Three iSchool alumni and a current student are included in Library Journal's 2020 class of Movers & Shakers, an annual list that recognizes fifty professionals who are transforming what it means to be a librarian. Thomas Padilla (MS '13) and Nicholas Weber (MS '10, PhD '15) were honored in the Digital Developers category; Haley Samuelson (MS '08) was honored in the Educators category; and MS/LIS student Edward Kristan was honored in the Community Builders category.

MS/LIS students Michael Cummings and Josh Hackel have been selected as recipients of the 2019-2020 Outstanding Graduate Student Award from the University Library at the University of Illinois. Cummings works in the Scholarly Commons, providing service at the Scholarly Commons front desk and Main Library Information desk, updating web pages and maintaining social media, and providing GIS (Geographic Information Systems) support. Hackel holds two positions at the Library. At Grainger Engineering Library, Joshua covers a wide variety of responsibilities, including serving as a duty officer with supervisory responsibilities, providing reference and instruction, and supporting Virtual Reality (VR) technologies in the IDEA lab. He also works in Records and Management Services on a three-year grant project.

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.

Associate Professor Carol Tilley has been selected as a judge for the 2020 Ringo Awards for achievement in comic books. Tilley is part of a five-member esteemed jury representing a cross-section of the comic book industry, which includes educators, publishers, press, and creators across numerous genres. Among her fellow jury members is Gene Luen Yang, a recent MacArthur Fellow and the Library of Congress' fifth National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Unlike other professional industry awards, the Mike Wieringo (Ringo) Comic Book Industry Awards include fan participation in the nomination process.

MS/LIS student Mia Adams' work with local and international nonprofits has earned her a Special Recognition in Graduate Student Leadership from the Graduate College at Illinois. Adams serves as director of development and board member for Three Spinners, a nonprofit organization serving refugees and immigrants in the Champaign-Urbana community.

Assistant Professor Jessie Chin has received a $389,810 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to identify false information about the HPV vaccine and model its impact on risk perceptions.

Professor Ted Underwood has received a $73,122 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to investigate the consequences of error in digital libraries. While digital libraries represent an immense storehouse of knowledge, the texts are full of errors because of the imperfect process by which they are transcribed optically.

Associate Professor Kate McDowell has received funding from the Center for Social and Behavioral Science Small Grant program at the University of Illinois to help community organizations tell more effective data stories.

The goal of the "Data Storytelling for Community Organizations" project is to develop and pilot a toolkit, based on the iSchool's Data Science Storytelling course (IS 590DST), to bring storytelling in information science to community organizations. The project will create a data storytelling kit for community organizations, position public libraries to distribute this toolkit, and support community organizations using the toolkit.

Two professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been awarded a 2020 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.
This year’s fellows are David Sepkoski, a professor of history and iSchool affiliate professor, and Janice N. Harrington, a poet and professor of English.

The Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT) of the American Library Association has chosen Melissa Bowles-Terry (MS '09), associate director of the Faculty Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, as the 2020 recipient of the LIRT Librarian Recognition Award. The Librarian Recognition Award was created to recognize an individual's contribution to the development, advancement and support of information literacy and instruction.