iSchool's Wobbrock honored for lasting impact

Tuesday, December 6, 2022

The Association for Computing Machinery has honored Information School Professor Jacob O. Wobbrock and colleagues with a 10-year lasting impact award for their groundbreaking work improving how computers recognize stroke gestures. Wobbrock and co-authors Radu-Daniel Vatavu (University Stefan cel Mare of Suceava, Romania) and Lisa Anthony (University of Florida) were presented with the 2022 Ten Year Technical Impact Award in November at the ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI). The award honors their 2012 paper titled Gestures as point clouds: A $P recognizer for use

In a challenging labor market, we're here to help iSchool alumni

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

The current landscape of uncertainty, unpredictability and unease has reached those of us in the once impermeable tech field. We at the iSchool want our alumni to know that we stand with you — especially if the cuts have directly impacted you. As companies look to cut costs in the face of softening demand and rising inflation, the result is usually layoffs. Please let us be a support to you if this worst-case scenario becomes a reality. We would like to offer a list of resources that are available to iSchool alumni: The University of Washington Career & Internship Center provide

TV language creators visit Informatics class

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Upper-level students at the University of Washington Information School were in for a treat recently, when conlangers Jessie Sams and David Peterson spoke with class. Presenting on the process of constructing new languages and the challenges of using existing software, the pair shared about their experiences creating spoken languages for shows, games and movies, including “Game of Thrones,” “The Witcher,” “Paper Girls” and “Dune.” Assistant Teaching Professor Jeremy Zaretzky invited the speakers to join his Informatics 442: Cooperative Software Development class for the day,

Q&A: iSchool researchers on the turbulence at Twitter

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Katherine Cross is a Ph.D. candidate at the Information School whose research focuses primarily on the dynamics of online harassment, particularly on social media. Anna Lauren Hoffmann is an iSchool associate professor who researches the ethical challenges and risks of technologies, and much of her work has focused on Facebook. We spoke to them Nov. 9 about the upheaval at Twitter since Elon Musk took over the company in late October. Q: Twitter recently cut half its workforce, including its human rights, accessibility, ethical AI, communications, curation, and public policy teams. What goo

MLIS alum holds tech giants to account

Monday, November 7, 2022

Gennie Gebhart’s job is far from simple. But she sums it up simply. “I mostly yell at tech companies,” she said. “When I really want to boil down my job description, I say, ‘I make my living yelling at any tech company that is not standing by its users in any number of ways.’” Gebhart is this year’s recipient of the Graduate of the Last Decade (GOLD) Alumni Impact Award, which celebrates recent graduates for their contributions to the information field. Gebhart is the activism director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit that defends civil liberties i

Ph.D. alum Sunny Consolvo searches for a safer internet

Thursday, November 3, 2022

Bullying, trolling and other forms of hate and harassment are intensifying online. Attackers hunt down home addresses, hijack accounts, disrupt chat rooms, sexually harass people, post racial slurs, issue harmful threats, and extract and publish revealing private information. iSchool alum Sunny Consolvo, Ph.D. ’08, studies how best to safeguard against such ever-evolving assaults in her role as a Google researcher focused on security, privacy, safety and anti-abuse topics. “It’s a very, very complicated space. It’s not always clear how to do things the right way,” says Consolvo, t

Ph.D. students work on the misinformation puzzle

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Misinformation is everywhere, and it gets more sophisticated all the time: doctored photos, made-up news stories, fake videos so convincing it’s nearly impossible to spot the deception. What people believe drives how they act, and this misinformation has real-world, sometimes dangerous, effects. iSchool students are helping tackle this problem while gaining experience in running and interpreting research projects.  Yeonhee (Johnny) Cho and Lidia Morris (pictured above), who are both earning Ph.D.s in Information Science, are working on misinformation escape rooms — games in whic

Informatics student hacks her way to an A in cybersecurity course

Monday, October 31, 2022

Informatics students know how to work hard and earn high grades. One student, Marie O’Connell, found another way to ensure that she earned an A: by hacking her professor.  Andrew Reifers, an associate teaching professor at the University of Washington Information School, offers students a unique opportunity in his INFO 415: Emerging Topics in Information Assurance and Cybersecurity course. “If one of you can hack me successfully, you get an A in my class,” he tells students on the first day. An Informatics and French double major, O’Connell decided to take Reifers up on

At Shaw Lecture, author entertains with humor and history

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

“When we remember, we are doing something very powerful and sacred” - Joseph Bruchac Over 200 alumni, staff, faculty, students and friends of the University of Washington Information School attended the 2022 Spencer G. Shaw Lecture. Professor Shaw’s career spanned nearly seven decades and included service as a public librarian, an educator, and a world-renowned expert on storytelling and library service to children. A group of librarians from six library systems selected Joseph Bruchac as this year’s speaker. Bruchac joins an esteemed group of speakers who have given the Shaw Le

iSchool's Batya Friedman asks the hard questions

Thursday, October 20, 2022

Batya Friedman taps away at a rock on a remote hillside east of the Cascades. With each strike of her hammer, she brings out the beauty she sees within the stone and transforms a small piece of this landscape of jagged peaks.   Friedman’s approach to stone carving is a lot like her groundbreaking work in technology design: methodical, thoughtful, and inspired by her desire to make the world a little better. It’s an approach that’s made the longtime professor an influential international researcher and a key figure in the growth of the University of Washington Information Schoo

iSchool's Teodorescu takes honors for research on improving patent process

Thursday, October 20, 2022

Mike Teodorescu, an assistant professor at the University of Washington Information School, recently marked his arrival by taking top honors in the Technology Innovation Management Division (TIM) at the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Seattle. Teodorescu is a co-author of both the Best Paper Award Winner and the Best Paper Runner-up Award of the TIM division at the conference, which selected one best paper and two runners-up out of more than 600 submissions. The papers are co-authored with Dr. Andrew Toole, Chief Economist of the U.S. Patent and Trade Office (USPTO);

‘Co-Designing for Trust’ team receives NSF Convergence Accelerator Phase 2 funding

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

“Co-Designing for Trust,” a multi-institutional team working in Texas and Washington state to design community-centered solutions to mitigate the impacts of misinformation, has advanced to Phase 2 of the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator program. A new, $5 million grant will allow academic and community researchers to scale up work they started last fall in Phase 1 through a series of community workshops.  The Co-Designing for Trust team is made up of an interdisciplinary set of researchers and practitioners from the University of Washington, The University of

Siblings take team approach to MSIM

Monday, October 17, 2022

Locksley, Lynzley and McKaulay Kolakowski don’t have to go far when they need a study partner. The siblings, who live together in the Seattle area, are all working on degrees through the iSchool’s Master of Science in Information Management online mode. And, because they’re all pursuing the same specialization — Program/Product Management and Consulting — they’re also in all the same classes.  McKaulay, who is the eldest sibling, was the first to join the iSchool when he was accepted to the Informatics program. Lynzley and Locksley, who are twins, followed him a few years l

Student success in Informatics starts early

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

I recently sent my eldest son, Kavi, off to college in Southern California, and these past few months have been an eye-opening experience. I have a newfound appreciation for parents navigating the process of sending their kids off to college. I’ve seen students make decisions at age 17 or 18 that will affect their entire lives. And as a dean, it’s given me a new perspective on the trust that families put in us and on what our school is doing to support a growing number of direct-to-major admits into Informatics. Kavi’s experience made me realize how much has changed since I applied to

Sandy Littletree's new role makes room for research

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Libraries are a vital part of Indigenous communities, but there’s very little academic research that focuses on those libraries. Sandy Littletree is working to change that. “A lot of people, when you say ‘libraries,’ get warm, fuzzy feelings about books and story time, and that’s great,” said Littletree, who was recently hired as an assistant professor at the University of Washington Information School. “But there are really complex issues of information access for Native communities.” In her new role, Littletree is excited to have more time to dig deep into her research,