Alumni Updates
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Yaxing Yao
MSIM, 2014
Yaxing Yao is a postdoc fellow in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and will join the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in January 2021 as an assistant professor.
Albert Ybarra
MLIS, 2014
Albert is the chair and director for the Library and Learning Resource Center, and the distance learning / education coordinator at Los Angeles Mission College. In response to the impact of COVID-19, Albert led a team of faculty to transition more than 250,000 students to online learning. You can read the story athttps://www.the74million.org/article/how-californias-largest-community-college-district-is-making-the-switch-to-teach-online-in-response-to-covid-19-do-your-best-at-this-moment/
Yunxiang Zhang
MSIM, 2014
Yunxiang works as a business analyst at Amazon.
Adil Ait Hamd
MSIM, 2013
Adil is a Project Manger at the University of Washington School of Medicine Dean's Office, where he leads system development projects, infrastructure upgrades and business process improvements.
Lauren Appelbaum
Informatics, 2013
As of 2025, Lauren was celebrating the release of her second novel, "An Introvert's Guide to Life and Love," coming this September from Hachette Book Group.
Heather Barnum
MLIS, 2013
As of June 2017, Heather was working as the supervising librarian at the Mary D. Pretlow Anchor Branch of Norfolk Public Library, Norfolk, Virginia.
Miranda Belarde-Lewis
PhD, 2013
Miranda will be leading the Frye Art Museum's new art history lecture series, "The Multi-Faceted World of Native Art." Over the course of five lectures, she will discuss "indigenous knowledge, bounded space, and knowledge visualization" through weaving, carving and sculpture, jewelry, and painting.
Sanjay Bhatt
MSIM, 2013
Sanjay joined Kitsap Transit, which operates buses and ferries in Kitsap County, in 2016 as its public information officer. Sanjay was promoted in January 2017 to oversee marketing and communications for the agency, and also serves on the board of Seattle Globalist, a non-profit focused on promoting diverse voices in media.
Rachael Black
MLIS, 2013
In January 2016, Rachael started a new position as an archivist with the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives in Santa Fe.
Elizabeth Brookbank
MLIS, 2013
Elizabeth is an instruction librarian at Western Oregon University, where she has been since just a couple months after graduation in 2013.
Some highlights: In 2018, she was promoted to associate professor and granted tenure. In summer 2019, the book she co-wrote with UW librarian Faye Christenberry was published by MLA. And beginning this November she embarks upon her first research sabbatical, during which she will conduct a qualitative research study on student reading habits and use of recreational reading collections in academic libraries in the U.S. and U.K.