Master's student Sara Benson, copyright librarian and assistant professor at the University Library, and Harriett Green, affiliated faculty member and head of scholarly communication and publishing at the University Library, have been invited to present at the 2017 Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute (SCI 2017).

Imagine a Facebook app that instantly predicts the likelihood of skin cancer. Waya.ai, a technology startup based in Champaign, has developed this open source app and is working on its next product—a smartphone app that can detect if a person has suffered a concussion. Ravijot Narang, a student in the iSchool's MS/IM program, is working on product strategy, product validation, market analysis, and customer development for the new company, which is dedicated to improving healthcare through the use of artificial intelligence and big data.

Several iSchool faculty and students will participate in the 2017 Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Annual Meeting, which will be held October 27-November 1 in Washington, D.C. The meeting, now in its 80th year, is the premier international conference dedicated to the study of information, people, and technology in contemporary society. This year's theme is "Diversity of Engagement."

Master's student Tura Dover served as an intern for the Illinois Library Association (ILA) during its annual conference on October 10-12. Dover worked at the registration desk and said the best part about her experience was "meeting people from different arms of the library system and LIS programs" as well as getting a better understanding of the ILA.

Doctoral student Shadi Rezapour has received a scholarship to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) in Orlando, Florida, on October 4-6. The GHC Student Scholarship, awarded by AnitaB.org, is very competitive and covers all expenses related to attending the conference.

Three recipients of the 2017 Digital Library Federation (DLF) Forum Fellowships have ties to the iSchool. Jane Kelly, an MS/LIS student in the Leep program, and Nushrat Khan (MS '16) were awarded DLF Forum Fellowships for Students and New Professionals. Richard J. Urban (PhD '12) was named a KRESS+DLF Forum Fellow.

Members of the Whole Tale Archaeology Working Group will meet with fellow computational archaeologists, environmental scientists, and other researchers for the first "Prov-a-thon" on practical tools for reproducible science. Held in conjunction with the DataONE All-Hands Meeting in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico, the two-day workshop on August 31 and September 1 is cosponsored by the NSF-funded projects Whole Tale, DataONE, and the Arctic Data Center.

Two iSchool graduate students undertook placements at Oxford University this summer. The placements were part of the Oxford-Illinois Digital Library Placement Program, an ongoing collaboration between Illinois and Oxford. Master's student Anna Oates and doctoral student Jessica (Yi-Yun) Cheng spent six weeks at the Bodleian Libraries and the Oxford e-Research Centre, respectively.

Doctoral candidate Katrina Fenlon successfully defended her dissertation, “Thematic research collections: Libraries and the evolution of alternative scholarly publishing in the humanities,” on September 8.

When MS/IM student Rob Callahan isn't participating in an online class, he is out flying helicopters. First Lieutenant Callahan flies H-60 Blackhawks as an aeromedical evacuation officer in the U.S. Army.