Energetic new director takes the helm of Law Librarianship program

Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Carla Wale’s new job directing the UW Law Librarianship program comes with two offices. One is in the iSchool, the other in the School of Law. The iSchool administers the small but prestigious program and issues its specialized Master of Library and Information Science degree. The Marian Gould Gallagher Law Library administers the students’ internships. The program — consistently ranked No. 1 by U.S. News & World Report — turned 80 years old this year. “I plan to build on the program’s history of innovation and excellence,” says Wale, who graduated from the UW progr

iSchool joins Ocean Nexus research partnership

Tuesday, June 30, 2020

The Information School is among the University of Washington units partnering in the Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Center, an interdisciplinary research group announced June 30. The Ocean Nexus Center will study changes, responses and solutions to societal issues that emerge in relation to the oceans and will bring uncompromised, critical voices to policy and public conversations. The center was launched with $32.5 million in funding spread over 10 years. “The sustenance of humanity depends on our mother ocean,” said Yohei Sasakawa, chairman of The Nippon Foundation. “And so today,

Convocation 2.0 spotlights resilience of iSchool's Class of 2020

Tuesday, June 23, 2020

The second time was the charm for the Information School’s 2020 Convocation. After the iSchool’s initial online ceremony on June 6 left many students and their families disappointed, the school decided to redo it and give students a proper sendoff with a “Version 2.0.” Some aspects of the initial ceremony were beyond the school’s control, and it left out some students while not representing others as they wished. For the “do-over” on June 20, the school took control over all aspects of the ceremony. It included a live reading of graduates’ names, new speeches by facul

For Capstone, Informatics students help increase access to loan programs

Friday, June 12, 2020

Community Credit Lab (CCL) is an organization that partners with nonprofits and community organizations to find and create custom loan programs for underserved communities. With limited staff and resources, however, the process of training partners is a major challenge — one that has consequences for the number of communities CCL can reach. For their Capstone project, a group of Informatics students set out to address this problem by developing Community Courses, a centralized online platform to train and onboard new partners and investors. The team is composed of seniors Michae

MLIS team's storytelling Capstone succeeds after plot twist

Friday, June 12, 2020

Hot-air-balloon navigator Flyster Luna takes young readers on a journey to stories real and imagined. Pam Huffman and Nicole Breiner aimed to take Luna to libraries everywhere. Flyster Luna is the narrator of “The Otherworld Balloon” audio series, developed by Whidbey Island-based nonprofit Otherworld Media, which creates educational programs for children and young people. Huffman and Breiner were University of Washington Information School students, who just completed their Master of Library and Information Science degrees. As part of their Capstone project, the graduate

Winfo co-presidents to serve as Informatics gonfalonieres at UW Commencement

Thursday, June 11, 2020

Graduating Informatics students Autumn Derr and Hayley Younghusband will represent the Information School as gonfalonieres — banner carriers — at the University of Washington Commencement ceremony on June 13. Gonfalonieres are selected by their program advisors and exemplify undergraduate education at the UW. At this year’s online ceremony, they will lead their school’s graduates during the commencement procession. Derr, who focused on data science and human-computer interaction and served as co-president for the student group Women in Informatics (Winfo), reflects fo

Informatics student finishes in top 3 in Microsoft Imagine Cup

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Informatics student Drew Gallardo and his group, Team Tremor Vision, finished in the top three of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup for their online platform that works to streamline care for early-onset Parkinson’s disease patients. Imagine Cup is a global technology competition that fosters technology solutions for the world’s most pressing issues. Gallardo and his teammates, Janae Chan and Robert Minneker, who are both bioengineering and computer science students at the UW, initially came up with their design for Dubhacks, an annual 24-hour collegiate hackathon held at the UW. After s

Cindy Aden brings library, corporate experience to iSchool faculty

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

In her more than two decades away from academia, Washington State Librarian Cindy Aden has worked with libraries large and small, urban and rural, public and private — including gigs at Amazon and Corbis. Her varied roles have included business analyst, director, tech-savvy innovator, researcher, metadata manager, networker and national influencer. “I have served libraries from outside the traditional framework and seen them from many different vantage points,” says the multifaceted iSchool ’87 alumna, who has also worked as a journalist at community newspapers. “Newspapers a

Our work must be a part of the change

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Like many of you, I have been glued to the news as protests swept across the country in response to repeated police violence. Amidst a pandemic and an economic crisis, I couldn’t have imagined we would be dealing with a crisis of race as well, and yet here we are, in a crisis of crises. The names George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor are now part of an ongoing American tragedy, a long list of Black people’s lives ended too soon at the hands of police. Ten days after Floyd’s death set off protests across the country, a recording surfaced of another Black man saying “I ca

DubsTech student group engages iSchoolers in first online hackathon

Monday, June 8, 2020

DubsTech, a UW student organization and technology community that is led by several Informatics students and whose events attract many iSchoolers, recently hosted its eighth successful user experience hackathon — the Protothon — the first to be held completely online. “I am extremely happy with the turnout,” said Zoshua Colah, Dubstech director and Informatics ’19 graduate, during the closing ceremony. “We had six different continents in total participate, with 300 participants and 81 team submissions.” Founded by Colah in 2017, the Protothon is intended to offer design

A message of solidarity from Dean Anind Dey

Friday, June 5, 2020

Dear iSchool students, The iSchool community recognizes that spring quarter 2020 has been extraordinarily difficult for a multitude of reasons, any one of which singularly, much less combined, poses great challenges for our students in focusing on their education. As a global community, we continue to face a series of crises, and we stand with all of you who are struggling to manage and respond to the pandemic, the sheltering, the horrifying displays of racial injustice after decades of inaction, and the resulting consequences to our health, safety and socioeconomic fabric. To provide

National Science Foundation awards CIP researchers $200,000 grant

Monday, June 1, 2020

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded grant funding for a proposal submitted by researchers at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP) who are aiming to better understand how scientific knowledge, expertise, data and communication affect the spread and correction of online misinformation about an emerging pandemic.  The approximately $200,000 in funding was awarded through NSF’s COVID-19 Rapid Response Research (RAPID) program. CIP principal investigators Emma Spiro, an assistant professor at the UW Information School, Kate Starbird, an asso

Nearly 1,500 attend online Capstone showcase

Sunday, May 31, 2020

A year like none other produced a Capstone Night like none other at the University of Washington Information School, which held a first-of-its-kind all-online project showcase on May 27. Instead of gathering around tables in the HUB, families, friends and sponsors gathered online to watch presentations from 62 teams who opted to participate, representing more than 200 students’ projects. Close to 1,500 people tuned in to watch on Zoom and YouTube. Attendees had their choice of three sessions at any one time. They could pop from room to room and learn about projects such as a real-tim

iSchool Ph.D. alumna Amanda Menking to lead UW's MHCI+D program

Thursday, May 28, 2020

The University of Washington has named Amanda Menking the new Academic Director of its Master of Human-Computer Interaction + Design program. Menking, a 2019 iSchool Ph.D. alumna, will lead one of the top master’s programs in this rapidly evolving field. As a researcher, educator and veteran of Seattle’s tech industry, she brings a balance of academic depth, intellectual rigor and industry experience that will ensure MCHI+D continues to be well-positioned to help graduates think critically about the increasingly important role designers play in our world today. Menking is e

Q&A with Jacob Wobbrock on UW's new accessible technology research center

Thursday, May 28, 2020

Information School Professor Jacob O. Wobbrock is one of the co-directors of the University of Washington’s new CREATE center, along with Professor Jennifer Mankoff of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. CREATE, which stands for the Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences, is the culmination of a career in which Wobbrock has become one of the world’s foremost experts on accessible computing and human-computer interaction. Wobbrock’s research seeks to understand and improve people’s experiences of computers and informatio