Faculty, staff, and students represented the iSchool at the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC), held on October 1-4 in Orlando, Florida. Produced by AnitaB.org and presented in partnership with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), GHC is the world's largest gathering of women technologists.

Associate Professor and PhD Program Director Jana Diesner has received a $200,000 grant from the Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute (CIRI) for her project, "Reliable Extraction of Emergency Response Networks from Text Data and Bench-marking with National Emergency Response Guidelines." CIRI is a Center of Excellence of the Department of Homeland Security that aims to enhance the resiliency of the nation's critical infrastructures.

A travel grant provided by the iSchool will allow MS/LIS student Morgan Sherlock to present her research with Laurel Post (MS '19) and Affiliate Professor Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (MS '94) at the Charleston Conference without the extra financial stress. In the paper they will be presenting, "Behind the Gate: Early Career Researchers' Motivations for Using ResearchGate," the coauthors examine the motivations behind why early career researchers use the academic social network site ResearchGate and how publishers and librarians can use these findings to better understand and support their user communities.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has appointed Dean Eunice E. Santos to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum Board of Directors. Santos was named dean of the School of Information Sciences in August. She previously served as the Ron Hochsprung Endowed Chair and Professor, and department chair of computer science, at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

Six iSchool instructors were named in the University's List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent for Summer 2019. The rankings are released every semester, and results are based on the Instructor and Course Evaluation System (ICES) questionnaire forms maintained by Measurement and Evaluation in the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. pau

Two students in the MS in information management (MS/IM) program received top honors for their performance as interns at the University's Research Park. Saurav Yadav was named "Most Outstanding Graduate Intern" for his work at the COUNTRY Financial DigitaLab, and Harshit Gupta received the award for "Best Technological Innovation" for his work as a data scientist technology intern at Syngenta.

Two iSchool alumni have received the Up and Comer Award from ATG Media. Aaisha N. Haykal (MS '11), manager of archival services at the Avery Research Center of African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston, and Paolo P. Gujilde (MS '09), assistant head of acquisitions at Northwestern University, are among the fifteen individuals who were selected for the award, which is intended for early-career librarians and information professionals.

Associate Professor Victoria Stodden has been appointed to the Board of Trustees of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS), a nonprofit institution that conducts statistical science research. NISS was established in 1990 by the national statistics societies and Research Triangle universities to foster high-impact, cross-disciplinary, and cross-sector research involving the statistical sciences.  According to NISS Director James L. Rosenberger, Stodden's addition to the board greatly strengthens the institute’s expertise and connections within the arena of statistics in data science.

Four iSchool alumni—Kristine Hammerstrand (MS '79), Stacey Knight-Davis (MS '01), Heather McCammond-Watts (MS '95), and Brian Shepard (MS '05)—have been selected to receive awards from the Illinois Library Association (ILA).

Associate Professor and BS/IS Program Director Emily Knox has been named the iSchool's Centennial Scholar for 2019-2020. Endowed by alumni and friends of the School, the Centennial Scholar award recognizes outstanding accomplishments and/or professional promise in the field of library and information science.