UMSI awards & honors: May 2026

Faculty, staff and students of the University of Michigan School of Information regularly earn local and national recognition for their research, service and thought leadership. UMSI awards & honors is a monthly roundup celebrating achievements submitted by members of the UMSI community. Share your own good news or recognize a colleague at umsi.info/awards. 

Awards & honors

MSI student Ayesha Hakim earned the Intersectional Advocacy Award from the U-M Spectrum Center. This award is given to a member of the graduating Lavender Class who has shown outstanding dedication to honoring and advocating for the intersectional nature of students’ many identities with LGBTQ+ identities, through their involvement and activities at U-M.

MHI student Graciela Lagraba was part of a team that earned two awards at MIT Hacking Medicine’s Grand Hack 2026, a national healthcare innovation competition that brings together students and professionals to develop solutions to pressing clinical challenges. Her team earned second place in the trauma and rehabilitation track and first place in the InterSystems Challenge, which recognizes projects with strong potential for real-world implementation and data integration. 

Jim Rampton, lecturer III in information, has been named a 2026 Honored Instructor by Michigan Housing. The recognition goes to instructors who are nominated by undergraduate students for having a positive impact on their college journeys. 

BSI student Tiffany Phoebe Sudijono earned second place in ICPSR's 2026 Data Communication Scholarship, which celebrates students for their ingenuity in discovering, exploring and communicating research data archived at ICPSR. 

At the university-wide Learning Levers Prize, an EdTech competition cosponsored by UMSI, BSI student Samantha Pui and team earned a Development Award of $3,500 for MotiMuse, and MSI students Molly Yang, Sami Pratt and team earned a Development Award of $2,000 for LevelUp Living.

18 top projects earned awards at the UMSI Student Project Exposition, representing excellence in user experience design, archival practice, civic engagement, entrepreneurship and more. 

Four members of the class of 2026 earned student awards at UMSI’s commencement ceremony. The honorees were nominated by staff, faculty and peers, and they exemplify UMSI’s mission and values. 

13 UMSI students were awarded the Teresa Noel Urban Blaurock Student Research Award, which recognizes excellence in student research projects conducted in partnership with UMSI researchers:

• MSI student Rachel Huang, for research with Rebecca Frank
• MSI student Chenxi Jiang, for research with Yulin Yu
• MSI student Yizhou Li, for research with Yulin Yu
• MSI student Allison Liu, for research with Mark Newman and Anna Eckerdal
• MSI student Selina Lu, for research with Shanley Corvite
• MSI student Khoa Nguyen, for research with Shanley Corvite
• MSI student Stephanie Noh, for research with Sun Young Park
• MSI student Ruoyu Shao, for research with Jiayu Zhou
• MSI student Berkley Olivia Sorrells, for research with Paul Conway
• BSI student Tiffany Phoebe Sudijono, for research with Mark Newman
• MHI student Shangqing Wei, for research with Hong Chen
• MSI student Yifei Xu, for research with Yulin Yu
• MSI student Yubo Zhou, for research with Ceren Budak 

Thought leadership

Lauren Cecil, executive director of development and alumni relations, and Nick Campbell, associate director of development, were invited by the U-M Office of University Development to represent UMSI at the April 2026 Development Council meeting. Presenting to hundreds of development peers from across the university, they shared UMSI’s mission and evolution, fostering deeper connections and inviting future collaboration opportunities for the school. Campbell also delivered a powerful donor story by marketing and communications writer Abigail McFee, about lifelong friends who both attended UMSI and named the UMSI student lounge.

Jordan Hansen, assistant director of undergraduate career education,  was selected by the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education as a 2026-27 U-M Advising Fellow. Fellows work on campus-wide advising projects that will meaningfully shape the future of advising at U-M.

The U-M Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs has elected Kentaro Toyama, W. K. Kellogg Professor of Community Information, as its chair. SACUA is the university’s central governing body on faculty affairs. As its leader, Toyama will bring expertise in technology and social impact.

More than 50 UMSI researchers presented at ​​the 2026 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Barcelona, Spain.