Eight iSchool master's students have been named 2025–2026 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association. This "Spectrum Scholar Spotlight" series highlights the School's scholars. MSLIS student Nathaniel Allen Pila earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Mount Holyoke College.

The following iSchool faculty and students will participate in iConference 2026, which will be held virtually from March 23–26 and physically from March 29–April 2 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The theme of this year's conference is "Information Literacies, Authenticity and Use: The Move Towards a Digitally Enlightened Society."

Informatics PhD student Olive Wang has been awarded a minigrant by AccessComputing, an organization that supports people with disabilities in computing. The $5,000 grant will support Wang's work on the video game Loadouts, which teaches players why accessibility is important. In the game, players learn why video games are inaccessible for players who are low-vision and how accessibility features such as high contrast, auditory cues, and multimodality can be effective.

A paper co-authored by PhD student Muhammad Hassan and Associate Professor Masooda Bashir received the Distinguished Paper Award at the Workshop on Security and Privacy in Standardized IoT, which was held last month in San Diego, California, in conjunction with the Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2026. 

This week, iSchool PhD students and faculty will present their research at the Technocracy Conference. Hosted by the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois on March 5–6, the conference will begin with a panel of graduate student papers and continue the following day with invited speakers and a keynote. All events will take place at the Levis Faculty Center on the Urbana campus. 

Professor and Associate Dean for Research Dong Wang and PhD student Ruohan Zong will present their research at the 19th ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM 26), which will be held from February 22–26 in Boise, Idaho. WSDM is a premier international conference in web search, data mining, and AI, known for its highly selective acceptance rates. This year, the acceptance rate for the main track of the conference was only 16 percent. 

Growing up on the south side of Chicago, BSIS student Devon Reynolds always saw his future in technology. He discovered the information sciences program during his senior year of high school and was drawn to its balance of challenging coursework. Choosing the iSchool at Illinois felt like a natural next step. 

Eight iSchool master's students have been named 2025–2026 Spectrum Scholars by the American Library Association. This "Spectrum Scholar Spotlight" series highlights the School's scholars. MSLIS student Mariana Guerrero earned a bachelor's degree in Spanish language and literature from Rockford University.

PhD student Fobazi Ettarh passed away on January 28, 2026. Ettarh entered the doctoral program at the University of Illinois in 2022. She held an MLIS from Rutgers University and bachelor's degree in English and sociology from the University of Delaware. Prior to joining the iSchool, Ettarh served as an academic librarian at Temple University Libraries; California State University, Dominguez Hills; and Rutgers University. She was also a school library media specialist at Hawthorne (NJ) Public Schools.

BSIS+DS student and undergraduate ambassador Alex Soja discusses his meaningful experience studying abroad in Japan, where he got the opportunity to live independently in Tokyo and gain a more global perspective.