BS/IS student Hanyu (Zella) Zhao learned about pop culture and data analytics through her work on the undergraduate research project, Analysis on Rolling Stone Magazine Covers. Professor Michael Twidale mentored her during the project, in which a team of undergraduates created a database of celebrities who appeared on the magazine cover from 1967 to 2021.

Lauren Ochs (MS/LIS '07) has always wanted to teach. In college, she decided to become a high school English teacher, because of her love for literature and admiration for an English teacher she had in high school. It was while completing courses and practicum experiences for her major that she discovered how much she enjoyed teaching reading and integrating technology into the classroom in meaningful ways.

Associate Professor Carol Tilley has been selected to serve as a judge for the 2022 Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, which is presented to the best graphic novel, fiction or nonfiction, published in the previous year by a living U.S. or Canadian citizen or resident. The annual award is sponsored by Penn State University Libraries and administered by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.

When asked to serve as the iSchool's convocation speaker next month, Yasmeen Shorish (MS/LIS '11) was surprised and honored. "It means a lot to be recognized by my alma mater in this way." Shorish, who holds a BS in biology from Northeastern Illinois University and a BFA in theater from UIUC, is the head of scholarly communications strategies at James Madison University Libraries.

A new project led by Assistant Professor Matthew Turk is among the napari plugin projects that have recently received support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) in its effort to advance bioimaging technologies. Visiting Research Scientist Christopher Havlin will serve as co-principal investigator on the project, "Enabling Access To Multi-resolution Data."

Associate Professor Jingrui He has been awarded a three-year, $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop explainable techniques to detect and track rare categories. For her project, "RareXplain: A Computational Framework for Explainable Rare Category Analysis," she will focus on real-world problems where underrepresented, rare (abnormal) examples play critical roles, such as defective silicon wafers resulting from a new semiconductor manufacturing process and rare but severe complications (e.g., kidney failure) among diabetes patients.

iSchool researchers presented their work at the 19th annual Community Informatics Research Network (CIRN) Conference on November 8-12. The theme of this year's conference was "Communities, Technology and This Moment." CIRN 2021 explored how researchers and practitioners ethically collect information, including what happens when community information is deliberately not collected and how information systems can be designed "in harmony with communities."

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Christopher Lueg will join the faculty as a professor in January 2022. He is currently a professor of medical informatics at the Bern University of Applied Sciences in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland.

Newly elected Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin ran a campaign ad featuring a mother who eight years ago tried to ban Beloved, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Toni Morrison, from her son's advanced placement high school English class. Youngkin's use of the ad has generated a discussion about banning books. Emily Knox is a professor and the interim associate dean for academic affairs in the School of Information Sciences, the author of Book Banning in 21st-Century America and editor of Trigger Warnings: History, Theory, Context. She talked with News Bureau arts and humanities editor Jodi Heckel.

When Lucille Belcher applied to the Graduate School of Library Science (now the iSchool) in the 1960s, she was met with some uncertainty, or at least concern, regarding her ability to complete the program. After all, Belcher was a middle-aged housewife and mother, and at that time, there weren't many women of her age and situation heading back to college.