iSchools Doctoral Dissertation Award 2025
- iSchools News
- Jun 10
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 11
The iSchools Doctoral Dissertation Award is a prestigious annual competition introduced in 2013 that recognizes outstanding work in the information field. Nominations are solicited from all members of the iSchools organization and judged by a committee drawn from leading international iSchools.
The iSchools Organization is proud to announce the winners of the 2025 Doctoral Dissertation Award: Dr. Yuting Huang (Wuhan University, China) nominated by Prof. Ruhua Huang for the Dissertation "A Study on the Construction and Application of Digital Literacy Assessment Indicators for Rural Residents in China" and Dr. Yim Register (University of Washington, United States of America) nominated by Prof. Emma Spiro for the Dissertation "The Future of AI Can Be Kind: Strategies for Embedded Ethics in AI Education" won the Award in this year's very close competition.
Dr. Yuting Huang is a lecturer at the School of Public Administration, Xiangtan University. She earned both her Bachelor's and Ph.D. degrees in Library Science from the School of Information Management, Wuhan University. Her research interests include digital literacy, open government, and open access. Dr. Huang is currently the Principal Investigator of a project funded by the National Social Science Fund of China. She has published first-author articles in leading academic journals, including The Journal of Chinese Libraries, the highest-ranked journal in Library and Information Science in China.
Dr. Yim Register (they/them) is a responsible AI researcher, lover of math and programming, Wikipedia enthusiast, social justice advocate, dancer, dreamer, and artist. They received their PhD from the University of Washington iSchool, with a dissertation entitled "The Future of AI Can Be Kind: Strategies for Embedded Ethics in AI Education". They work at the intersections of AI, machine learning education, and trauma-informed computing. They are currently an Applied Scientist at AWS Machine Learning University (MLU), where they teach software engineers to implement AI solutions with social responsibility and safety at the forefront.
For the first time in the history of the iSchools Doctoral Dissertation Award two nominations earned the same best final score from the reviewers. Both winners of the 2025 Doctoral Dissertation Award will receive a cash prize of USD 2,500.
Out of 25 nominations from iSchools around the globe, Yim Register and Yuting Huang were evaluated as the best in a very tight competition. The finalists came from the University of California Berkeley, Penn State University, University of Washington, Wuhan University and the University of Toronto, all evaluated as excellent works.
The iSchools Organization would like to thank the Doctoral Dissertation Award Committee Members Hanna Carlsson (Linnaeus University), Hsia-Ching Chang (University of North Texas), Andrew Cox (Sheffield University), Jesse Dinneen (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Ricardo Eito Brun (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), Ina Fourie (University of Pretoria), Dion Goh Hoe Lian (Nanyang Technological University), Fredrik Hanell (Linnaeus University), Emi Ishita (Kyushu University), Jaap Kamps (University of Amsterdam), Vanessa Kitzie (University of South Carolina), Maja Krtalić (Victoria University Wellington), Udo Kruschwitz (Universität Regensburg), Glen Layne-Worthey (University of Illinois), Myeong Lee (George Mason University), Louise Limberg (University of Borås), Miriam Matteson (Kent State University), Eric Meyers (University of British Columbia), Shawne Miksa (University of North Texas), Staša Milojevic (Indiana University Bloomington), Ehsan Mohammadi Nik (University of South Carolina), Melissa Ocepek (University of Illinois), Peter Organisciak (University of Denver), Devendra Potnis (University of Tennessee Knoxville), Arcot Rajasekar (University of Chapel Hill), Fernanda Ribeiro (University of Porto), Ellie Sayyad Abdi (Curtin University), António Lucas Soares (University of Porto), Beth St. Jean (University of Maryland) and Rebecca Stallworth (Simmons University) for their outstanding work for the committee.
The Doctoral Dissertation Award is given annually. More information about current and past Award winners can be found on the iSchools Doctoral Dissertation Award website.
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