A recent analysis of online conversations about President Obama’s proposed plan for tuition-free community colleges, America's College Promise, indicates that a significant number of people oppose the plan.  iSchool doctoral student Shubhanshu Mishra and researchers examined the content and civility of comments that were posted on websites during the week following Obama's announcement.

Doctoral candidate Shameem Ahmed successfully defended his dissertation, "mHealth Literacy: Characterizing People’s Ability to Use Smartphone-based Health-related Applications," on June 30.

Doctoral candidate Melissa Villa-Nicholas successfully defended her dissertation, "Latinas in Telecommunications: Intersectional Experiences in the Bell System," on June 30.

Developed in the 1940s and 1950s, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy measures physical and chemical properties of atoms or molecules by measuring change in the magnetic resonance of the nuclei of atoms. The process is used by scientists for a variety of applications, such as substance identification. In biomolecular science, NMR supports discovery and identification of new drugs, disease and metabolic research, study of structural biology, and more.

Doctoral student Steve Witt (MS '95) is the recipient of the 2016 Donald G. Davis Article Award given by the Library History Round Table of the American Library Association (ALA). The award will be presented on June 26 at the 2016 ALA Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida, at the Library History Round Table Research Forum.

Doctoral candidate Noah Lenstra (MS '09, CAS '11) successfully defended his dissertation, "The Community Informatics of an Aging Society: A Comparative Case Study of Public Libraries and Senior Centers,” on June 20.

Several master’s students from the Applied Business Research course (590ABR) participated in the Innovation Immersion Program (IIP) Global Conference, which was held in May at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in Ulsan, South Korea. These students represented the iSchool’s Business Information Group (BIG), a research group that simulates an information consultancy.

Several students and faculty members will share their research at the 2016 Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), held on June 19-23 in Newark, New Jersey. The event brings together international scholars focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, organizational, and social issues.

Doctoral student Andrea Thomer has been selected as a 2016 Fellow of the Research Data Alliance/US (RDA/US) Data Share early career engagement program. As an RDA Fellow, she will undertake a project to survey the completeness and coverage of existing natural history physical sample databases.

Master’s student Gretsi Isac chose to earn her degree at the iSchool at Illinois because she knew the School would present rewarding challenges and open doors for professional opportunities. Now she’s preparing to graduate in August and pursue a career in data analytics.