MSLIS student and ALA Spectrum Scholar Wardah Mohammed earned her bachelor's degree in philosophy with a focus in bioethics, global studies, and Arabic language and culture from Loyola University Chicago.

Sara Benson (MSLIS '17), adjunct associate professor at the iSchool and copyright librarian and associate professor at the University Library, was recently named a senior policy fellow for the American Library Association's Public Policy and Advocacy Office and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) representative to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR). 

A project to examine the circulation of newspaper reports about anti-Black violence in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century U.S. newspapers could provide context to the spread of white supremacist ideologies in social media today. "The Virality of Racial Terror in US Newspapers, 1863-1921" (VRT) is a partnership between the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Northeastern University, and Washington University, with Illinois serving as the lead institution. VRT was recently awarded a $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, as part of its Higher Learning program that supports inquiry into issues of vital social, cultural, and historical import.

A paper coauthored by PhD student Zhixuan (Kyrie) Zhou and Mengyi Wei, a PhD student at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, received the Best Paper Award at the 56th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-56). The conference, which was held in Maui on January 3-6, is one of the longest-standing working scientific conferences in information technology management.

Jill Misawa Axelson, a student in the MSLIS online (Leep) program, has been awarded a grant from the Caxton Club, a not-for-profit organization devoted to the study and promotion of the book arts. The grant will support her project, "Bookmaking as bibliographic study: an inquiry into the first printing of the Hawaiian Alphabet," which was a part of her final assignment from Associate Professor Bonnie Mak's History of the Book (IS 583) course she took last fall.

With their nearly completed "Whole Tale" project, Bertram Ludäscher, professor and director of the Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS), and his team have created methods and tools for scientists to link executable computer code, data, and other information to online scholarly publications, which helps ensure reproducibility and paves the way for new discoveries.

The University of Illinois is part of a nine-university consortium led by the University of Buffalo that has been awarded a $20 million grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish a national institute that develops artificial intelligence systems that identify and assist young children with speech and/or language processing challenges.

Assistant Professor Jessie Chin and her team have received a $30,000 Arnold O. Beckman Research Award from the U of I Campus Research Board for their project, "Augmenting Health Self-Regulation across the Cancer Survivorship Continuum by Digital Phenotyping." The researchers will develop a model of how breast cancer survivors manage their health by passively tracking survivors' interactions with their personal digital devices to identify when assistance is needed. 

Diane Foote (MSLIS '06), former executive director of the Illinois Library Association (ILA), has been inducted as an Illinois Library Luminary. The Illinois Library Luminary program, an initiative of the ILA, recognizes those who have made a significant contribution to Illinois libraries.

Thirteen iSchool master's students were named 2022-2023 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services. This "Spectrum Scholar Spotlight" series highlights the School's scholars. MSLIS student Sanobar Chagani earned her bachelor's degree in political science and communications and rhetorical studies from Syracuse University.