Beginning in 2021, J. Elizabeth Mills and Dr. Kathleen Campana (Kent State) will conduct an evaluation of the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Read, Baby, Read initiative. Read, Baby, Read aims to increase the availability of early education for families in Philadelphia’s low-income communities by helping to build early language skills in infants and toddlers and provide support for their parents and caregivers. The evaluation will measure impacts and identify effective practices and recommendations for large-scale implementation of the initiative across the library system.

Chirag Shah served as an invited panelist on Data Science at VAIBHAV, a summit organized by Government of India and inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi.

Katherine Cross was interviewed for the MIT Technology Review article, “How the truth was murdered.” The piece has been released online and will also be featured in the print magazine.

Hans Jochen Scholl has officially been accepted as a visiting Professor at the University of Granada (Spain). For the next three years, he will collaborate with his colleague and sponsor Prof. Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar on several research projects including an applied research project for the Regional Government of Andalusia titled, “Implementación y impacto de sistemas conversacionales y de DLT en la transparencia, en la innovación y gestión pública de problemas sociales y sanitarios, y en la participación ciudadana” (Implementation and impact of chatbots and DLT on transparency, public innovation, public management of social and health problems, and citizen participation).

Tessa Campbell was featured in a New York Times Science article titled, “Man’s Best Friend Once Made Nice Wool Blankets, Too.” In the article, she shares how she learned about ‘wool dogs’ and how the Coast Salish Indigenous peoples incorporated dog fur into their textile weaving practices.