Do Alexa and Siri make kids bossier? New research suggests you might not need to worry

Friday, September 17, 2021

Chatting with a robot is now part of many families’ daily lives, thanks to conversational agents such as Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa. Recent research has shown that children are often delighted to find that they can ask Alexa to play their favorite songs or call Grandma.  But does hanging out with Alexa or Siri affect the way children communicate with their fellow humans? Probably not, according to a recent study led by the University of Washington that found that children are sensitive to context when it comes to these conversations. The team had a conversation

After 5 years, cybersecurity student group stays on the watch

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

When Andy Herman joined the Information School’s Master of Science in Information Management program, he went looking for other students who shared his interest in cybersecurity. When he found that there wasn’t a cybersecurity-focused student group, Herman (pictured above) joined with some friends to create one. He chose to affiliate with ISACA, a worldwide organization that supports people who work in information security, risk management and related fields. Now, five years later, Herman has long since handed over the reins of ISACA, but he’s too attached to let it go complet

Music services fall short for superfans, iSchool's Lee finds

Monday, September 13, 2021

With more than 20 million albums sold, a string of No. 1 hits and a dedicated fanbase known as “ARMY,” BTS is a worldwide phenomenon. To Jin Ha Lee, it’s also an important area for research. Lee, an associate professor at the University of Washington Information School and a proud BTS fan, wants to know how well music streaming services are serving the band’s fans and what they could do better to support fan communities. She also wants to contribute to documenting a moment in history she doesn’t expect to see repeated in her lifetime. “That time will come when BTS is not here

Scott Barker's legacy lives on through the iSchool and alumni

Monday, September 13, 2021

“He was my best friend.” “He was super involved.” “We would just chat about anything.” When Scott Barker’s former students and TAs talk about the longtime IT director and teaching professor, they all seem to echo the same sentiments. He was always available to talk, always supporting them, always looking out for their best interests. When Barker passed away unexpectedly on July 23 at age 59, he left a hole in the lives of family, colleagues, friends and students. He also left an enduring stamp on the Information School and the information science field, and a legacy o

Smartsheet CEO creates Informatics scholarships to spark 'unlock moments'

Monday, August 30, 2021

Mark Mader loves seeing people have “unlock moments” — when a lightbulb goes on and they realize they’re capable of more than they thought possible. The Smartsheet president and CEO hopes to inspire those moments with the establishment of a new scholarship at the University of Washington Information School. The Mark and Jaimee Mader Term Scholarship in Informatics will cover part of recipients’ tuition costs, beginning with three incoming freshmen this fall. Much like when someone unlocks the solution to a problem using software, they can get a feeling of exhilaration when

Aylin Caliskan adds to iSchool expertise in ethical AI

Friday, August 27, 2021

Can machines be sexist? Researcher Aylin Caliskan found out the answer when she entered “O bir profesör, O bir öğretmen” into Google Translate on her computer. “O” is a gender-neutral pronoun in Turkish; it can mean she, he or it. The Google program, powered by statistical machine translation algorithms, translated the Turkish sentences as “He is a professor. She is a teacher.” The gender-biased response was not an anomaly, she found. As they process massive language datasets, rapidly learning as they go, artificial intelligence (AI) programs tend to associate female terms �

$2.25 million in NSF funding will support Center for an Informed Public research

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $3 million collaborative grant to a team led by the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP) and supported by Stanford University to study ways to apply collaborative, rapid-response research to mitigate online disinformation.  The project, funded through NSF’s Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program, will start in October and be led by UW Human Centered Design & Engineering Associate Professor Kate Starbird and UW Information School Associate Professors Emma S. Spiro and Jevin D. West, who in 20

Tireless student advocate and longtime Informatics chair Scott Barker passes away

Monday, July 26, 2021

Our dear friend and colleague Scott Barker, Associate Teaching Professor and Director of iSchool IT, passed away unexpectedly on Friday, July 23, 2021. For over 20 years, Scott has been an integral part of the iSchool community and we are incredibly fortunate to have had the privilege of working with him.  During his tenure, he was a teaching faculty member and head of IT at the iSchool, and from 2006 until 2017, served as chair of the Informatics program. Scott was an outspoken and tireless advocate for the students he taught and worked hard to expand access to our Informatics

Read-a-Rama expands its reach with summer camps

Friday, July 23, 2021

Read-a-Rama is going national this summer with a pair of online camps designed to engage children with books and spark a love of reading. Led by Michelle H. Martin, the Beverly Cleary Professor for Children and Youth Services at the University of Washington Information School, Read-a-Rama is a nonprofit that uses children’s books as a springboard for other activities such as singing, movement, hands-on crafts, STEM activities and games. It offers camps and storytimes year-round and immersive weeklong camps each summer. This summer’s camps are “Cooking Up a Storm,” on the the

Tanu Mitra wins grant, award for young researchers

Thursday, July 22, 2021

Tanu Mitra recently notched a pair of awards for young researchers — one of them a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, and the other a career honor from a leading conference on social media research. Mitra, an assistant professor at the University of Washington Information School, won the grant from the military’s Office of Naval Research (ONR) to study influence campaigns in Southeast Asia, focusing primarily on India. Over the next three years, Mitra will lead a team that investigates both the narratives that flow through social media platforms and the effect of influence campa

2 MLIS students awarded ALA Spectrum Scholarships

Friday, July 16, 2021

University of Washington Master of Library and Information Science students Truc Ho and Kaitlin Srader are among those awarded 2021-22 ALA Spectrum Scholarships, the American Library Association announced. Ho, a second-year residential student living in Seattle, focused on critical race theory, memory studies and feminist studies as an undergrad at the UW and seeks to make catalog records more inclusive to marginalized communities. Ho is a recipient of a UW BoundLIS Fellowship — a partnership between the Information School and UW Libraries — and a graduate assistant in Cataloging an

From ‘distress’ to ‘unscathed’ — mental health of UW students during spring 2020

Tuesday, July 13, 2021

In early March 2020, the University of Washington became the first four-year U.S. university to transition to online-only classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many researchers predicted severe consequences of these physical distancing measures. To understand how this change affected college students’ mental health, UW researchers surveyed 147 UW students over the 2020 spring quarter, which began shortly after the university transitioned to online-only classes. The team compared the students’ responses to a previous survey of 253 students in spring quarter 2019. The re

2 student leaders represent iSchool as gonfalonieres at UW Commencement

Monday, June 14, 2021

Graduating Informatics students Kiran Pradhan and Akoly Vongdala represented the Information School as gonfalonieres — banner carriers — at the University of Washington’s Commencement ceremony on June 12. Gonfalonieres are selected by their program advisors and exemplify undergraduate education at the UW. At this year’s online ceremony, they led their school’s graduates during the commencement procession. Pradhan, whose studies concentrated on data science, wrote: “I chose Informatics because of the inclusive and welcoming community and the great opportunities available f

Cheryl Metoyer has made the iSchool feel like home to Indigenous scholars

Monday, June 14, 2021

At the University, this is the time of year for fond farewells. In June, we graduate hundreds of students and welcome them to our growing alumni community. This year, we’re also saying goodbye to one member of our faculty whose impact is difficult to overstate.  Cheryl Metoyer joined the Information School full-time in 2003, in the early days after its conversion from a single library science program to a broad-based iSchool. The school’s first Dean, Michael Eisenberg, recruited her based on her tireless work to improve Native American library and information services, with the g

iSchool alum awarded inaugural Ph.D. fellowship in Native North American Indigenous Knowledge

Monday, June 14, 2021

In 2019 Iisaaksiichaa Ross Braine was named the iSchool Distinguished Alumnus, in tribute to his work as the UW tribal liaison and director of wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ (Intellectual House). Two years later, he’s returning to the iSchool with new goals in mind.   “I think it’s time...to turn that next page and fulfill an obligation I made to my grandparents a while ago to get my Ph.D.,” Braine says.  Braine, a citizen of the warrior Apsaalooke (Crow) Nation, will join the Information School’s doctoral program with the ambition of conducting research that supports American