be held virtually from June 14-25. Sponsored by Northwestern University, the institute will bring together graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and beginning faculty for lectures, group problem sets, and participant-led research projects.

Each year, the School recognizes a group of outstanding students for their achievement in academics as well as a number of attributes that contribute to professional success. Congratulations to this year's honorees!

PhD student Jamillah R. Gabriel will give the opening keynote address at the Critical Pedagogy Symposium, which will be held virtually on May 17-19. The symposium is a collaborative project of the Association of College and Research Libraries/Greater New York Metropolitan Area Chapter, Library Information Literacy Advisory Committee (LILAC) of The City University of New York, and METRO.