Curiosity, conversation and connection took center stage as the Information School celebrated the work of its research community.
On the evening of March 5, the HUB Ballroom echoed with lively discussion as researchers gathered for the return of the Information School Research Fair as an in-person event for the first time since 2019.
Organized by Professor and Associate Dean for Research Jevin West, the event marked a significant moment for the Information School to return after seven years.
“Research is an endeavor that requires interaction, and we just need to be doing that more, and it's great to finally be doing it again,” West said.
With nearly 90 research project posters displayed around the room, researchers and community members joined for food, refreshments and conversation about their recent research endeavors.
Information School Ph.D. student Marx Wang shared his project, “Do Attachment Styles Shape ChatGPT Usage?,” studying whether people exhibit relational attachment styles — emotional patterns such as trust or anxiety — in their interactions with ChatGPT.
“This study is very interesting because there are so many people using ChatGPT for homework. What we see is that even if you just use this for homework, we can still see a strong pattern for those people with different attachment styles,” he said.
The event also included 10 lightning presentations about research and new projects from Information School professors and Ph.D. students. Among them was Assistant Professor Martin Saveski, who shared his research on the algorithms at the core of social media platforms and how they alter affective polarization.
As social media algorithms curate what information people see, they can contribute to how they feel about that information, Saveski said.
“They have a very big influence on our opinions, attitudes and moods,” he said. “They're designed to maximize engagement, and that has raised concerns that they might be exacerbating affective polarization. In other words, how do we feel about people from the other side?”
Saveski and his team created a methodology designed to reduce affective polarization in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election and recruited more than 1,200 participants to scan through social media feeds reordered using the new methodology.
The team found that making polarizing content harder to reach resulted in people feeling much less polarized. “They feel much warmer towards people from the other side… And interestingly, not only do people feel warmer towards people from the other side, but they also feel less angry and less sad in the moment. And so these results demonstrate the big power that this algorithm has,” he said.
Information School Associate Professor Hala Annabi discussed the new UW Institute for Neurodiversity and Employment in her lightning talk.
Annabi, the institute’s founding director, described the persistently low employment rates among neurodivergent people as an organizational design problem. She is working with employers and the university to create meaningful job opportunities for them.
The institute, established last year with a $15 million grant from the Canopy Neurodiversity Foundation, is housed in the Information School, with collaboration from the Michael G. Foster School of Business and the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.
“The goal for our institute is to bring together leading scholars and practitioners from various disciplines to build the capacity of the University of Washington and Washington state around how we can create educational experiences and workplaces that align with how people's minds work,” Annabi said.
Other lightning talks included presentations by Information School faculty researchers Ben Lee, Temi Odumosu, Ryan Calo, Nassim Parvin, Wes King and Mike Tedorescu, and by Ph.D. students Seokhyun Shawn Hwang and Michele Newman.
Poster sessions continued throughout the night, highlighting the range of research in the Information School.
MLIS alum , ’25, showcased his poster “Neighboring Washington Tribal Libraries.” The project examines the relationships between non-tribal public libraries and tribal communities in Washington state, studying the origins and outcomes of a 1975 state law as it relates to these relationships.
The law permits library boards across the state to serve “Indian tribes” beyond the boundaries of their library districts. Deidrich said, “We studied how this law came about and also what it's being used for in today's public libraries.”
The law was introduced when the Spokane Tribe of Indians approached the Spokane Country District Library to work together to get it passed. “We were able to see how it's being used today to facilitate relationships, and largely we wanted to understand why those relationships are in place and what the tribes are getting from these resources that are made available to them,” he said.
West was thrilled to see the school showcase the work of its research community for the first time since the COVID pandemic.
“I cannot tell you how excited I've been that [Research Fair] is back,” West said. “I've been counting down the days this year and was counting down the days in previous years until we could finally do it again.”