Associate Professor Anita Say Chan presented her research at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S 2019), which took place in New Orleans on September 4-7. The Society is an international, nonprofit association that fosters interdisciplinary scholarship in social studies of science, technology, and medicine (a field often referred to as STS). The theme of this year's meeting was "Innovations, Interruptions, and Regenerations."

Assistant Professor Jodi Schneider presented her research on argumentation mining at a doctoral workshop at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland on September 2-3. Her lecture and tutorials were featured during the University’s Language and Cognition program’s “Linguistic and Corpus Perspectives on Argumentative Discourse” workshop. Schneider discussed problem definitions, corpora, and argument annotation for mining arguments from text. 

Celia C. Pérez (CAS '12) credits her experience as a student in the Certificate of Advanced Study (CAS) program with her decision to become a children's book author. Her debut children’s book, The First Rule of Punk, published by Viking Books for Young Readers in 2017, was a hit. In addition to receiving several honors, including the 2018 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, the Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis is currently adapting the book into a musical.

Two students in the MS in information management (MS/IM) program received top honors for their performance as interns at the University's Research Park. Saurav Yadav was named "Most Outstanding Graduate Intern" for his work at the COUNTRY Financial DigitaLab, and Harshit Gupta received the award for "Best Technological Innovation" for his work as a data scientist technology intern at Syngenta.

Associate Professor Masooda Bashir will present her research on trust formation in human-agent collaboration at the Intelligent Systems Conference (IntelliSys) 2019, which will be held September 5-6 in London. The conference, which brings together researchers and practitioners from diverse fields, focuses on areas of intelligent systems and artificial intelligence and how they apply to the real world.

Our School is grateful for talented and dedicated staff, who contribute greatly to our teaching and research excellence. This "Get to Know" series highlights our staff, sharing their friendly faces and stories of professional success. 

Two iSchool alumni have received the Up and Comer Award from ATG Media. Aaisha N. Haykal (MS '11), manager of archival services at the Avery Research Center of African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston, and Paolo P. Gujilde (MS '09), assistant head of acquisitions at Northwestern University, are among the fifteen individuals who were selected for the award, which is intended for early-career librarians and information professionals.

Associate Professor Carol Tilley shared her comics research at two conferences this summer: 6th International Comics Days, held at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, and the 2nd Annual Conference of the Comics Studies Society, held at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. At the latter event, she received an unexpected honor acknowledging her efforts to support comics scholars.

The iSchool is pleased to announce the appointment of David Hopping as a new visiting lecturer. He was most recently employed as an adjunct lecturer with the iSchool and Illinois Informatics Institute at the University of Illinois.

Associate Professor Victoria Stodden has been appointed to the Board of Trustees of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS), a nonprofit institution that conducts statistical science research. NISS was established in 1990 by the national statistics societies and Research Triangle universities to foster high-impact, cross-disciplinary, and cross-sector research involving the statistical sciences.  According to NISS Director James L. Rosenberger, Stodden's addition to the board greatly strengthens the institute’s expertise and connections within the arena of statistics in data science.