Professor and Associate Dean for Research Dong Wang and students from his Social Sensing and Intelligence Lab will be presenting papers at the ACM Web Conference in Dubai from June 29 to July 3.
Informatics PhD student Robbie Sieczkowski's project, "The mv lab spatial trainer," is a mixed-reality app designed to help users learn and practice foundational concepts in Laban-Bartenieff Movement Analysis (LBMA).
PhD student Wei Cao and Assistant Professor Yaoyao Liu received a Best Paper Award at the 4th Workshop on Generative Models for Computer Vision, which was held during the 2026 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR).
A paper from Professor Dong Wang's Social Sensing & Intelligence Lab received the Best Dataset Paper Award at the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) held in May 2026 in Los Angeles, California. According to Wang, the paper was accepted in the first review round, which had an acceptance rate of 4.7 percent (14 of 298 submissions).
Associate Professor Rachel Adler and Informatics PhD student Olive Wang will present their work at the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education Conference on Research on Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT), which will be held in Chicago this week.
PhD students Ramazan Yener, Eryue Xu, and Mubarak Raji presented their research this week at the 2026 USENIX Conference on Privacy Engineering Practice and Respect (PEPR) in Santa Clara, California. PEPR is focused on designing and building products and systems with privacy and respect for their users and the societies in which they operate. The students received USENIX grants covering their conference registration and providing travel support to attend the conference.
PhD student Mubarak Raji has been invited to join the Working Expert Group on AI Governance Interoperability. This group operates under the United Nations Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies' new AI Governance for Humanity Lab. It supports the Secretary-General's High-level Advisory Body on AI by providing evidence-based analysis for the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, which will be held in July 2026 in Geneva, Switzerland.
PhD student Gladys Kemboi has been named a recipient of the Standing Conference of Eastern, Central and Southern African Library and Information Associations (SCECSAL) Excellence Awards 2026 in the category of Young LIS Professional. This is an international award recognizing excellence in library and information science in Africa.
PhD student Adebola Obayemi discusses her internship with the San Francisco Public Library, where she worked on Expanding Information Access for Incarcerated People Initiative. She has been invited to present her proposal on digital literacy for incarcerated populations at the Expanding Information Access for Incarcerated People Convening, which will be held in June in Chicago.
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.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Illinois International are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2026 International Achievement Awards. The International Achievement Awards recognize outstanding alumni, faculty, and students whose exceptional work, service, and/or scholarship have made a significant, global impact.
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.
PhD student Mubarak Raji has been selected as an IAPP Westin Scholar Award honoree for the 2025-2026 academic year. The annual awards were created by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) to support students who are identified as future leaders in the field of privacy and data protection. Honorees receive a $1,000 cash award; two years of membership with the IAPP; three complimentary exams for IAPP certifications (CIPP, CIPM, CIPT); and unlimited access to online training for the recipient's selected IAPP certification exams.
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.
PhD student Gladys Kemboi has been awarded the Knowledge Manager of the Year Award from CILIP, the UK's library and information association. This is an international award that recognizes an individual who has made a significant contribution and excellence in the discipline of knowledge management through their work and professionalism.
