Connect with iSchool faculty and staff next month at the 2018 ALISE Annual Conference and the ALA 2018 Midwinter Meeting in Denver. ALISE 2018 will be held February 6-9, and ALA Midwinter will be held February 9-13. A reception to honor the Kansas City Public Library, recipient of the 2017 Downs Intellectual Freedom Award, will take place on Saturday, February 10, from 5:30-7:00 p.m. in Ellingwood Rooms A and B at the Crowne Plaza Downtown Denver. The award is sponsored by the iSchool and Libraries Unlimited.

MS student Mark McCarthy has received the Stan Yellott Scholarship from the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group. The award provides financial support to students interested in pursuing studies related to information technology. McCarthy, an information management student, is certified in information accessibility, design, and policy and has earned several certificates in cybersecurity.

As a child, MS/LIS student and author Brittany Jacobs was banned from her local library for not returning anything on time. Now, Jacobs works in the children's department at the Naperville Public Library, writes and illustrates children's books, and helps librarians create educational programs for youth.

Doctoral candidate Jeanie Austin successfully defended their dissertation, "Libraries for Social Change: Centering youth of color and/or LGBTQ and gender non-conforming youth in library practice," on November 6.

Nandana Nallapu is learning about data science, both through her work in the classroom and as an intern for the John Deere Technology Innovation Center at the University of Illinois Research Park. With a bachelor's degree in information technology from SRKR Engineering College in India, she is building on her academic success by earning an MS in information management (MS/IM).

Master's student Jiayi Liu has received two awards to attend the CIKM 2017 International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, which will be held on November 6-10 in Singapore.

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).

Imagine a Facebook app that instantly predicts the likelihood of skin cancer. Waya.ai, a technology startup based in Champaign, has developed this open source app and is working on its next product—a smartphone app that can detect if a person has suffered a concussion. Ravijot Narang, a student in the iSchool's MS/IM program, is working on product strategy, product validation, market analysis, and customer development for the new company, which is dedicated to improving healthcare through the use of artificial intelligence and big data.

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."

Master's student Tura Dover served as an intern for the Illinois Library Association (ILA) during its annual conference on October 10-12. Dover worked at the registration desk and said the best part about her experience was "meeting people from different arms of the library system and LIS programs" as well as getting a better understanding of the ILA.

Doctoral student Shadi Rezapour has received a scholarship to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) in Orlando, Florida, on October 4-6. The GHC Student Scholarship, awarded by AnitaB.org, is very competitive and covers all expenses related to attending the conference.

Three recipients of the 2017 Digital Library Federation (DLF) Forum Fellowships have ties to the iSchool. Jane Kelly, an MS/LIS student in the Leep program, and Nushrat Khan (MS '16) were awarded DLF Forum Fellowships for Students and New Professionals. Richard J. Urban (PhD '12) was named a KRESS+DLF Forum Fellow.

Members of the Whole Tale Archaeology Working Group will meet with fellow computational archaeologists, environmental scientists, and other researchers for the first "Prov-a-thon" on practical tools for reproducible science. Held in conjunction with the DataONE All-Hands Meeting in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico, the two-day workshop on August 31 and September 1 is cosponsored by the NSF-funded projects Whole Tale, DataONE, and the Arctic Data Center.

Two iSchool graduate students undertook placements at Oxford University this summer. The placements were part of the Oxford-Illinois Digital Library Placement Program, an ongoing collaboration between Illinois and Oxford. Master's student Anna Oates and doctoral student Jessica (Yi-Yun) Cheng spent six weeks at the Bodleian Libraries and the Oxford e-Research Centre, respectively.

Doctoral candidate Katrina Fenlon successfully defended her dissertation, “Thematic research collections: Libraries and the evolution of alternative scholarly publishing in the humanities,” on September 8.

When MS/IM student Rob Callahan isn't participating in an online class, he is out flying helicopters. First Lieutenant Callahan flies H-60 Blackhawks as an aeromedical evacuation officer in the U.S. Army. 

Three iSchool master's students have been selected by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Committee on Diversity and Leadership to participate in the Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce (IRDW) as ARL diversity scholars: Aicha Azzaoui, Carli Lowe, and Teresa Helena Moreno.

Doctoral candidate LaTesha Velez successfully defended her dissertation, "James E. Shepard, The Man and His Message: A Context-Sensitive, Discourse-Historical Analysis of 'God Bless Old North Carolina," on Thursday, June 29.

Doctoral candidates E.E. Lawrence and Andrea Thomer have been awarded Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships by Beta Phi Mu, the International Library and Information Studies Honor Society.

Associate Professor Terry Weech and doctoral candidate Aiko Takazawa will discuss their research on the economics of information at the International Conference on Business and Information (BAI), which will be held July 4-6 in Hiroshima, Japan.