BINFO builds community for Black students in Informatics

Friday, November 8, 2024

For Informatics students Thomas Emnetu and Ahmed Ghaddah, the search for belonging and community on campus led to something greater than themselves. In fall 2023, they co-founded Black in Informatics (BINFO), a student organization dedicated to fostering the professional, academic and personal development of Black students in the iSchool’s Informatics program. Within just a year, BINFO has grown to around 100 students and expanded to attract participants from across various programs, including Computer Science and Human-Centered Design and Engineering. The idea for BINFO came to Em

Step by step, professor makes health tracking more inclusive

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

More than a third of Americans now use health-care apps and wearable devices, tracking everything from walking steps, heart rates, caloric intake and running speeds to daily moods, hourly medications and monthly fertility cycles. For users with disabilities — the blind person who cannot read a touchscreen at the gym or the older person whose slow gait is inaccurately recorded on a wearable device — the tracking tools can be a frustrating mismatch. This year’s UW iSchool Distinguished Alumni Award honoree, Eun Kyoung Choe (Ph.D. ’14), is taking on these challenges, helping to desig

AI tools show biases in ranking job applicants’ names according to perceived race and gender

Monday, November 4, 2024

The future of hiring, it seems, is automated. Applicants can now use artificial intelligence bots to apply to job listings by the thousands. And companies — which have long automated parts of the process — are now deploying the latest AI large language models to write job descriptions, sift through resumes and screen applicants. An estimated 99% of Fortune 500 companies now use some form of automation in their hiring process.This automation can boost efficiency, and some claim it can make the hiring process less discriminatory. But new University of Washington research found significant ra

Illustrator Christian Robinson charms crowd at Shaw Lecture

Thursday, October 31, 2024

Using his drawings of anxiety, inspiration and lobsters, illustrator Christian Robinson told his story about telling stories.  Robinson presented at the UW HUB and over Zoom on Oct. 24 for the iSchool’s 32nd annual Spencer G. Shaw Lecture, the first in-person edition of the event since 2019. Before an audience of 460 registrants, Robinson told his personal story titled, “You Are Here: Finding yourself in picture books.”From the moment Robinson began speaking, the audience instantly engaged with his charisma, personable wit and most significantly, his drawing of a lobster.H

iSchool adds expert in digital access to faculty

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Benjamin Charles Germain Lee has a wide background of work — astrophysics, work with archives, machine learning, writing for popular magazines like The New Republic — and he is now bringing those skills and diverse research interests to his new role as an assistant professor at the iSchool, where he will launch the Lab for Computing Cultural Heritage. The lab will adopt an interdisciplinary approach — one of Lee’s strengths — to work with libraries, archives and museums to address challenges facing digital access. The lab will bring together work on machine learning, d

Center for an Informed Public educates community about election rumors

Friday, October 25, 2024

The 2024 election cycle is accompanied by a wave of rumors surrounding policies and candidates. Some of these rumors may hold truth, while others are false or unsubstantiated. To address this, the Center for an Informed Public (CIP) is working to educate about these rumors through its election blog series, a journalism help desk and public talks to the university community. “Primarily what we're trying to understand is how different communities, whether that's online or offline, are thinking and talking about the election and the kinds of things around election procedures and processes

Libraries, museums, archives unite in new research center

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

More than two dozen Information School faculty and Ph.D. students are exploring diverse systems of knowledge and how they are produced, collected and accessed. Their work contributes to how libraries, museums and archives adapt to serve their communities.Since scholarship involving these cultural institutions is so wide-ranging, it can sometimes happen in siloes when collaborations would be more fruitful. A new center housed at the iSchool intends to bring that work together.The Center for Advances in Libraries, Museums and Archives (CALMA) is charged with creating a community around research

Illustrator Christian Robinson to share power of stories

Thursday, October 17, 2024

The artist and author will visit Oct. 23-24 for a film screening and the annual Spencer Shaw Lecture.Illustrator Christian Robinson's art resonates with audiences of all ages, fostering connection and understanding in our diverse world. He gravitates toward narratives that are often overlooked.“I am drawn to stories that are challenging in some ways,” Robinson said. “I'm drawn to those stories that I wish I had myself as a child growing up, stories that would help me make sense of the world, process the world, understand myself better and also give an opportunity to make my classmates or

iSchool infuses MSIM curriculum with AI

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Artificial intelligence is disrupting and reshaping organizations around the world, affecting how businesses work, how people perform their jobs, and ultimately the skills in demand from hiring managers charged with attracting talent to lead their organizations into the AI era. These are exactly the type of complex business and organizational problems graduates of the UW Information School’s Master of Science in Information Management (MSIM) program are taught to solve. “Information management professionals make change by understanding the capabilities and ethical considerat

The iSchool needs room to grow

Monday, October 7, 2024

The iSchool will surpass 2,000 students next quarter, a milestone that reflects the growing urgency of an education in information science. Students see the value of programs that blend technology and liberal arts and put them on a path to a rewarding career.This academic year, we will admit close to 600 students into Informatics, bringing the total to more than 1,000. Informatics is now one of the largest majors at the University of Washington, and it’s easy to see why: It sets students up to succeed as well-rounded information technology professionals. Graduates are problem-solvers and lea

Election integrity, misinformation center stage at Town Hall

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Speaking to a crowd of about 300 at Town Hall Seattle, Emma S. Spiro noted the many changes as well as familiar patterns that she and her colleagues at the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public have researched in the five years since the CIP’s founding. The Sept. 11 conversation on Town Hall’s Great Hall stage focused on research, reflections and dialogue on rumors, mis- and disinformation, and different ways of framing topics related to election integrity. Spiro, associate professor at the Information School and incoming CIP faculty director, was joined in conve

iStartup Lab awards first micro grants to students, alumni

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

The iStartup Lab, co-founded by Information School faculty members Mike Teodorescu and Jeremy Zaretzky, has introduced a new micro grant program designed to support student entrepreneurship. After conducting a survey and interviews across the iSchool’s student population, it was clear to Teodorescu and Zaretzky that students sought more than just theoretical coursework — they wanted tangible experiences in entrepreneurship. “Students wanted both the curricular element in terms of classes and the social element of meeting like-minded peers to ideate and potentially co-found

Students go behind the scenes of generative AI

Monday, September 23, 2024

For students such as Nikhil Navkal and Sai Ma, it was about learning a technology that would better their career prospects. But it was more than that. It was also about exploring a technology that they use in their daily lives.The iSchool students took a special topics course last spring called Building and Applying Large Language Models, the Core of the Generative Artificial Intelligence Phenomenon. “If I want to make sure that I continue to be relevant to where business is going, I need to learn about large language models and leverage their power,” said Navkal, who is pursuing a ma

'Warrior librarian' Tracie D. Hall joins iSchool faculty

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

The star power at the Time100 Gala in New York City last October rivaled the bright lights of nearby Broadway. Luminaries from director Steven Spielberg to actor Angela Bassett to rapper Doja Cat took center stage at the magazine’s glittering annual celebration of the 100 most influential people in the world. The spotlight shifted from glamour to grit when honoree Tracie D. Hall, ’00, took the microphone. The widely acclaimed “warrior librarian” had earned national attention for her tenacious fight against censorship during her tenure as executive director of the American Library

iSchool's Caliskan wins award to battle bias in artificial intelligence

Monday, September 9, 2024

Imagine losing out on your dream job due to bias in AI tools used in the resume screening process or having your health care compromised for the same reason.Those are the disturbing scenarios that Aylin Caliskan, an assistant professor in the University of Washington Information School, is dedicated to thwarting.Caliskan was recently awarded a $603,342 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award for her project titled, “The Impact of Associations and Biases in Generative AI on Society.” She is planning to develop computational methods to measure biases in ge