Professor and Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS) Director Bertram Ludäscher will be the keynote speaker for a webinar hosted by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) on February 10. The webinar, "Toward Open, Reproducible, and Reusable Research," will present projects, approaches, and practices that advance research sharing for reproducibility and reuse.

Anita Say Chan, associate professor in the iSchool and the Department of Media and Cinema Studies, will share her expertise with campus as the Provost Fellow for International Affairs and Global Strategies for the 2020-2021 academic year. The Provost Fellows Program provides selected Illinois faculty with academic leadership experience in key campus administrative roles. Fellows participate in mentoring and learning opportunities, collaborate with colleagues in the Provost’s and Chancellor's Offices and across campus, and assume leadership roles on critical campus strategic initiatives and projects.

Saundra Nettles (MS '68) credits the iSchool with teaching her skills, such as systems thinking and interdisciplinary teamwork, that she has been able to transfer across work settings in diverse organizations. Nettles, who also holds a PhD in psychology from Howard University, has served as a special recruit at the Library of Congress, librarian at the Moorland-Spingarn Center at Howard University, principal research scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Social Organization of Schools, and faculty member at the University of Maryland, Georgia Southern University, and University of Illinois.

Associate Professor Jingrui He will present her research at the International Workshop on Deep Learning on Graphs, which will be held in conjunction with the 35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'21) on February 2-9. The one-day workshop brings together academic researchers and industrial practitioners from different backgrounds to investigate new approaches and methods at the intersection of Graph Neural Networks and real-world applications.

The School of Information Sciences is pleased to announce the appointment of Clara M. Chu and Jaya Raju as coeditors-in-chief of its quarterly journal Library Trends, effective February 1, 2021. Their extensive editorial experience and unique combination of global, multicultural, and diverse perspectives will advance the journal's reputation as an essential tool for professional librarians and educators.

A paper coauthored by Ruohua Han, iSchool doctoral candidate, and Linqing Ma (Renmin University of China) has been named one of five finalists for the Best Short Research Paper Award at iConference 2021. The winner will be announced during the conference, which will take place online from March 17-31.

It is important for patients to understand the information they need for making health decisions, yet studies have shown that a large segment of the population lacks the health literacy to do so. Health literacy refers to capacity of people to obtain, process, and understand health information needed for making health decisions. Assistant Professor Jessie Chin addresses this topic in the paper, "Health Literacy, Processing Capacity, Illness Knowledge, and Actionable Memory for Medication Taking in Type 2 Diabetes: Cross-Sectional Analysis," which was recently published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Associate Professor Masooda Bashir will present her privacy research at the 14th International Computers, Privacy & Data Protection Conference (CPDP2021), which will be held virtually on January 27-29. The conference brings together academics, lawyers, practitioners, policymakers, industry, and civil society to discuss emerging issues and trends in privacy and data protection. This year’s theme is "Enforcing Rights in a Changing World."

For MS/LIS student Eunice Kang, receiving the Carl Volkmann Scholarship from the iSchool allowed her to focus on learning and "taking advantage of all the opportunities that the University has to offer," while also lightening her financial burden. Kang realized soon after earning her bachelor's degree in advertising from the University of Illinois that she did not belong in that field. After spending time teaching English to lower income children in Korea, she decided to pursue a career where she could help children.

The iSchool at Illinois seeks nominations for the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award. The deadline for nominations is March 15, 2021. Given annually, the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award acknowledges individuals or groups who have furthered the cause of intellectual freedom, particularly as it impacts libraries and information centers and the dissemination of ideas. Granted to those who have resisted censorship or efforts to abridge the freedom of individuals to read or view materials of their choice or to hear or express ideas, the award may be in recognition of a particular action or a long-term interest in and dedication to the cause of intellectual freedom.