Doctoral candidate Noah Samuel presented research on makerspace education at FabLearn 2020, which was held virtually from October 9-11. FabLearn brings together researchers, educators, and policymakers to discuss the maker culture and share best practices in digital fabrication in education, hands-on learning, and instructional tools. The theme of this year's conference was "Making as Resistance and Resilience."

The HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) has received a $500,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a project that will develop new methods for creating and analyzing digital collections, with an emphasis on content related to historically under-resourced and marginalized textual communities. Principal investigators are based at the School of Information Sciences (iSchool) at the University of Illinois, Indiana University, and the University of Kansas.

Associate Professor Yang Wang presented his research at the 64th International Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), a virtual event held from October 5-9.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Assistant Professor Nigel Bosch a three-year, $987,015 grant to study potential bias in adaptive learning software through his project, "Collaborative Research: Exploring Algorithmic Fairness and Potential Bias in K-12 Mathematics Adaptive Learning." Bosch will observe and interview students using adaptive math learning software to discover what aspects of their identity are most salient in the adaptive learning context and then investigate possible algorithmic biases related to the identities that students express. Steven Ritter, founder and chief scientist at Carnegie Learning, will serve as co-principal investigator on the project, which also includes researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Illinois College of Education.

Assistant Professor Jessie Chin and PhD student Smit Desai will present their research at the 64th International Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), a virtual event held from October 5-9. The mission of HFES is "to advance the science and practice of designing for people in systems through knowledge exchange, collaboration, and advocacy."

Assistant Professor Elizabeth Hoiem has published a paper, "The Progress of Sugar: Consumption as Complicity in Children's Books about Slavery and Manufacturing, 1790-2015," in Children's Literature in Education (CLE). In her paper, Hoiem analyzes "production stories," a genre of books and media that teaches how everyday things are made. Since they started in the eighteenth century, children's production stories have evolved from picturebooks to TV episodes and web video series. Hoiem focuses on stories of sugar production in her paper and accompanying web resource, Production Stories.

Assistant Professor Melissa Ocepek and PhD student Jamillah Gabriel will present their research at the Information Behaviour Conference (ISIC 2020), a virtual event held from September 28-October 2. This conference is devoted to information-seeking behavior and information use, focusing this year on analytical investigations of the connection between information research and information behavior and practices.

PhD student Clair Irwin will participate in the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s 2020 Virtual Seminar, New Directions in Scholarly Publishing: Community, Collaboration, and Crisis, which will be held September 30-October 1. The seminar will explore new ways for publishers and industry leaders to support peer-reviewed research and academic publishing, especially during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.

Doctoral candidate Jooho Lee successfully defended her dissertation, "Using Grant Applications to Measure the Evolution of Collaborative and Non-Collaborative Research," on September 21.

PhD student Qiuyan Guo will present her research at the Flyover Comics Symposium, which will be held virtually on September 24-25. The symposium is organized by members of the comics studies communities at the University of Illinois, University of North Texas, and Michigan State University.