Author Archives: News Staff
The Strategic Technology Advisory Committee (STAC) is committed to creating a culture of collaboration for innovation and progress. Since its renaming and the adoption of a new charter last June, the committee has been busy! STAC has met with unit IT leadership and identified six top unit priorities: procurement services research computing and services storage options SPG 601.27… Read More »
While adaptive sports provide opportunities for children with mobility disabilities to participate in athletic events, these games are not designed for competitive play between kids with disabilities and those without. iGYM, an augmented reality game system created by a team of U-M researchers, is looking to change that. The current implementation of the system resembles soccer — or… Read More »
Packy, a furry, fun mascot is the symbol of the BackPac app created by U-M students to encourage others, particularly their peers, to spend some time volunteering in the community—especially during the holidays when the needs are great. “The number of volunteers has significantly gone down in the last decade,” said Gaurav Dhir, co-founder of BackPac and a… Read More »
Last year, HITS instituted a program called Home for Dinner, to help physicians use MiChart more efficiently. Provider exhaustion is a significant issue across the medical community. While MiChart, the electronic health record (EHR) at Michigan Medicine, can enhance coordination and quality of care, it can also have unintended negative consequences. Michigan Medicine providers are spending significant time… Read More »
Many cities and residents in Michigan have already begun to feel the effects of climate change. Such changes can damage the environment and public health. Trish Koman, a research investigator for the School of Public Health, and her colleagues have developed the Michigan Environmental Project, an online mapping tool designed to track climate change impacts in Michigan. The new… Read More »
Artificial intelligence that can hold a “real” conversation has long been one of the sci-fi standards of future technology. Enter the Amazon Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge. Among the ten schools from around the world selected to compete is a team from U-M co-advised by assistant professor David Jurgens from the School of Information and assistant professor Nikola Banovic in… Read More »
An interdisciplinary group of U-M researchers turned to Twitter to see whether online discussions about food can help inform policy makers. They used community-based surveys to gather demographic and health-related behavior information that might help explain health status and disparities between groups, and whether there were differences between how groups of residents of a given region discussed food. Their… Read More »
With a shortage of new tuberculosis drugs in the pipeline, a software tool from U-M can predict how current drugs can be combined in new ways to create more effective treatments. Dubbed INDIGO (INferring Drug Interactions using chemoGenomics and Orthology) the application can also identify the genes that control these drug responses. “This could replace our traditional trial-and-error… Read More »
Silicon integrated circuits, which are used in computer processors, are approaching the maximum feasible density of transistors on a single chip—at least, in two-dimensional arrays. Now, a team of engineers at U-M have stacked a second layer of transistors directly atop a state-of-the-art silicon chip. They propose that their design could remove the need for a second chip… Read More »
The percentage of websites protected with HTTPS secure encryption—indicated by the lock icon in the address bar of most browsers—has jumped from just over 40% in 2016 to 80% today. That’s largely due to the efforts of Let’s Encrypt, a nonprofit certificate authority co-founded in 2013 by J. Alex Halderman, a U-M professor of computer science and engineering.… Read More »
U-M began creating online learning content over a decade ago. Since then, over six million students have enrolled for these courses, a tenth from India. Coursera, the US-based edtech platform that U-M partners with, has 4.8 million users in India. U-M’s online course “Programming for everyone” is the second-most popular in the country. During his recent visit to… Read More »
As the largest college on campus, LSA has hundreds of changes to courses and degree requirements every year—changes that must be coordinated between LSA departments and the Registrar’s Office. That process just became easier with the recent completion of the Course List Update project (CLU) led by Matt Olex, a senior application architect in LSA Technology Services. M-Pathways… Read More »
During the week of October 21, 2019, healthcare data and analytics practitioners from across the U.S. and Canada descended upon Ann Arbor to participate in the annual conference of the Healthcare Data & Analytics Association (HDAA)—hosted by Michigan Medicine. The theme of this year’s conference was The Art of Data & Analytics. Almost 400 attendees from more than 140… Read More »
On October 15, LSA Technology Services hosted the second Technology Tools for Teaching event, where presenters demonstrated a variety of learning technologies. Over 100 participants visited 23 team stations set up in the Biological Sciences Building. LSA Technology Services partnered with Academic Innovation, The Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT), Information and Technology Services (ITS) Teaching and… Read More »
The relationship between research and IT is complex. Erin Dietrich, HITS senior director, and her team team are on a mission to strengthen the relationship between researchers and HITS, improve the customer experience, and raise awareness of IT services. “In developing a strategy and vision for research IT, we have focused on defining the services needed to support… Read More »
A team of researchers including Kevin Fu and Daniel Genkin, U-M professors of electrical engineering and computer science, have found a way to take over Google Home, Amazon’s Alexa, or Apple’s Siri devices from hundreds of feet away by shining laser pointers, and even flashlights, at the devices’ microphones. “We’ve shown that hijacking voice assistants only requires line-of-sight… Read More »
Data science is an important tool that can help researchers tackle challenges ranging from mobility and health to public safety and education. But having access to information comes with great responsibility, so researchers at the University of Michigan are working to ensure data science is not misused to disproportionately harm underrepresented groups.
U-M will anchor the Detroit Center for Innovation, a 14-acre center in downtown Detroit aimed at stimulating entrepreneurial activity, educating students and further diversifying the regional economy. The center will be designed to provide a new talent pipeline to current companies and attract new businesses to the area. In accepting the invitation to be a key partner in… Read More »
Blocks, books and bikes used to be the staples of childhood. But as more kids grow up with a seemingly endless menu of virtual activities offered through digital media, child development experts worry about the wane of traditional playtime. Jenny Radesky, a pediatrician at U-M’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, who is addressing the topic at the national American Academy of Pediatrics meeting in… Read More »
UM-Dearborn Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science Mohamed Abouelenien is exploring whether machine learning can help create a customized, responsive climate control system that would automatically detect a person’s level of “thermal comfort” and then make continuous adjustments to their environment. Abouelenien and his collaborator, UM-Flint Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Mihai Burzo, used a thermal camera… Read More »