Alumni Startup Spotlight

The University of Washington Information School is delighted to highlight iSchool alumni who exemplify the ideals of entrepreneurship. These alumni have taken their enterprising notions one step further by either establishing or being employed at new business ventures. To nominate someone for the Alumni Startup Spotlight series, please fill out our form.

Angela Mele, Studio Understory: Angela Mele’s startup, Studio Understory, is a women-owned company with an appreciation for localized stories.Run by Mele, a Museology alum with expertise in visual communication, and her partner, Laura Frick, Studio...

Ishita Bhandari, Watto AI: "Ishita Bhandari is the co-founder of Watto AI, a 2023 Y Combinator startup. Bhandari, formerly a software engineer, and her co-founders, Suryansh Soni and Rishabh Panwar, both prior engineering managers, had the initial..."

Abdullah 'Ax' Ali, 3rd Brain: "Dr. Abdullah “Ax” Ali arrived in the United States as a 19-year-old war refugee and worked his way from community college to a Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction at the iSchool. Ali took the knowledge he gained..."

Cedric Ith, Forward: "Cedric Ith has been involved in startups throughout his career. While studying Informatics at the UW, he worked as part of a four-person healthtech startup called Pyrus Medical. The startup partnered with the UW..."

News

MLIS team preserves a piece of radio history

Friday, May 16, 2025

From 1973 to 2011, the Evergreen Radio Reading Service served blind and print-disabled listeners across the state of Washington. Now, with its recordings stored in a fragile audio archive and at risk of permanent loss, a team of MLIS...

iSchool’s Hiniker honored for societal impact at SIGCHI conference

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Human-computer interaction (HCI) researcher and iSchool Ph.D chair Alexis Hiniker has been honored with the prestigious Societal Impact Award at this year’s ACM SIGCHI conference.The Association for Computing Machinery’s Special...