As its second year of new funding begins, there is new leadership at the Midwest Big Data Innovation Hub (MBDH), with a swap in principal investigators and the appointment of a new executive director. Catherine Blake, a co-principal investigator (PI) on the project, has moved into the PI role, while William (Bill) Gropp transitions to co-PI duties. Long-time Hub staff member John MacMullen was named executive director in January.

With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, many public health organizations have found themselves overwhelmed by the need to make fast, data-focused operation decisions, but often they do not have enough staff with the necessary data science skills. The University of Illinois, meanwhile, has a diverse student population with strong technical skills and professional expertise who would like to help combat the pandemic but do not know how to get involved.

Affiliate Professor Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, professor and coordinator for information literacy services and instruction in the University Library,  and Kyle Jones, assistant professor in the School of Informatics and Computing at the Indiana University-Indianapolis, have received the ALISE Best Conference Paper Award for "New Methods, New Needs: Preparing Academic Library Practitioners to Address Ethical Issues Associated with Learning Analytics."

The use of data science tools in research across campuses has exploded–from engineering and science to the humanities and social sciences. But there is no established data science discipline and no recognized way for various academic fields to develop and integrate accepted data science processes into research. Associate Professor Victoria Stodden has proposed a framework for guiding researchers and curriculum development in data science and for aiding policy and funding decisions. She outlines the approach in the journal Communications of the ACM.

Adjunct Lecturer Melissa Wong and Laura Saunders, associate professor of library and information science at Simmons University, have co-edited a new book, Reference and Information Services, 6th edition, which was recently published by ABC-CLIO. The first half of the book establishes a foundation of knowledge on reference service and frames each topic with ethical and social justice perspectives, while the second half introduces tools and resources used by reference professionals.

iSchool Associate Professor Masooda Bashir and Informatics PhD student Tanusree Sharma have published a paper, "Use of Apps in the COVID-19 Response and the Loss of Privacy Protection," in Nature Medicine. In the paper, they examine how digital surveillance used to contain the spread of COVID-19 may impact privacy rights.

iSchool PhD student Natã Barbosa and his advisor Associate Professor Yang Wang have received a $65,053 grant from Facebook for their project, "In-Situ Privacy Controls of Profiling and Ad-Targeting." The goal of the project is to design a privacy control framework that makes profiling and ad-targeting more transparent to ordinary Internet users.

Theresa Dirndorfer Anderson has been selected by the iSchool faculty as a research fellow for the 2019-2021 academic years. Research fellows are chosen because their work is relevant to the interests of the School's faculty and students. During the period of their appointments, fellows give at least one public lecture.

Associate Professor and PhD Program Director Jana Diesner is a new associate editor on the editorial board of Science Advances, the open access multidisciplinary journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The journal supports the AAAS mission by extending the capacity of Science magazine to identify and promote significant advances in science and engineering across a wide range of areas. Science Advances editors not only have stellar reputations in their disciplines but also have acknowledged breadth in recognizing and promoting interdisciplinary collaborations. Diesner brings to this role her expertise in computational social science, human-centered data science, network analysis, natural language processing, machine learning, and responsible computing.

Associate Professor and MS/LIS Program Director Maria Bonn and three iSchool alumni have received the 2020 Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Library Publishing, which recognizes significant and timely contributions to library publishing theory and practice. Bonn’s coauthors include Katrina Fenlon (MS '09, PhD '17), assistant professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park; Megan Senseney (MS '08), head of the Office of Digital Innovation and Stewardship at the University of Arizona Libraries; and Janet Swatscheno (MS '14), instructor and digital publishing librarian, University Library, at the University of Illinois at Chicago.