Associate Professor Victoria Stodden presented her research at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine workshop, "Opportunities for Accelerating Scientific Discovery: Realizing the Potential of Advanced and Automated Workflows," which was held virtually on March 16-17. 

The following iSchool faculty, staff, and students will participate in iConference 2020, which will be held virtually on March 23-27. 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 "Sustainable Digital Communities."

Tony Torres joined the School on March 5 as academic advisor and coordinator of undergraduate affairs. His duties include advising and supporting BS/IS students as well as managing student engagement, support, and outreach for the undergraduate program. He comes to the School from the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, where he served for four years as an admissions counselor.

Associate Professor Jingrui He and Arun Reddy Nelakurthi, senior engineer in machine learning research at Samsung Research America, have coauthored a new guide to user behavior modeling. Their book, Social Media Analytics for User Behavior Modeling: A Task Heterogeneity Perspective, was recently published by CRC Press.

John Gough (MS '14) works for the University of Texas at Austin in the University Development Office (UDO). UDO is the fundraising arm of the university and oversees philanthropic giving from alumni, friends, foundations, and corporations totaling several hundred million dollars every year. As the senior executive director for advancement data operations and strategy, he oversees over twenty individuals across three teams responsible for gift and data processing, data quality, business intelligence, and predictive analytics.

iSchool faculty and students will present their research at the Women in Data Science Urbana-Champaign Conference (WiDS), which will be held on March 6 at the University of Illinois. The event, which is organized by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and cosponsored by the iSchool, is one of over 200 WiDS conferences being held worldwide.

Moises Orozco Villicaña, director of enrollment management at the iSchool, has been selected to receive the 2020 Future Leader Award from the Association for Graduate Enrollment Management (NAGAP). The award is presented annually to individuals who have "clearly exhibited leadership qualities and an enthusiasm for the graduate enrollment management (GEM) profession that distinguishes them as a rising leader in NAGAP and the field."

Associate Professor and PhD Program Director Jana Diesner will give an invited talk at the conference "The Data Quality Challenge: Research during the Digital Transformation," which will be hosted by the German Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures on February 27-28 in Hanover, Germany. The conference will examine topics such as research integrity and trust, data quality as a political issue, criteria for the scientific quality of data, the data lifecycle, and data quality standards.

Associate Professor Carol Tilley will be a keynote speaker at the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2), which will be held on February 28-March 1. C2E2 brings together the best of pop culture, including comics, graphic novels, and manga, as well as movies, TV, video games, and more.

Professor Emerita Linda C. Smith has returned to the iSchool on a part-time basis as interim executive associate dean for faculty affairs. In this role, she will provide leadership for iSchool faculty affairs and administrative oversight for the work of the School's associate deans.