A fierce advocate for undergraduate students, Scott Barker established the UW’s first scholarship to support Informatics students in 2009. Those wishing to honor Scott at this time can make a gift online to the Scott Barker Endowed Fund for Excellence in Informatics in Scott’s memory.
Gifts to this endowed scholarship will support Informatics students who demonstrate academic merit and leadership potential.
Scholarship recipients
Current and former recipients of the Scott Barker Endowed Fund for Excellence in Informatics
Kavya Iyer, Informatics: Data Science & Human Computer Interaction ’22: 2021-22 Recipient
Kavya Iyer is completing her final year in the Informatics program, specializing in Data Science and Human-Computer Interaction. She also serves as the Director of Academic Support for IUGA (the Informatics Undergraduate Association), is an iSchool Informatics peer advisor, and sits on the iSchool’s Communications Review Board. Her interest in Informatics traces back to her experience in INFO 200, taught by Scott coincidentally, and INFO 201 her sophomore year.
She is working as a marketing data analytics intern with PACCAR over the 2021 summer term, where she is able to use the user interviewing skills and user-centered design fundamentals she learned in her HCI courses at the iSchool, along with the technical code-writing ability from courses such as INFO 330 to create reports that are interactive and fit user’s needs. Kavya credits the iSchool’s curriculum for honing her abilities through projects and skills. Once her internship is over, Kavya has a busy senior year planned, balancing her studies with leadership roles in several clubs.
Jessica Libman, Informatics ’18: 2017-18 Recipient
While at the iSchool, Jessica Libman was a teaching assistant and a student leader in IUGA, serving as Vice President in her senior year. Since graduation, she has worked with Hoylu, a remote work and information sharing services company based in Sweden. Jessica worked as a software engineer, started an internship program, and was promoted to an engineering manager after two years. She ran recruitment for Hoylu and has hired several iSchool and UW graduates for engineering and design roles.
When the majority of Hoylu’s clientele began working from home, Jessica’s team shifted focus to improving the accessibility of Hoylu Workspaces for laptops, as many companies primarily use Hoylu’s large displays. Her time at the iSchool developing skills around accessibility and design thinking contributed heavily to the improvements she was able to make to the product interactions and design. Jessica is currently taking a sabbatical and backpacking through Europe.
Felix Ouk, Informatics ’18: 2017-18 Recipient
As an undergraduate student, Felix Ouk, a recipient of the Scott Barker Endowed Fund for Excellence in Informatics, worked as a research assistant for two years in the UW Interactive Data Lab where he helped develop and refine an innovative visualization recommendation system and accompanying interface for data exploration.
In 2019, he accepted a position as a software engineer, focusing on UI engineering and data experience for data intensive applications. Felix’s projects have ranged from data infrastructure observability, to the machine learning model lifecycle, and most recently, user interfaces for anomaly detection. Felix credits much of his success in completing large projects spanning multiple teams and functions to the people skills that are emphasized and honed in his undergraduate program. Informatics projects and courses are highly creative and collaborative, and gave him a leg up in empathetically navigating stakeholders and ambiguity in the corporate world. Outside of work, Felix has recently purchased a home in Seattle, and finds a lot of joy in analyzing the local real estate market with alumni from the iSchool and colleagues.