Alumni Impact Awards
Distinguished Alumni Award
The Information School Distinguished Alumni Award recognizes alumni who have made significant and exceptional contributions to the information field through their profession, in the community, or with their involvement with the Information School and the University of Washington. This award acknowledges those who continue to uphold iSchool values by helping others discover, learn, innovate, and solve problems beyond their UW years.
2024 Awardee: Eun Kyoung Choe
Class of 2014
Eun Kyoung Choe, Ph.D. ’14, is an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies. Working at the intersection of human-computer interaction and health informatics, she creates accessible health technologies for marginalized populations. Choe’s research started with sleep tracking. Her dissertation at the iSchool focused on understanding why some people sleep well and finding ways to help those who sleep poorly. As her career has progressed, she has branched out into research areas such as exercise for older adults, digital well-being, and designing health tools that are more accessible to marginalized users such as stroke survivors and older adults.
GOLD Alumni Impact Award
The GOLD award celebrates recent graduates for their contributions to the information field.
2024 Awardee: Ashley Farley
Class of 2017
Ashley Farley, MLIS ’17, has become a leading voice for open access to scholarly work. As the program officer of knowledge and research services at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Farley advocates for open access to published research and works to ensure that scholars adhere to the foundation’s policy of providing unrestricted access to all the research it funds. As a major funder, the foundation's open-access policies can have an outsized effect on publishing. “We’re trying to shift toward a much more equitable system,” Farley said. “That’s a very small drop in the bucket and we’re not the only funder paying for things, but it’s amazing to see the global audience and influence.”