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. 

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.

The work of an iSchool team led by Visiting Research Scientist Chris Havlin and Assistant Professor Matthew Turk is at the center of a National Science Foundation (NSF) project to better understand the microphysical activities of rocks that affect the upper mantle of the Earth.

Dean and Professor Eunice E. Santos has been named a 2023 Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The organization is the world's largest technical professional society and serves professionals involved in all aspects of the electrical, electronic, and computing fields and related areas of science and technology.
This recognition, the highest grade of membership, is bestowed on fewer than 0.1 percent of voting members each year. It is given to eminent scholars and scientists whose outstanding accomplishments in engineering, science, and technology have shown significant value to society. Santos was honored "for leadership in computational social networks."

BSIS student Jared Canty has been honored by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) as a 2022 Fiddler Innovation Undergraduate Fellow. Canty was among twenty undergraduates from various fields who were selected from NCSA's SPIN, REU-INCLUSION, and Design for America programs. The fellowship, which includes a $1,500 award, recognizes students whose research at NCSA crosses over into multiple disciplines, encouraging exploration of new topics and innovation.

A paper coauthored by PhD student Lanyu Shang and members of Associate Professor Dong Wang's research group, the Social Sensing and Intelligence Lab, received the best paper award in the research track during the 2022 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Network Analysis and Mining (ASONAM 2022).

Members of Associate Professor Jingrui He's research group, the iSAIL Lab, will present their research at the 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2022), which will be held from November 29-December 1 in New Orleans, Louisiana, and also virtually. NeurIPS is one of the most prestigious and competitive international conferences in machine learning and computational neuroscience.  

J. Stephen Downie, iSchool professor and co-director of the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC), and Glen Layne-Worthey, associate director for HTRC Research Support Services, along with partners in the University of Illinois Library, have been awarded $17,456 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Office of Digital Humanities. The team will contribute to the University of Kansas project, "Building Literacy and Curating (Critical Cultural) Knowledge in Digital Humanities (BLACK DH)."

Catherine Blake, professor in the School of Information Sciences and Health Innovation Professor in the Carle College of Medicine, has been named a fellow in the fourth cohort of the IAspire Leadership Academy, a leadership program aimed at helping STEM faculty from underrepresented backgrounds ascend to leadership roles at colleges and universities. The academy is part of the Aspire Alliance's Institutional Change Initiative, led by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the University of Georgia.

As he works toward his PhD in information sciences, William Langston is receiving financial support through the Diversifying Higher Education Faculty in Illinois Program (DFI). The program provides competitive need-based financial awards to underrepresented students in the state of Illinois who are interested in becoming full-time tenure-track faculty and staff at colleges and universities in Illinois.

MS/LIS student Katie Colson and Cora Godfrey (MS/LIS '22) won first prize for their paper at the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) conference's student forum. The conference, which supports innovation in metadata design and best practices across the metadata ecology, was held virtually on October 3-7.

With funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Associate Professor Jodi Schneider is leading a project in collaboration with the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) to prevent the spread of retracted research.

Schneider was recently awarded a $249,998 grant to continue her work to create consistent community practices for publishers, preprint repositories, and discovery services to identify and signal that publications have been retracted or have expressions of concern.

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. MS/LIS student Megha Bamola earned her bachelor's degree in urban planning from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.