News Staff

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Author Archives: News Staff

U-M celebrates Class of 2020 with day of online tributes, social media

By | May 5, 2020
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GO DISCOVER. GO ACHIEVE. GO SERVE. GO BLUE.

U-M leaders, alumni, notables join in pandemic-altered virtual party Congratulatory video messages and other virtual activities replaced traditional commencement ceremonies as the University of Michigan community celebrated the Class of 2020 online amid the coronavirus pandemic.  President Mark Schlissel, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, university deans, notable alumni and many others were part of a daylong online… Read More »

Online Teaching at U-M site provides faculty resources

By | May 4, 2020
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illustration of man and woman in front of Online Teaching home page

To support the university community in preparing for the fall term, the Center for Academic Innovation (CAI) has just launched Online Teaching at U-M, a new website hosting resources and learning experiences to help faculty and instructional staff learn to teach effectively online. While the original focus of CAI’s work was intended to extend U-M’s reach and impact through… Read More »

ITS moves quickly to take campus into new normal

By | May 1, 2020
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When President Mark Schlissel announced last month that the balance of the winter semester would be conducted in alternate, virtual forms as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, all university units were quick to respond. Information and Technology Services had been actively preparing for such a situation for almost a month, in partnership with university leadership and IT leaders… Read More »

Virtual care at Michigan Medicine explodes amid COVID-19 pandemic

By | April 30, 2020
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On March 9, Michigan Medicine treated its first COVID-19 patient, one of two in the state, prompting Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to mandate that non-essential workers “Stay Home and Stay Safe.” To Michigan Medicine ambulatory care clinics, this meant deferring all in-person, non-critical appointments and elective surgeries, creating a backlog of appointments that pushed virtual care to the forefront.… Read More »

K-12 online learning platform from U-M sees dramatic rise in use

By | April 29, 2020
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Making k-12 digital, Cu of child's hand drawing on tablet.

The Collabrify Roadmap Platform, a set of free, customizable digital learning tools developed by the Center for Digital Curricula at the College of Engineering, provides K-12 teachers with scheduling templates that can be customized to include all the activities that would normally take place in their classrooms. Created last summer as a supplemental tool to make educational resources… Read More »

Why we adopt then abandon online safety practices

By | April 28, 2020
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Creative binary code and digital padlock background. Programming and password concept.

To find out why people adopt and then sometimes abandon online safety measures, researchers from the School of Information surveyed more than 900 people about their use of 30 commonly recommended practices to guard against security, privacy, and identity theft risks. The team found that security practices like avoiding clicking on unknown links or emails were much more… Read More »

Probing tech’s soft underbelly

By | April 27, 2020
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Portrait of Dr. Kevin Fu.

On any given day in Kevin Fu’s laboratory at the College of Engineering research investigators might use an antenna to fool the lab’s sensor into giving a false temperature readings or a laser light beam to inject false voice commands in a voice-controlled assistant from a distance of 300 feet. Unlike many cybersecurity troubleshooters, Fu is not looking… Read More »

U-M researchers train tech tool to find relationship clues from written conversations

By | April 27, 2020
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Mental concept with thinking process, relationships

Social scientists have identified 10 dimensions to describe the nature of human relationships but little research has focused on how these concepts are expressed through written language, and what role they have in shaping social interactions. New research from U-M and Nokia Bell Labs has used crowdsourcing and a tech tool to detect how these characteristics are expressed… Read More »

Extreme interest in crowdsourced projects requires more traditional management

By | April 24, 2020
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Businessman with idea on laptop rasing money via internet to support project.

Collaborative crowdsourcing has become a popular way to advance a technology idea or to spin it off for new uses, but U-M research shows when faced with extreme interest, team leaders must often rely on traditional organizational management structure to get the work done. When a collaborative crowdsourced project is thrust into the limelight, the impact—or shock—of so… Read More »

Retooled computer science course goes all-COVID, all-online

By | April 22, 2020
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laptop in darkened room with surgical mask on the keyboard

A COVID-era redesign of a long-running computer science undergraduate course will put up to 120 U-M computer science and engineering students to work designing software to tackle problems related to the crisis during the 2020 spring/summer semester. Computer science and engineering lecturer David Chesney has run the class for years as an in-person offering called “Software for Accessibility.”… Read More »

Summer orientation programs for incoming students to transition online

By | April 21, 2020
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illustration of student sitting at table with pamphlets and laptop

In light of the coronavirus outbreak, U-M summer student orientation, which is mandatory for all first-year and transfer students, is moving online. The switch to online orientation will affect the ability of students to visit campus and meet other students. Ann Hower, director of the Office of New Student Programs, said the office is preparing intensively to provide an excellent experience… Read More »

Building better coronavirus databases with automatic quality checks

By | April 20, 2020
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Amid a growing coronavirus crisis, experts in all fields have begun compiling massive datasets to track the impact of the contagion. To make constructing these datasets as accurate and timely as possible, Michael Cafarella, professor of computer science and engineering, is leading an NSF-funded project that will build high-quality auxiliary datasets to enable automatic quality checking and fraud… Read More »

Computer scientists employ AI to help address COVID-19 challenges

By | April 16, 2020
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illustration of coronavirus

The coronavirus pandemic has changed the world around us and is affecting our health, our economy, our social interactions, and so much more. Faculty and students affiliated with the AI Lab in Computer Science and Engineering have partnered with clinicians and experts from other disciplines to bring their expertise to assist with the outbreak and to help find… Read More »

Combine Metadata Harvester: Aggregate ALL the data!

By | April 14, 2020
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Combine harvesting wheat field.

The Digital Public Library of America displays over 36 million records. While a large share come from ‘Content Hubs’ like the Smithsonian or HathiTrust, there are still millions of records ingested from a wide range of smaller institutions across America. “The technologies we use to transform and validate XML records, like XSLT, are well-established and highly reliable, but software for… Read More »

App to provide anonymous support network for U-M students

By | April 10, 2020
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illustration of three houses showing students in the windows, Kare logo above them

A new app called kare is an anonymous wellness support platform recently launched by U-M students for college students. According to business junior Bennett Hilkert, chief executive officer and a co-founder of kare, the apps tagline (“because sometimes we don’t feel our best”) outlines the purpose of the company: to help connect students via an anonymous peer-to-peer support… Read More »

Live public street cams are tracking social distancing

By | April 10, 2020
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screenshot of NY city live cam with distancing graph above.

With advanced computer vision models and live public street cam video, a U-M startup is tracking social distancing behaviors in real time at some of the most visited places in the world. Voxel51’s new tool uses the company’s existing platform and underlying custom AI to continuously track vehicle, cyclist, and pedestrian traffic at seven locations around the world, and… Read More »

Virtual solutions: Four stories of challenge and opportunity

By | April 9, 2020
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As universities around the country transitioned to online instruction, faculty and staff members had to quickly change how they teach and work. The shift has been filled with challenges, but also new opportunities. The University Record recently featured stories about how four faculty made the quick transition to remote teaching: Ginger Shultz’s chemistry students would no longer have… Read More »

Engineering students improve data center efficiency

By | April 8, 2020
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close up of circuit board

Two U-M computer science and engineering students have distinguished themselves with their work on ways to speed up and improve data center efficiency. Computer science undergraduate Nathan Brown competed in the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Student Research Competition and took first place among undergraduates. His project provides a means to speed up software applications by reading future… Read More »

Federal Court rules in favor of UMSI professor in discrimination research case

By | April 8, 2020
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modern login form interface design with username and password

A federal court has cleared the way for academic researchers, computer scientists, and journalists to continue work that investigates online company practices for racial, gender or other discrimination. The ruling means that those who research online companies no longer have to fear prosecution for the work they do to hold tech companies accountable for their practices, said Christian Sandvig, professor… Read More »

Enriching Scholarship cancelled, other options available

By | April 7, 2020
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Enriching Scholarship 2019 logo

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Enriching Scholarship has been cancelled for this year. However, many workshops will still be offered remotely throughout the coming months. You can view all upcoming workshops on the TeachTech website, including a full slate of upcoming sessions on remote teaching. In addition to in-person sessions, you may also be interested in the IT4U Webinars offered by ITS.… Read More »