News Category: faculty-news

iSchool Bids Farewell To Lynn Westbrook

Sept. 28, 2018

Associate Professor Lynn Westbrook celebrated her retirement from the iSchool on August 28, 2018. Numerous iSchool faculty and staff members came together for an elegant High Tea celebration to honor Westbrook’s 13 years at the iSchool.

 Westbrook started as assistant professor in 2005, after which she became an associate professor in 2009. She taught courses in research methods, information retrieval, information literacy, information resources and services, structuring information interactions, general management, collection development, academic libraries, and pedagogy.

Students Develop Cutting- Edge Prototypes

Sept. 28, 2018

In the Texas iSchool’s Interaction Design class, students learn to “put it all together,” says Dr. Fleming Seay, a longtime adjunct faculty member and senior principal UX engineer at Dell. The project-based course in design thinking allows students to tackle a real-world problem of their choice by gathering and interpreting data, and transforming the implications of that data into a prototype design that is then tested and refined.

The Future of Search Engines

Aug. 31, 2018

Search engines have changed the world. They put vast amounts of information at our fingertips. But search engines have their flaws, says iSchool Associate Professor Matthew Lease. Search results are often not as “smart” as we’d like them to be, lacking a true understanding of language and human logic. They can also replicate and deepen the biases embedded in our searches, rather than bringing us new information or insight.

The University of Texas at Austin Awarded Grant from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to Support Human Cell Atlas

July 13, 2018

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative DAF (CZI), a donor-advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation, recently awarded a grant to the University of Texas at Austin to support the work of Assistant Professor Danna Gurari. The project titled, “Video Analysis: Efficiently Tracking and Detecting Life Cycle Phase Transitions for Live Cells,” aims to design frameworks and systems that close the gap between computer vision (CV) algorithm and human performance for analyzing living cells observed in videos.

 

iSchool Faculty Assist Puerto Rican Institutions

Feb. 12, 2018

Texas iSchool Senior Lecturer Karen Pavelka traveled to Puerto Rico in January to assess damage and provide technical assistance to cultural institutions affected by Hurricane Maria.

The Category 4 storm hit the American territory in September 2017, devastating the island and crippling its infrastructure. In addition, many of Puerto Rico’s libraries, museums and archives experienced catastrophic damage.