The iSchool is pleased to announce that Haohan Wang will join the faculty as an assistant professor in August 2022, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. He recently completed his PhD in computer science through the Language Technologies Institute of Carnegie Mellon University.

Ian Brooks, iSchool research scientist and director of the Center for Health Informatics (CHI), gave a keynote talk at the West Africa Conference on Digital Public Goods and Cybersecurity, which was held on May 9-10 in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The conference focused on bridging the gender gap in digital public goods and cybersecurity spaces in Africa.

There are approximately 600,000 individuals in the U.S. who are undergoing hemodialysis (HD) therapy for kidney failure. In hemodialysis, a machine filters wastes, salts, and fluid from the blood when an individual's kidneys are no longer healthy enough to do this work adequately. While lifestyle changes such as getting more exercise and making better nutritional choices would benefit HD patients, they are not popular with patients—leading to poor health outcomes. A new project, led by Assistant Professor Jessie Chin, aims to boost HD patients' commitment to exercise through a long-term motivational interviewing conversational agent (LotMintBot).

Risk assessments are conducted to determine if a chemical found in the environment is harmful to public health; for example, answering questions such as "does chemical 'x' promote cancer?" Conducting an impartial analysis of chemicals is thus critical to ensure that public policies reflect the best available scientific evidence. Unfortunately, the process of retrieving, extracting, and analyzing findings reported in scientific literature is time consuming and can delay when policies are updated to reflect new evidence.

iSchool faculty will present their research at the AMIA (American Medical Informatics Association) Informatics Summit, which will be held from March 21-24 in Chicago. The symposium showcases the latest innovations from the community of biomedical informatics researchers and practitioners.

Several iSchool researchers participated in the recent Misinformation Research Symposium, which was hosted by the Center for Social and Behavioral Science and sponsored by the Center for Advanced Study, Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute, and National Center for Supercomputing Applications. The goals of the symposium were to help connect misinformation research on campus, foster interdisciplinary teams interested in collaborating on external submissions, and learn more about the needs of existing and emerging research groups on campus. 

Research conducted by Assistant Professor Jessie Chin's Adaptive Cognition and Interaction Design Lab (ACTION) provided the foundation for an article recently published in the high-impact Journal of Medical Internet Research. PhD student Tre Tomaszewski is the first author on the peer-reviewed article, "Identifying False Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccine Information and Corresponding Risk Perceptions from Twitter: Advanced Predictive Models."

Assistant Professor Jodi Schneider has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award to assess how to identify potential sources of bias in research and how confident we can be in the conclusions drawn from a particular body of evidence. This prestigious award is given in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Schneider's project, "Using Network Analysis to Assess Confidence in Research Synthesis," will be supported by a five-year, $599,963 grant from the NSF.

According to Assistant Professor Jodi Schneider, a silver lining of the pandemic is that it has brought attention to the retraction of scientific publications. Schneider's project, "Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science: Shaping a Research and Implementation Agenda," has also brought attention to the problem of retracted research, resulting in a recent report with recommendations. The project, which was supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, brought together a variety of stakeholders, including funders, editors, peer reviewers, authors, and publishers.

Teaching Associate Professor David Dubin and Associate Professor Halil Kilicoglu have been named National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) Faculty Fellows for the 2021-22 academic year. This competitive program for faculty and researchers at the University of Illinois provides seed funding for new projects that include NCSA staff as integral contributors to the research.

Peer review is a valuable component in the research process, but it also lengthens the time to publish research. The need to rapidly communicate scientific findings has been especially apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to an increase in the number of publications disseminated via preprint servers. With the lack of traditional peer review, the quality of these publications can be questionable. Associate Professor Halil Kilicoglu and the Automated Screening Working Group are working to assess COVID-19 preprints for rigor and transparency in their reporting.

Health care workers often don't adopt new guidelines for best practices in medical care until well after those guidelines are established. A team of researchers led by Eunice E. Santos, the dean of the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has developed a new computational modeling and simulation framework to analyze decision-making and identify effective dissemination strategies for medical guidelines.

Patients with compromised health conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, are at enhanced risk of contracting COVID-19. Unfortunately, these patients are also hesitant to take the COVID-19 vaccine because of their condition. A new project, led by Assistant Professor Jessie Chin, aims to develop an accessible, generalizable, and efficient digital health solution for promoting vaccination among vulnerable populations.

The iSchool is pleased to announce that Dong Wang will join the faculty as an associate professor in August 2021. He is currently an associate professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Notre Dame.

A project to increase the health data literacy of youth has received funding through the University’s Extension Collaboration Grant Program. Assistant Professor Rachel M. Magee will lead the project, "Health Data Literacy Ambassadors," with Associate Professors Catherine Blake and Jana Diesner serving as co-investigators. Funded through the Office of the Provost's Investment for Growth Program and University of Illinois Extension, the grant supports research and partnerships that address critical issues in five key areas: food, economy, environment, community, and health.

It is important for patients to understand the information they need for making health decisions, yet studies have shown that a large segment of the population lacks the health literacy to do so. Health literacy refers to capacity of people to obtain, process, and understand health information needed for making health decisions. Assistant Professor Jessie Chin addresses this topic in the paper, "Health Literacy, Processing Capacity, Illness Knowledge, and Actionable Memory for Medication Taking in Type 2 Diabetes: Cross-Sectional Analysis," which was recently published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

PhD student Linh Hoang will present her research with Assistant Professor Jodi Schneider and Assistant Professor Nigel Bosch at the AMIA (American Medical Informatics Association) Annual Symposium, which will be held virtually from November 14-18. The symposium showcases the latest innovations from the community of biomedical informatics researchers and practitioners.

Doctoral candidate Beth Bloch successfully defended her dissertation, "The Values and Ethics of Biomedical Engineering Practices in The Design of Novel Biotechnologies," on November 13.

Associate Professor Halil Kilicoglu and PhD student Linh Hoang will present their research at the AMIA (American Medical Informatics Association) Annual Symposium, which will be held virtually from November 14-18. The symposium showcases the latest innovations from the community of biomedical informatics researchers and practitioners.

When retracted papers are cited both before and after retraction, the scientific publication network inadvertently propagates potentially faked data, fundamental errors, and unreproducible results. Assistant Professor Jodi Schneider is working on reducing the spread of retracted science, receiving a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for this research.