Home country's lack of technology inspires Informatics student

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

During a trip to Eritrea, Nobel Menghis noticed the lack of access to technology in his home country. Fueled by a desire to make technology more accessible, Menghis has dedicated his education and career to achieving this goal.  Menghis, a third-year Informatics student at the University of Washington, recently received the Larsen Family Endowed Scholarship and a second award from the Information School Scholarship Fund, supported by alumni and donors. “I am so grateful and amazed to have been selected for these scholarships,” said Menghis. “It has lessened the financial b

Professor weaves recipes and stories from Syrian refugee camp

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

As an embedded researcher in the Zaatari Syrian refugee camp in Jordan, Karen Fisher wanted to know about the effects of domicide and the invisible lives of women.Those living in the camp are conservative Sunni Muslim, and it’s rare to see women working in public, said Fisher, a professor at the University of Washington Information School. To learn about women’s daily lives in the camp, she asked many of them to keep and share diaries. When one 15-year-old girl included her favorite cake recipe in hers, it sparked an idea for a way to document women’s knowledge and preserve an important

Researchers teach kids to code with cultural research, embroidery machines

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Even in tech-heavy Washington state, the numbers of students with access to computer science classes aren’t higher than national averages: In the 2022-2023 school year, 48% of public high schools offered foundational CS classes and 5% of middle school and high school students took such classes.Those numbers have inched up, but historically marginalized populations are still less likely to attend schools teaching computer science, and certain groups — such as Latinx students and young women — are less likely than their peers to be enrolled in the classes even if the school offers them.To

ACM recognizes Amy Ko as Distinguished Member

Monday, March 18, 2024

UW Information School Professor Amy J. Ko is among 52 global scholars recognized as Distinguished Members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for their innovative contributions to the computing field. The ACM is the world’s largest computing society. It recognizes up to 10 percent of its worldwide membership as distinguished members based on their professional experience, groundbreaking achievements, and longstanding participation in computing. The ACM has three tiers of recognition: fellows, distinguished members and senior members. The Distinguished Member Recognitio

Q&A: How Instagram influencers profit from anti-vaccine misinformation

Monday, March 18, 2024

While Instagram might have a reputation for superficiality — a realm of exquisitely filtered images — it is now eclipsing other social media as a news source. The platform is increasingly filled with information, some of it pernicious and distributed via influencers.Researchers at the University of Washington studied three prominent Instagram influencers spreading anti-vaccine misinformation as a route to profit. Each account occupies what lead author Rachel E. Moran, a UW senior research scientist at the Center for an Informed Public (CIP) and staff researcher in the Information Scho

MLIS student hopes to smooth the path to grad school

Monday, March 11, 2024

As an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin, María Fernanda (Fer) Palomares Carranco found it challenging to do the type of research that would support her graduate school goals. The libraries and catalogs were difficult to navigate, and she didn’t know how to get more help. After she earned her bachelor's degree, she was looking for a graduate program, but again, finding the necessary information was overwhelming. When she began working in graduate admissions, she suddenly had an insider’s view to the admissions process and she realized there was much she hadn’t known

Women in Entrepreneurship event celebrates innovation

Monday, March 11, 2024

With the launch of the iStartup Lab, new entrepreneurship courses available to students, and opportunities to develop a startup idea from the hackathon stage to a full-fledged company, now is a rewarding time to be an entrepreneur at the University of Washington Information School. “I tell my students all the time, the classroom is the practice space,” said Sara Sanford, assistant teaching professor and the founder and principal consultant of GEN Certification. She was speaking to an audience gathered at Startup Hall on Feb. 21 for an event focused on women in entrepreneursh

iSchool scholar confronts rising tide of electronic waste

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

As an iSchool doctoral candidate, Nick Logler spent weeks rummaging through trash piles on the side of the road, ferreting around in thrift stores, and browsing platforms like Craigslist. Discarded desktop printers were his target, and he ultimately collected more than a dozen to supply workshops for middle schoolers to explore concepts like materiality and disassembly. They would take the defunct printers apart, then observe and identify the components beneath the surface. After brainstorming and reimagining applications for these parts, the students built entirely new objects. Workshops

UW Libraries award scholarships to 18 iSchool students

Monday, February 26, 2024

Eighteen Information School students are among the 50 recipients of this year’s UW Libraries Student Employee Scholarship.The recipients will each receive $1,000 through the scholarship, which is funded from a variety of sources including individual donors, the Friends of the UW Libraries, and 14 named scholarship endowments. Sixteen of the recipients come from the Master of Library and Information Science program: Andrea Berg, Aaliyah Davis, Courtney Griffin, Sabrina Hsu, Samuel Mintzer, Hannah Morrison, Norah Murphy, Cypress Payne, W. Carrington Powell, Martha Rabura, Connor Aust

Q&A: What is the best route to fairer AI systems?

Thursday, February 15, 2024

In December, the European Union passed the AI Act, the first major law aiming to regulate technologies that fall under the umbrella of artificial intelligence. The legislation might have arrived sooner, but the sudden success of ChatGPT in late 2022 demanded the act be updated.The EU’s act, however, does not mention fairness — a measure looking at how well a system avoids discrimination. The field studying fairness in machine learning (a sub-field of AI) is relatively new, so clear regulation is still in development.Mike Teodorescu, a University of Washington assistant professor in the Inf

Aylin Caliskan joins leadership of UW Tech Policy Lab

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

The co-directors of UW’s Tech Policy Lab are familiar with breaking ground and testing new ideas together. Since 2013, they have partnered in research and education to guide conversations around topics with no clear path to an answer or oftentimes even a precedent.This prepared them well for the task of replacing one of their own.For a few years, Information School Professor Batya Friedman had been planning her transition away from university work, which meant also stepping down from her role as co-director of TPL. This was new terrain for the Lab, which had been governed by the same trio si

Library leader Tracie D. Hall to join iSchool faculty

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Tracie D. Hall will join the Information School this fall as a Distinguished Practitioner in Residence. Hall, a 2000 graduate of the iSchool Master of Library and Information Science program, has served in a variety of roles in libraries, government, academia and the arts. They include tenures as vice president of strategy and organizational development at the Queens Public Library, as assistant dean of Dominican University’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science, as Culture program director at the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, and as deputy commissioner of Chicago's Departmen

At the iSchool, we welcome the challenges and possibilities of AI

Monday, February 12, 2024

I am a huge proponent of artificial intelligence. In my research, I build systems that identify patterns that can be gleaned from your smartphone or any smart device. By studying student populations, we’ve been able to detect when students are suffering from depression and predict whether their GPAs will be above or below the university average. With this knowledge, we can provide additional support to students in need — just one example of the promise of AI.The term AI has been around for 60 years, and most of us were using it before the recent phenomenon of generative AI tools such as Ch

Winfo Hackathon overflows with ideas

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

With close to 250 students participating and more than 100 on the waitlist, this year’s Winfo Hackathon was the biggest yet. Led by the Women in Informatics student group, the hackathon brought students to the University of Washington HUB on Jan. 27 to work on projects and develop solutions to a wide array of issues. This year’s hackathon theme was “infinite possibilities and infinite solutions.” Keynote speaker Amy J. Ko, a professor in the Information School, kicked off the event emphasizing the value of the hackathon experience and celebrating human potential and creativity.&nb

MSIM online students sharpen skills, build community

Friday, February 2, 2024

More than 50 online students and several alumni from the Information School’s Master of Science in Information Management program gathered at the University of Washington campus for the second annual MSIM Online Student Summit to discuss leadership and artificial intelligence. The Jan. 26-27 summit began with a Friday evening reception at Kane Hall, featuring a keynote conversation with Stephanie Ballard, senior practice development manager in Microsoft’s Office of Responsible AI. Ballard is an alum of both the Master of Library and Information Science and Ph.D. programs at the iSchoo