Doctoral candidate Alaine Martaus successfully defended her dissertation, "Modeling Participatory Literacy (In Your Pants): An Analysis of Print and New Media Convergence in the Vlogbrothers' YouTube Videos," on April 5.

Recent MS/IM graduate Abhiram Tripuraneni discusses his internship with PayPal and how the experience led him to a full-time position with the company.

Doctoral candidate E.E. Lawrence successfully defended their dissertation, "Reading for Democratic Citizenship: A New Model for Readers' Advisory," on March 28.

The following iSchool faculty, staff, and students will participate in iConference 2019, which will be held March 31-April 1 in Washington, D.C. The annual event brings together scholars, researchers, and information professionals to share insights on critical information issues. The theme of this year's conference is "Inform. Include. Inspire."

PhD student Linh Hoang presented her research with Assistant Professor Jodi Schneider at the AAAI 2019 Spring Symposium on Combining Machine Learning with Knowledge Engineering, which was held March 25-27 at Stanford University. 

Doctoral candidate Dianah T. Kacunguzi will present her research at the UP Carnegie Conference, which will be held from March 24-30 in Pretoria, South Africa.

This month doctoral candidate Jim Jones presented his digital preservation work at the Society for Cinema & Media Studies 60th Annual Conference (SCMS 2019) and participated in the PBCore Workshop for Public Media Users and Educators.

MS/LIS student Itzel Jihan has been awarded a scholarship to attend the PyCon 2019 conference, which will be held May 1-9 in Cleveland, Ohio. The conference is the largest annual gathering for the community using and developing the open-source Python programming language. It includes tutorials, talks, events such as a poster session and job fair, and sprints, where developers collaborate on open source projects.

For Kelly Ferreira, receiving a Leep Scholarship has made "a world of difference." When she enrolled in the MS/LIS program, she was employed at the Ela Area Public Library in Lake Zurich, Illinois. However, she had to leave her position when she recently moved with her partner across the country. Now working as a library technician at Eastern Florida State College's Palm Bay campus, Ferreira appreciates the flexibility of the Leep online option as well as her scholarship.

Samantha Walkow, an Informatics PhD student advised by Assistant Professor Matthew Turk, has been accepted into the Mozilla Open Leaders Program. The 14-week mentorship and project management program focuses on internet health and openness. Walkow is part of a cohort in the "culture track," in which participants learn how to design and build an open culture that promotes participation and inclusion.