2019-2020 Research Highlights

2019-2020 RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Leading the future of information T H E I N T E R S E C T I O N O F P E O P L E , I N F O R M AT I O N , A N D T E C H N O L O G Y

Degree programs BS in Information Sciences (BS/IS) MS in Library and Information Science (MS/LIS) MS in Information Management (MS/IM) MS in Bioinformatics (Information Sciences Concentration) PhD in Information Sciences School Librarian Licensure Certificate of Advanced Study

The iSchool is dedicated to shaping the future of information through research, education, and engagement. Our mission is to lead the way in understanding the use of information in science, culture, society, commerce, and the diverse activities of our daily lives.

2

Message from the Dean Information is crucial to our lives. It educates us, helps us form opinions, and drives decision-making across a range of activities. Without information, we would be like a ship without a rudder, attempting to chart new paths without the benefit of navigation. Information promotes discovery, creates connections, empowers us, and provides vision for the future. In short, information changes the world.

“Through an interdisciplinary and inclusive approach, the iSchool at Illinois harnesses the power of information and technology to maximize the human potential.”

— Eunice E. Santos, Dean

Consistently ranked number one for excellence in graduate education, the iSchool at Illinois leads the way in shaping the future of information. Our researchers address the opportunities and challenges of contemporary information technologies, and our faculty and staff equip students to think critically and pursue careers in diverse information settings. Our graduates are leaders in the information professions who make a difference every day in their local, national, and global communities.

Through an interdisciplinary and inclusive approach, the iSchool harnesses the power of information and technology to maximize the human potential. Our research portfolio leverages expertise in accessing, managing, and analyzing information across all sectors of our society. In the pages that follow, you will read how this essential work benefits areas such as science, business, education, and health care. Highlights include: • Promoting positive health outcomes through our research partnership with the Center for Health Informatics and applying informatics to improve the precision of medical outcome detection.

• Studying how computational models can help explain social behaviors and the factors that influence decision-making during pandemics.

• Identifying the complex socio-technical networks that form during humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts.

• Applying crisis informatics to study emergency response networks and policy.

• Protecting the privacy, security, and ethics of society’s critical information systems and designing effective privacy and security mechanisms for underserved populations.

• Addressing artificial intelligence and the evolution of the Web through the lens of computer science, computational social science, economics, public policy, and Web-based applications.

• Integrating knowledge to create technologies for designing and building biological organisms with transformative potential in energy, agriculture, materials, and health.

• Developing research literacy in young people and teaching scholarly communications to emerging librarians.

• Ensuring the reproducibility and reliability of scientific research and improving research transparency and quality.

I hope you enjoy learning more about the breadth and depth of our School’s research, which makes a difference in the lives of our citizens and addresses the challenges of contemporary society.

3

Research Grants

Our faculty and staff are principal investigators on a portfolio of 29 projects totaling $13.8 million and co-investigators or partners on 21 projects totaling $73.3 million.

Designing privacy controls for Facebook ad-targeting Facebook awarded PhD student NatĂŁ Barbosa and his advisor, Associate Professor Yang Wang, a $65,053 grant for a project aimed at designing a privacy control framework that makes profiling and ad-targeting more transparent to ordinary Internet users.

Understanding the impact of false information on HPV vaccination behavior Assistant Professor Jessie Chin received a $389,810 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to bridge theories in cognitive psychology, machine learning, and natural language processing to identify false information and assess its impact on risk perceptions about the HPV vaccine, with the goal of combating misinformation in cancer prevention.

Ensuring scientific research reproducibility

Developing resources to empower emerging librarians Associate Professor and MS/LIS Program Director Maria Bonn and colleagues received a grant of $247,128 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to develop the Scholarly Communications Notebook, an open educational resource index and repository for teaching scholarly communications to emerging librarians.

Associate Professor Victoria Stodden was awarded a two-year, $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to facilitate research on scientific reproducibility, exploring how to better ensure the reliability and usefulness of scientific results in the face of increasingly sophisticated computational approaches to research.

Training the next generation of cybersecurity scholars Associate Professor Masooda Bashir received a funding extension of $4 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue the Illinois Cyber Security Scholars Program, enabling talented students to pursue cybersecurity in order to build a workforce that protects information infrastructure and is sensitive to the privacy, security, and ethics of society’s critical information systems.

4

Applying crisis informatics to study emergency response networks and policy Associate Professor and PhD Program Director Jana Diesner received a $200,000 grant from the Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute to continue work with the U.S. Coast Guard on identifying the complex socio-technical networks that form during humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts, and determining if efforts on the ground align with policy or indicate policy revisions.

Studying the global effects of bio-conservation investments on preserving natural resources and biodiversity Associate Professor Jana Diesner is co-principal investigator on a new multi-institutional project supported by a $550,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation to trace outcomes of $655 million in investments in capacity-building and sustainable financing for bioconservation.

Reducing the inadvertent spread of retracted science: Shaping a research and implementation agenda The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded Assistant Professor Jodi Schneider a $174,981 grant to bring together diverse stakeholders in the academic publishing ecosystem to interact and reflect on the problems arising from the continued citation of retracted research, such as spreading fundamental errors, and to envision possible solutions.

Integrating knowledge for synthetic biology discoveries The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $1.2 million grant to accelerate discovery and exploration of the synthetic biology design space through work by a multi-institutional team of researchers, including Professor and Associate Dean for Research J. Stephen Downie (left) as a principal investigator and Postdoctoral Research Associate Jacob Jett (PhD ’19) as a lead researcher. The goal is to build an integrated knowledge system for use in synthetic biology, which focuses on creating technologies for designing and building biological organisms and has transformative potential in applications from energy, agriculture, materials, and health.

Investigating the consequences of error in digital libraries Professor Ted Underwood received a $73,122 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to investigate the consequences of error in digital libraries resulting from optical transcription and provide tools that will help researchers estimate the level of uncertainty in their conclusions.

Helping community organizations tell more effective data stories Associate Professor Kate McDowell received funding from the University of Illinois Center for Social and Behavioral Science Small Grant program to bring storytelling in information science to local nonprofit organizations, allowing them to use their limited resources to tell more effective data stories and better connect with communities.

5

Featured News

Mak discusses materiality of texts at the University of Copenhagen Associate Professor Bonnie Mak presented the invited paper, “Scholarship and Its Formats: Documenting the Humanities,” which explored the enduring features of humanistic scholarship across different technological contexts.

Diesner discusses responsible social computing in keynote Associate Professor Jana Diesner gave the keynote talk, “Responsible Social Computing: Validating Network Data and Theory” at the 5th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2).

Tilley addresses censorship, gatekeeping, and growth in comics librarianship Associate Professor Carol Tilley delivered the keynote, “Comics Librarianship: Censorship, Gatekeeping —and Growth,” at the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2), which featured the best of pop culture, including comics, graphic novels, and manga, as well as movies, TV, and video games.

iSchool researchers address key societal challenges at the intersection of people, information, and technology, drawing on cross-disciplinary expertise and collaborating with scholars around the world.

Wang shares smart home privacy, inclusive privacy research Associate Professor Yang Wang participated in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) Principal Investigators’ Meeting, sharing research from an SaTC-funded project: Privacy-Enhancing User Interfaces Based on Individualized Mental Models and Inclusive Privacy: Effective Privacy Management for People with Visual Impairments.

Research literacy skills benefit youth Assistant Professor Rachel M. Magee conducted research and trained library staff through funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to promote the development of research literacies in young people, with the goal of contributing to their future academic, civic, and personal success.

Advances in artificial intelligence and Web science Associate Professor Jingrui He’s research group, the iSAIL Lab, presented research at leading national conferences (AAAI-20 and Web Conference 2020), addressing artificial intelligence and the evolution of the Web through the lens of computer science, computational social science, economics, public policy, and Web-based applications.

National Park Service partnership provides interactive K-12 learning tools A partnership between Professor Sara L. Schwebel, director of the iSchool’s Center for Children’s Books, and the Channel Islands National Park provides an interactive website and K-12 lesson plans on Island of the Blue Dolphins to benefit students, educators, and parents.

Course development draws on data visualization and storytelling research

Associate Professor Kate McDowell and Assistant Professor Matthew Turk applied their respective research expertise in storytelling and data visualization to create the iSchool’s Data Science Storytelling course, in which students learn how to tell meaningful stories based on data, a valuable skill in the contemporary workforce.

6

Informatics approach improves precision of medical outcome detection Associate Professor and MS/IM Program Director Catherine Blake, who serves as associate director of the iSchool’s Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS), partnered on a new informatics approach to introduce a more precise method of reviewing medical literature by extracting noun phrases rather than entire sentences.

Ludäscher presents keynote at workshop on research objects Professor Bertram Ludäscher, director of the iSchool’s Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS), presented “From Research Objects to Reproducible Science Tales,” in which he discussed how research objects can make “computational science tales” more reproducible and transparent.

Kilicoglu gives invited talk at meta-research conference Associate Professor Halil Kilicoglu gave an invited talk at the conference on “Meta-Research for Transforming Clinical Research,” presenting his work in using text mining techniques to extract information from clinical publications for assessing and improving research transparency and quality.

Social behaviors and factors influence decision-making during pandemics Dean and Professor Eunice E. Santos and iSchool doctoral students Suresh Subramanian and Vairavan Murugappan studied how computational models can help explain social behaviors and the factors that influence decision-making during pandemics.

Promoting positive health outcomes The Illinois Center for Health Informatics (CHI), a partnership between the Grainger College of Engineering and the iSchool, focuses on the promotion of positive local and global health outcomes through research innovation. It provides a home for multidisciplinary research teams to work with the broader health community to enhance impact on health through the advanced management, analysis, and representation of data and information.

Directed by iSchool Research Scientist Ian Brooks, CHI works in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Mayo Clinic, and other state and local organizations. Key projects include pandemic and infodemic response, digital health fact sheets, spread of clinical innovations, and informatics support.

Brooks presents research at WHO meeting on COVID-19 “infodemic” Ian Brooks, research scientist, co-presented preliminary social media analytics research on COVID-19 at a two-day global event organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide advice on how to handle the information deluge or “infodemic” resulting from COVID-19.

7

Notable Achievements

iSchool faculty are leaders in the information sciences, recognized for their expertise through prestigious appointments and awards as well as significant publications that advance the field.

Statistical science research Associate Professor Victoria Stodden was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, a nonprofit institution that fosters high-impact, cross-disciplinary, and crosssector research involving the statistical sciences.

Global research networks Associate Professor Anita Say Chan received a Fulbright Specialist grant to spend three weeks at Javeriana University in Bogota, Colombia, where she will lecture on feminist data methods and give a workshop on community data.

Advances in science and engineering Associate Professor Jana Diesner assumed the role of associate editor for Science Advances, the open access multidisciplinary journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Research in data engineering and data-intensive systems Dean and Professor Eunice E. Santos gave an invited address, “Social Information, Data Modeling and Analysis Frameworks,” and served as a panelist at the Workshop on Women in Data Science (WiDS), which was part of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 36th International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE).

Course design and teaching Teaching Associate Professor and Acting BS/IS Program Director Judith Pintar has been selected by the Office of the Provost and the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs as the 2020-2021 Distinguished Teacher-Scholar in support of her project, “Gameful Pedagogy: Instructional Design for Student Well-Being.”

Data-centric technology Associate Professor Anita Say Chan was selected as a 2019-2020 Data & Society Faculty Fellow to contribute to research focused on social and cultural issues arising from automation and data-centric technology.

8 Community informatics studies Teaching Assistant Professor Martin Wolske joined the editorial board of the Journal of Community Informatics, which studies information and communications technologies used in support of community-defined development goals.

Big data innovation Associate Professor Catherine Blake assumed the role of principal investigator for the Midwest Big Data Hub (MBDH), a network of experts in twelve states who catalyze data science efforts to collect, manage, and leverage complex information to improve life in the Midwest. Funded by the National Science Foundation, MBDH priority areas include advanced materials and manufacturing; water quality; big data in health; digital agriculture; and smart, connected, and resilient communities.

Technological innovation

Comic book industry awards

Associate Professor Jingrui He was named a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest technical professional society serving professionals in the electrical, electronics, and computing fields and related areas of science and technology.

Associate Professor Carol Tilley, whose comics research has appeared in The New York Times and other national media outlets, was selected as a judge for the 2020 Ringo Awards for achievement in comic books.

Intellectual freedom and censorship Associate Professor and Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Emily Knox was appointed president of the Board of Trustees of the Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF).

First bilingual issue of Library Trends Associate Professor Kate Williams and two University of Havana colleagues edited the first bilingual issue of the iSchool’s journal, Library Trends. The volume, Communities and Technologies: Realities, Challenges, and Opportunities for Librarians in Cuba, features Cuban scholarship addressing innovations and users.

9

Student Accomplishments

Navigating provenance metadata standards useful for digital curation PhD students Michael Gryk and Jessica Cheng and alumna Rhiannon Bettivia (PhD ’16) organized a provenance workshop held in conjunction with the 15th International Digital Curation Conference.

With innovation and enthusiasm, our students turn ideas into action by implementing research and projects that garner praise and recognition.

Combating “the insulin crisis”

Grant supports book repair treatments

PhD student Clair Irwin (MS ’16, CAS ’17), whose research includes the information behaviors of people with diabetes, founded an Illinois chapter of #insulin4all, which advocates for access to affordable insulin, diabetes supplies, and medical care.

Recent graduate Annabel Pinkney (MS ’20) was awarded a grant from the Caxton Club, a not-for-profit organization devoted to the study and promotion of the book arts, for her project, “Advanced Studies of the Book Structure,” in which Pinkney created a portfolio of several book repair treatments of varying difficulty.

Addressing users’ propensity to trust others on Airbnb

Using data visualization to communicate archival information PhD student Courtney Richardson presented the keynote, “Telling a Story with Data from an Artist’s Perspective,” at the Storytelling with Data webinar hosted by the Library Administrators Conference of Northern Illinois (LACONI).

PhD student Natã Barbosa’s Airbnb internship experience provided the basis for the paper, “Designing for Trust: A Behavioral Framework for Sharing Economy Platforms,” which was selected for Web Conference 2020.

Data science research recognized PhD students Mihai Avram, Ly Dinh, Lan Jiang, Shubhanshu Mishra, Nikolaus Parulian, and Rezvaneh (Shadi) Rezapour, and MS student Tiffany Lu received best student poster awards at the 2020 Women in Data Science (WiDS) Urbana-Champaign Conference.

10

Completed Dissertations Paige Danielle Cunningham, “Exploring Communication Patterns in Massive Open Online Courses” Jacob Guy Jett, “Towards a General Conceptual Model for Bibliographic Aggregates: Four Case Studies from Our Bibliographic Standards”

Examining the impact of autonomous vehicles Students in Associate Professor Yoo-Seong Song’s Applied Business Research class worked with COUNTRY Financial at the University of Illinois Research Park on a project examining the impact of autonomous vehicles and smart cities on the insurance industry.

Jimi Jones, “So Many Standards, So Little Time: A History and Analysis of Four Digital Video Standards” Adam Kyle Kehoe, “Predicting Controlled Vocabulary Based on Text and Citations: Case Studies in Medical Subject Headings in MEDLINE and Patents” Shubhanshu Mishra, “Information Extraction from Digital Social Trace Data with Applications to Social Media and Scholarly Communication Data” Garrick T. Sherman, “Document Expansion and Language Model Re-Estimation for Information Retrieval” Aiko Takazawa, “Tutteli to Japan: A Case Study of Spontaneous Collaboration in Disaster Response” Craig Willis, “Trust, But Verify: An Investigation of Methods of Verification and Dissemination of Computational Research Artifacts for Transparency and Reproducibility”

Top honors for Research Park interns Two recent graduates received top honors for their performance as interns at the University’s Research Park. Saurav Yadav (MS ’19) was named “Most Outstanding Graduate Intern” for his work at COUNTRY Financial DigitaLab, and Harshit Gupta (MS ’20) received the award for “Best Technological Innovation” for his work as a data scientist technology intern at Syngenta.

ischool.illinois.edu