Assistant Professors Ismini Lourentzou and Yaoyao Liu, along with students from their labs, will present their research at the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), held in Denver, Colorado, from June 3–7. CVPR is the flagship annual meeting of IEEE/CVF and PAMI-TC, where researchers present their latest advances in computer vision, pattern recognition, machine learning, robotics, and artificial intelligence, both in theory and practice. 

iSchool faculty and staff will present their research at the Children's Literature Association (ChLA) annual conference, which will be held from May 28-30 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The theme of this year's conference is "Neighbors and Neighborhoods in Children's Literature, Media, and Culture."

Professor Dong Wang and PhD student Ruichen Yao will present their research at the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) 2026, which will take place May 27–29 in Los Angeles, bringing together researchers from around the world to study the intersection of social media, society, and technology. The conference is widely recognized as a premier venue for computational social science and social computing, with a highly selective acceptance process.

The iSchool is well represented in the 19th annual Undergraduate Research Symposium, which will be held on April 30 from 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. in the Illini Union. The iSchool is a Gold Sponsor of the symposium, which spotlights undergraduate research through oral and poster presentations, creative performances, and art exhibits.

The Association for Preservation Technology (APT) International has named Informatics PhD student Sepehr Vaez Afshar as a 2026 Student Scholar. Established in 1985, the APT Student Scholarship annually recognizes ten students worldwide whose work advances preservation technology through innovative and impactful approaches.

iSchool faculty and students will present their research at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2026), which will be held from April 13–17 in Barcelona, Spain. The conference, considered the most prestigious in the field of Human-Computer Interaction, attracts researchers and practitioners from around the globe.

A new app developed by Associate Professor Yun Huang aims to make navigating conferences less work and more fun, so that attendees can meet others, discover fresh ideas, and "experience academic life as an exciting adventure." The app, PapersClaw.fun, will debut at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2026), which will be held from April 13-17 in Barcelona, Spain.

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."

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. 

PhD student Ebubechukwu Uba has been invited to present her work at the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) conference, Net Inclusion 2026, which will be held on February 3-5 in Chicago. Uba will discuss her digital inclusion work with StepUp Academy, a nonprofit education and digital inclusion initiative in Nigeria that she founded in 2023.

Professor Jingrui He's lab received an outstanding paper award at the Multi-Modal Reasoning for Agentic Intelligence Workshop, which was held during the International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV 2025) last month in Honolulu, Hawaii. 

Informatics PhD student Sepehr Vaez Afshar has been named a Student Scholar by The Association for Preservation Technology International (APT). Each year, around ten students are selected worldwide for the scholarship program based on the quality and innovation of their research abstracts, as well as their contribution to the field of preservation technology. Scholars are paired with mentors from the APT College of Fellows, prepare and present their research during the association's annual conference, and enjoy opportunities for long-term professional networking and mentorship within the preservation community.

iSchool faculty, staff, and students will participate in the 88th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), which will be held on November 14-18 in Arlington, Virginia. ASIS&T will also host a Virtual Satellite Meeting on December 11-12. 

Students from The Stu/dio, the University of Illinois student-led game production studio, are preparing to take the stage at MDEV 2025, which will be held on November 7-8 in Madison, Wisconsin. One of the Midwest's most popular game industry conferences, MDEV celebrates innovation and collaboration in game development by bringing together game designers, developers, and enthusiasts from across the region for panels, workshops, and networking. 

iSchool faculty and students will present their research at the 27th International Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group (SIG) ACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2025), which will be held in Denver, Colorado, October 26–29, 2025. This conference allows researchers to present their scholarship on design, evaluation, use, and education related to computing for people with disabilities and older adults.

School faculty, staff, and students will present their research at the 2025 Illinois Library Association (ILA) Annual Conference, which will be held on October 14–16 in Rosemont. The theme of this year's conference is "You Belong Here."

Several faculty, students, and recent grads will present their research at the 28th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2025), which will be held October 18–22 in Bergen, Norway. The online portion of the conference will be held on October 10. 

Join the iSchool for the Association of Illinois School Library Educators (AISLE) annual conference, held October 5–7 at the I Hotel and Conference Center in Champaign, Illinois. The theme for the conference is “Libraries Build Connections.”