Whether you're a cybersecurity student, researcher, or professional, you are likely to confront difficult ethical dilemmas that can have significant implications. Equipped with skills like malware knowledge and hacking techniques, those in the field of cybersecurity have inside knowledge that can be powerful and potentially dangerous. There is a growing need to tether this power to an awareness of the complex web of potential consequences, critical ethical reasoning skills, and perhaps most importantly, a sense of social responsibility to ensure this power is used for the greater good.

Assistant Professor Elizabeth Massa Hoiem is one of six Illinois faculty members who have been awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships for 2018. It is the third year in the last four that the Urbana campus has garnered more fellowship awards than any other single institution.

Associate Professor Catherine Blake has been named the iSchool's Centennial Scholar for 2017-2018. The award is endowed by alumni and friends of the School and given in recognition of outstanding accomplishments and/or professional promise in information sciences.

Professor and Associate Dean for Research J. Stephen Downie was a keynote speaker for the 7th Rizal Library International Conference, which was held from November 16-18 at Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City, Philippines. The theme of the conference was "CLICK! Connecting Libraries, Information, and Community Knowledge."

Assistant Professor and MS/LIS Program Director Nicole A. Cooke has been elected director for Special Interest Groups (SIGs) for the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE). As director, Cooke will serve on the ALISE executive board and act as the liaison to all of the special interest groups and committees.

Embedded in our society is a cultural memory of the old-time family doctor, a medical practitioner who knows of your family, your history, and your daily life, and uses that knowledge to provide the most optimal care. One Illinois faculty member and his research team have been working to move closer to that goal by exploiting a piece of familiar technology—the smartphone that can now be found in the average American's pocket.

Professor of Medical Information Science Bruce Schatz, an affiliated faculty member at the iSchool, and coauthors previously developed software for Android phones that uses the phone's native motion sensor to predict a lung patient’s disease state. 

Nicole A. Cooke, assistant professor and MS/LIS program director, has received a Provost's Initiative on Teaching Advancement (PITA) grant, worth $7,500, for her proposal, "Inspiring Culturally Responsive Pedagogy." PITA grants support the implementation of teaching innovations and enhancements at the University of Illinois. 

Master's student Sara Benson, copyright librarian and assistant professor at the University Library, and Harriett Green, affiliated faculty member and head of scholarly communication and publishing at the University Library, have been invited to present at the 2017 Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute (SCI 2017).

Senior Lecturer Maria Bonn is sharing her research on scholarly communication with scholars, professionals, practitioners, and educators through two major, education-focused conferences, the  14th Annual Open Education Conference and the Charleston Conference.

Visiting Assistant Professor Melissa Ocepek has received the 2017 Elfreda A. Chatman Research Award for her research proposal, "An Exploration of Everyday Information Behavior." The award is presented by the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Special Interest Group (SIG), Information Needs Seeking and Use (USE).

Several iSchool faculty and students will participate in the 2017 Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Annual Meeting, which will be held October 27-November 1 in Washington, D.C. The meeting, now in its 80th year, is the premier international conference dedicated to the study of information, people, and technology in contemporary society. This year's theme is "Diversity of Engagement."

Daniel S. Katz, iSchool affiliated faculty member and assistant director for scientific software and applications at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), was the keynote speaker for the International Workshop on Science Gateways – Australia (ISGW-A) during the 11th eResearch Australasia Conference, and was the closing plenary speaker for the conference, which was held from October 16-20 in Brisbane, Australia.

According to Associate Professor Kate McDowell, storytelling is one of the few ways you can help people quickly understand cause, effect, and what they can do. For that reason, storytelling is a valuable tool for nonprofits wishing to educate the public about their mission and attract more volunteers and donations.

Senior Lecturer Maria Bonn and colleagues in Kansas and North Carolina have received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS LG-72-17-0132-17) to fund their project exploring the need for and components of an open educational resource (OER) for teaching library students and professionals about scholarly communication.

Assistant Professor and MS/LIS Program Director Nicole A. Cooke presented her research on October 3 as part of the Digital Dialogues series at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH). The series is the signature events program of MITH, a digital humanities center that is jointly supported by the University of Maryland (UMD) College of Arts and Humanities and UMD Libraries.

Assistant Professors Rachel M. Magee and Deborah Stevenson will present research on youth and technology at the Digital Media & Learning Conference 2017 from October 4-6 at the University of California, Irvine. The conference is an annual event supported by the MacArthur Foundation and organized by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub located at the UC Humanities Research Institute at UC Irvine.

Jana Diesner, assistant professor and PhD program director at the iSchool, is co-principal investigator on a multi-institutional initiative funded by the Army Research Lab to enable new predictive battlefield analytics and services. Diesner will collaborate on the project with researchers from Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering.  

Professor and Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS) Director Bertram Ludäscher and collaborators are presenting their joint work and tools for data quality, cleaning, and provenance at the 33rd Annual Biodiversity Information Standards conference, TDWG 2017, from October 1-6 in Ottawa, Canada. The annual conference provides a forum for developing standards and demonstrating new technologies and tools for biodiversity informatics. 

Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (MS '94), faculty affiliate and editor of Library Trends, and her colleagues from Simmons College have been awarded a National Forum grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Hinchliffe is professor and coordinator for information literacy services at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, one of the largest public university libraries in the world.

Eight iSchool instructors were named in the University's List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent for Summer 2017. The rankings are released every semester, and results are based on the Instructor and Course Evaluation System (ICES) questionnaire forms maintained by Measurement and Evaluation in the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning.