Thirteen iSchool master's students were named 2022-2023 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 Inbar Michael earned her bachelor's degree in history with a minor in humanities and law from the University of California, Irvine.

The NSF-funded FABRIC project has made steady progress establishing the groundbreaking network testbed infrastructure to reimagine the way large amounts of data are generated, stored, analyzed, and transmitted across the world. With the required hardware, software, storage, and fiber optic connections in place, the FABRIC system is available for early users to build and test novel large-scale experiments. 

A project co-led by Emily Knox is one of the twenty-five projects that recently received funding through the Chancellor's Call to Action Research Program to Address Racism and Social Injustice. The program is a $2 million annual commitment by the University of Illinois to respond to the critical need for universities across the nation to prioritize research focused on systemic racial inequities and injustices that exist not only in communities but in higher education itself. For 2022, the funded projects will focus on systemic racism and social justice, law enforcement and criminal justice reform, and disparities in health and health care.

Forty-four iSchool instructors were named in the University's List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent for Spring 2022. 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. Only those instructors who gave out ICES forms during the semester and who released their data for publication are included in the list.

A new project led by Associate Professor Halil Kilicoglu and Associate Professor Jodi Schneider will assist researchers and journals in evaluating citation behavior in biomedical publications. They recently received a two-year, $300,000 grant from the Office of Research Integrity of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for their project, "Natural Language Processing to Assess and Improve Citation Integrity in Biomedical Publications."

Eugene L. Moore has joined the iSchool as assistant dean for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. In his new position, he will provide professional expertise, strategic leadership, administrative oversight, and collaborative guidance to advance the School's DEIA mission and initiatives.

Zoë Kaler (MS/IM '18) serves as a senior user experience (UX) designer for the national digital services firm West Monroe. She credits the iSchool with preparing her for a rapidly changing technology landscape.

PhD student Jamillah Gabriel and iSchool alumna Katrina Spencer (MS/LIS ’16) gave the keynote address at the Society of American Archives Annual Conference, which was held on August 25-27 virtually and in Boston, Massachusetts.

Professor Catherine Blake will present the keynote at the Health Science Librarians of Illinois (HSLI) Annual Conference, which will be held virtually from September 7-9. HSLI promotes the professional and educational development of Illinois librarians, information professionals, and library students in the health sciences.

Talia Shaw has joined the iSchool as academic advisor and coordinator of graduate affairs. In this position, she will primarily provide academic advising and support to MS/LIS students as well as develop and facilitate programming/workshops, review applications for admission, and create new resources in collaboration with Student Affairs colleagues.