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Congratulating our 2024 NISO Plus Scholarship Awardees!

Congratulating our 2024 NISO Plus Scholarship Awardees!

January 2024

Each year, the NISO Plus conference brings people together in a dynamic forum to explore and tackle trends and challenges in the global information community. In alignment with  NISO’s strategic plan and steadfast commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, we invite all members of that community to participate in these discussions and work with us to produce solutions with the widest possible impact. To that end, the NISO Plus Scholarship program extends a unique opportunity for a group of emerging and mid-career professionals to contribute their perspectives and make their voices heard.

We are pleased to announce that this year, thanks to a generous grant from the Arthur P. Sloan Foundation, all scholarship awardees will receive funding for travel to Baltimore, MD, for the NISO Plus 2024 conference (February 13–14) and its pre-conference on AI and machine learning. They will attend the virtual NISO Plus event scheduled for September and receive free registration for our monthly webinar series; awardees will also have networking opportunities throughout the year with NISO Board members, staff, and other past and present scholarship winners. And our engagement with the cohort doesn’t end with the calendar year—past awardees continue to be involved in NISO’s work, by serving on our committees (including the NISO Plus planning committee), speaking and participating in NISO events and programs, and more. 

The 2024 recipients are an international group of students and professionals representing academic and public libraries as well as scholarly infrastructure providers. We are grateful to the NISO Plus Scholarship Review Committee (including several past scholarship recipients), who worked with NISO’s leadership and staff to select the awardees from a pool of impressive applicants.*  

Please join us in congratulating the 2024 NISO Plus Scholarship awardees:

  • Michael Chimalizeni, Metadata Specialist, Independent Consultant
  • Sunny Chung, Health Sciences Librarian, Stony Brook University
  • CJ Garcia, Research and Instruction Librarian, Creighton University Health Sciences Campus in Phoenix
  • Vashalice Kaaba, Ph.D. Candidate, School of Information – College of Communication & Information, Florida State University
  • Nataliia Kaliuzhna, Research Associate, Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and  PhD Student,  Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts
  • Tianji Jiang, PhD Candidate, Department of Information Studies, UCLA
  • Emory LaPrade, Cataloging and Metadata Librarian, Johnson City Public Library
  • Judy Low, Library Assistant, Pasadena Public Library
  • Mohamad Mostafa, Regional Engagement Specialist: Middle East and Asia, DataCite
  • Karina Sanchez, Scholars Lab Librarian, University of Texas at Austin Library
  • Maria Smith, Electronic Resources Librarian, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor
  • Katherine Witzig, Library Administrative Assistant, Oklahoma City University and Student, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Note that the 2024 NISO Plus conference is being hosted in person for only the second time since 2020. Again, thanks to the support of the Sloan Foundation, we will also fund travel to Baltimore next month for several scholarship recipients from the 2021–23 cohorts.

*Thank you to this year’s review committee members:

  • Melroy Almeida, ORCID Community and Engagement Lead, Australian Access Federation (NP ’21)
  • Kath Burton, Portfolio Development, Humanities, Taylor & Francis
  • Amy Castillo, Director of Access and Discovery, University of Texas at Arlington (NP ’21)
  • Kelly Denzer, Collections Strategist and Discovery Librarian, Davidson College (NP ’20)
  • Angela Ecklund, Head of Thesaurus Team and Tutorial and Instructional Technology Producer, Modern Language Association
  • Sandy Hirsh, Associate Dean for Academics, San José State University
  • Yuimi Hlasten, E-Resources and Scholarly Communication Librarian, Denison University (NP ’22)
  • Grace Kim, Electronic Resources Librarian, Nevada State University (NP ’23)
  • Nancy Kwangwa, Scholarly Communication and Publication Manager, University of Zimbabwe (NP ’23)
  • Jihye Lee, Electronic Cataloguing Librarian, NOVA Southeastern University (NP ’21)
  • Alice Meadows, Communications and Outreach Consultant, MoreBrains
  • Alex Mendonça, Preprints and Online Subscription Coordinator, ScieLo
  • Rusty Michalak, Library Director, Goldey-Beacom College (NP ’22)
  • Johanssen Obanda, Community Engagement Manager, Crossref (NP ’21)
  • Merrilee Proffitt, Senior Manager, OCLC Research Library Partnership
  • Ray Pun, Academic Research Librarian, Alder Graduate School of Education (NP ’20)
  • Sonali Sugrim, Electronic Resources Librarian, The City University of New York (NP ’23)

We look forward to seeing awardees past and present at the 2024 NISO Plus conference in Baltimore, where we will formally introduce the 2024 cohort to the NISO community during the Miles Conrad Awards Luncheon and Lecture, scheduled for 12:00 pm on Tuesday, February 13. Register now to join us and congratulate them in person!