The College of Communication and Information (CCI) is celebrating the three 2026 recipients of its annual CCI Graduate Student Awards, which recognize students for their excellence in research and teaching.
This year’s CCI Graduate Student Awards recipients are:
- CCI Graduate Student Research Award: Wangi Zhang
- CCI Graduate Student Teaching Award: Kylie Julius
- CCI Outstanding Dissertation Award: Shreenandan Rajarathnam (‘25)
Wangi Zhang
Wangi Zhang is earning her Master of Science in Information Sciences (MSIS) and is also one of the researchers in the School of Information Sciences (SIS) iLab studying human-robot interaction. She and other SIS researchers are seeking to better understand how social robots can be designed to meaningfully support human learning and interaction in everyday life and professional environments.
As a graduate research assistant (GRA) working with SIS Assistant Professor Jiangen He and SIS alumna Marielle Santos (‘25), Zhang worked on human-robot interaction projects, designed experiments, conducted usability tests, and led both qualitative and quantitative studies.
Her work as a GRA included co-authoring a long paper titled “From Human Bias to Robot Choice: How Occupational Contexts and Racial Priming Shape Robot Selection,” which explores how occupational contexts and racial priming shape people’s selection of robotic partners.
She also worked on a short paper titled “Bridging Psychological Safety and Skill Guidance: An Adaptive Robotic Interview Coach.” This research focused on developing an adaptive robotic interview coach. She led the research on this short paper from the beginning to end, recruiting participants, conducting interviews, collecting and analyzing data, and writing the paper.
Kylie Julius
Kylie Julius is a CCI doctoral student with a concentration in communication studies; her research focuses on interpersonal and organizational communication, particularly conflict communication and workplace bullying.
Julius works full-time as a communications manager for Strata-G, LLC, a Knoxville-based multidisciplinary environmental, engineering, and energy firm, while she pursues her doctorate.
She also teaches several classes on public speaking, business and professional communication, and organizational communication for the School of Communication Studies. Her teaching style emphasizes active student participation and real-world application of course content. She uses case studies, simulations, and problem-solving exercises to encourage students to grapple with real-world communication issues.
“She lives out the values of active student participation, real-world applications of course content, and personal growth in her teaching style,” said Quinten Bernhold, assistant professor in the School of Communication Studies and Julius’ nominator for the award. “Moreover, her intelligence, mastery over course content, and kind personality make her a great instructor for our school and college.”
Shreenandan Rajarathnam
Shreenandan Rajarathnam (‘25) graduated last December with a PhD from CCI with a concentration in information sciences. His research at CCI focused on making more user-friendly cybersecurity tools, platforms, policies and standards, training, and awareness programs in organizational settings.
He won the CCI Outstanding Dissertation Award for his dissertation “The Development of a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework (CSF)-Based Usable Security Community Profile: Integrating User Experience into Organizational Cybersecurity Practices.”
As part of his dissertation, he developed a community profile based on the NIST cybersecurity framework to address a gap in the industry for a widely adopted standard or framework to help organizations improve the convergence of cybersecurity and user experience (UX), also known as usable security.
SIS Professor Vandana Singh, Rajarathnam’s PhD advisor, said his dissertation makes an original and timely contribution to the field of usable security by addressing a clear gap in both scholarship and practice.
“A defining strength of this dissertation is its ability to bridge disciplines. Shreenandan successfully integrates perspectives from information sciences, cybersecurity, human-computer interaction, and mixed methods, producing a framework that is both theoretically grounded and practically applicable,” Singh said. “It exemplifies excellence in research, writing, and scholarly contribution, while also demonstrating professionalism, integrity, and the ability to work across disciplinary boundaries.”
Graduate student award winners will be formally recognized during the college’s last faculty and staff meeting of the semester in May 2026. The meeting serves to recognize excellence in academic, professional, and service throughout the college for the past academic year.