Advancing knowledge and practice wherever people interact with information and technology

Sekhar Sarukkai, a lecturer in the Master of Information and Cybersecurity program and entrepreneur, and Rajashree Sarukkai, a speech-language pathologist, have established the Sarukkai Social Impact Award, which will recognize School of Information master’s degree capstone or final projects with the greatest potential for social impact.

While teaching the MICS capstone course, Sekhar was struck by the creativity and potential for social impact many of the student projects showcased: ideas that sought to use technology to solve social problems. “The kind of ideas students at the I School are focusing on need to be given more oxygen,” Sekhar said, noting that the I School is in the middle of some of the “most important inflection points around data, cybersecurity, and technology.”

Tiffany Pham is on a mission to ‘queer’ the field of HCI: that is, to assess current technical systems and the way they uphold the (heteronormative) status quo, and in turn, design against them. 

The second-year Master of Information and Management (MIMS) student has been awarded the Paul Fasana LQBTQ Studies Fellowship, which supports School of Information graduate students whose research interests or studies are related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer studies in any field or discipline.