Author Archives: News Staff
Join us Thursday, April 11 from 1:15 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Palmer Commons (100 Washtenaw Ave) for the Academic Innovation Student Showcase, where we will hear from the student fellows that drive innovation within our office. The Academic Innovation Student Showcase is an opportunity for student fellows to share the projects they have been working on throughout their experience with the Office… Read More »
The University of Michigan has joined the Public Interest Technology University Network, a new partnership of 21 colleges and universities dedicated to building the nascent field of public interest technology and growing a new generation of civic-minded technologists. Started by the Ford Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, and New America, the network represents a powerful alignment across sectors as part… Read More »
Ignite UX Michigan is an evening of 5-minute talks on a range of user experience, design, and research topics in Ann Arbor. It is a free event, open to the public, that takes place at The Circ Bar, 210 S 1st St., Ann Arbor. The School of Information is a co-sponsor of this event. Talks Tim Ho – “VUI… Read More »
As members of the U-M community, all staff at U-M in Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint can complete 130+ courses for free through Michigan Online.
Social media companies face increasing scrutiny for amplifying fringe anti-vaccine sentiment amid measles outbreaks in several states like Washington. In response, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest recently made headlines by announcing initiatives to reduce vaccine misinformation on their platforms. Brendan Nyhan, a professor of public policy at the Ford School, recently wrote in “The New York Times” that while… Read More »
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have been getting a big workout from new advancements in AI because they offer significant performance boosts thanks to their parallel computing capabilities. GPUs are employed by large computing clusters to handle huge datasets for deep learning applications. Achieving cost-effectiveness in these clusters relies on efficiently sharing resources between multiple users. However, these systems… Read More »
Since the beginning of the academic year, several LSA classes have been participating in a pilot program of iClicker Reef, a new student response system from Macmillan Learning, to ask a wider variety of questions than traditional iClicker remotes. This pilot program is being used to help the LSA Instructional Support Services weigh in on what advantages the… Read More »
If you are already nervous about computer attacks, here’s some unwelcome news: there are many ways in which our technology is vulnerable based on physics, rather than on software. At the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in mid-February, U-M computer scientist Kevin Fu and his colleagues reported a scary find: your computer hard drive could—without… Read More »
J. Alex Halderman, a U-M professor of computer science and engineering, testified on February 27 in front of the US House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Service and General Government, urging lawmakers to approve additional funding for election cybersecurity prior to the upcoming 2020 elections. Halderman described the need as critical, citing two years of investigation by Congress and… Read More »
Web accessibility is a key ingredient to successful product development that can make or break many peoples’ experience. The U-M Library Digital Accessibility Team (DAT) helps library teams “bake in” web accessibility from the beginning of their projects and helps coordinate accessibility work across the Library. The Library’s Digital Accessibility Team collaborates primarily with U-M Library partners to… Read More »
The power of big data in areas like business analytics and advertising is well established and burgeoning, but a growing movement within data science is exploring applications that benefit society as a whole — not just a single company or client. More than 100 researchers at U-M, in fields ranging from public health and biostatistics to social work… Read More »
Precision Health at U-M is is funding a new use case focused on the effects of wearable and mobile technology on mental health outcomes. The project, “Enhancing Mental Health Care through Mobile Technology,” is led investigators Amy Bohnert and Srijan Sen from Michigan Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry. Researchers will use machine learning to identify key predictors of treatment… Read More »
On February 14, Academic Innovation hosted the first ever Academic Innovation Data Showcase. The event was created to make the ongoing research at Academic Innovation more accessible to the U-M community. More than 90 attendees from across the university, and a few visitors from other institutions, attended the inaugural event. “By putting the focus on data we were… Read More »
School of Information graduate student John Traylor knew the work he was doing in Puerto Rico to shore up communications infrastructure some nine months after Hurricane Maria was important, but it wasn’t until the project was finished that he fully understood the impact. That’s when one of the residents came by and uttered one very recognizable word—”Wi-Fi”—and delightedly… Read More »
U-M is full of rich core resources, but they are often challenging to find. The new Michigan Research Cores web portal enables researchers to easily find and identify the location and capabilities of 70 research cores across campus. Cores are centralized facilities or labs that offer services, equipment, resources and expertise on a recharge basis to scientific researchers.… Read More »
In a finding that runs counter to a common assumption in physics, researchers at U-M ran a light emitting diode (LED) with electrodes reversed in order to cool another device mere nanometers away. The approach could lead to new solid-state cooling technology for future microprocessors. “We have demonstrated a second method for using photons to cool devices,” said… Read More »
Artificial Intelligence has received tremendous attention for its ability to transform how health care uses Electronic Health Records. EHR are already an invaluable tool for organizing a patient’s demographic information and their past and current medical data. EHR can support physician decision-making, help increase the efficiency of administrative processes, and make clinical data available to researchers for advancing… Read More »
By zeroing in on humans’ gait, body symmetry and foot placement, U-M researchers are teaching self-driving cars to recognize and predict pedestrian movements with greater precision than current technologies. Data collected by vehicles allow the researchers to capture video snippets of humans in motion and then recreate them in 3D computer simulation. With that, they’ve created a system… Read More »
A study conducted by U-M professor of public policy Brendan Nyhan suggests that the effect of fake news on the 2016 election has been overestimated. Using laptop/desktop web traffic data from a nationally representative online panel allowed Nyhan and his colleagues to measure who visited fake news sites before the 2016 election with unprecedented precision. “Relatively few people consumed this form… Read More »
From understanding the influence of congressional members’ Twitter accounts to discussing why the global crude oil price rose again after 2016, the second annual Data for Public Good Symposium will showcase the unique ways in which students, faculty, staff and community members have analyzed and assessed data to benefit others. The conference takes place 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Feb.… Read More »