Awards Honor May 2026 Graduates

The School of Information’s May 2026 Commencement presented an opportunity to honor faculty and student achievements.

Dean Eric Meyer presented awards for outstanding capstone projects from the Master of Information Management and Systems program, the Master of Information and Data Science program, and the Master of Information and Cybersecurity program.

Students in the MIMS, MIDS, and MICS programs voted for their most outstanding instructors and gave awards to their classmates.

James R. Chen Award for Outstanding MIMS Final Project, 2026

Session 1

Reform

Natalia Juarez

Arnur Sabet

Reform offers resale infrastructure that bridges retail brands and secondhand marketplaces through digital authentication, scalable backend s

Under the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), every product sold in the EU must carry a Digital Product Passport (DPP), a persistent digital record containing the product’s provenance, materials, and environmental impact data. Reform is a resale architecture solution that transforms brands’ DPP compliance infrastructure into an authenticated secondhand commerce experience, creating new value for brands, resale marketplaces, resellers, and buyers.

Session 2

AV Watch: Community Reporting for Autonomous Vehicle Safety

Noah Baier

Evan Haas

Joshua Mussman

Monica Paz Parra

The world's first dedicated AV incident reporting platform for anyone, anywhere.

As incidents involving autonomous vehicles (AV) continue to occur, there are currently no widely available channels for both AV riders and non-riders to report incidents. AV Watch is the first dedicated AV incident reporting platform for use by anyone, anywhere. The team empowers anyone to reveal the street-level incidents occurring in their communities that would otherwise remain concealed, regardless of where they are.

Hal R. Varian MIDS Capstone Award, Spring 2026

Eye2Voice: Gaze-to-Speech Application for Individuals with Disabilities

Katya Aukamp

Keta Desai

Nichol Flowers

Clara Rhoades

Eye2Voice is a gaze-to-speech communication tool that gives people with physical disabilities a voice using only their eye movements.

Eye2Voice is a gaze-to-speech communication tool that gives people with physical disabilities a voice using only their eye movements. The tool aims to empower both the individual and the caretaker with the accessible communication.

Lily L. Chang MICS Capstone Award, Spring 2026

Agent Watch

Boaz Kaufman

Marisa Hall

Anya Svan

Cynthia Austin

Rutika Kushe

Anagha Late

Before an agent acts, who is watching?

AI browsing agents can read your screen, fill out your forms, and act on your behalf online — but most users have no way of knowing how safely they do it. Team AgentWatch evaluated five leading AI browsing assistants across privacy and security dimensions, from data disclosure to prompt injection resistance, and published the results in an open, publicly accessible framework.

For more information on previous MIDS and MICS Capstone awards, please check out our Summer 2025 winners and Fall 2025 winners.

Faculty Awards

Excellence in Teaching Award (MIMS program): Stefanie Hutka, Lecturer for INFO 213: Introduction to User Experience Design and INFO 290: UX for AI. 

Excellence in Teaching Award (MIDS program): Vinicio De Sola, Lecturer for DATASCI 261: Machine Learning at Scale.

Excellence in Teaching Award (MICS program): Jennia Hizver, Lecturer for CYBER 204: Software Security and CYBER 284: Web Application Security Assessment. 

Student Awards

Outstanding Teaching Assistant (MIMS): Natalia Juarez, INFO 205: Information Law and Policy and INFO 290M: ;Lean/Agile Product Management.

Outstanding Teaching Assistant (MIDS): Ilona Bodnar and Andy Guinto, DATASCI 200: Introduction to Data Science Programming.