Author Archives: News Staff
As artificial intelligence applications grow and multiply, researchers have been racing to design a new generation of hardware that meets the unique computational needs of those applications. The market for these “AI chips” is booming, and a key player in this new space is Palo Alto based SambaNova Systems. SambaNova, now a unicorn valued at over $2.5 billion,… Read More »
Researchers across campus can now directly query, via SQL server, a de-identified version of the Research Data Warehouse, which includes all 4 million unique Michigan Medicine patients. Learn how to leverage this resource and more Precision Health resources through our updated documentation site (accessible with a Level 1 UMICH login) and video demos and how-to’s. Precision Health has expanded its offerings… Read More »
A new three-course online specialization on extended reality developed by Michael Nebeling, an assistant professor with both the School of Information and the College of Engineering, and a team at the U-M Center for Academic Innovation has something for everyone—from novices to the most advanced users, designers, and developers. Extended reality, or XR, is the term for technology… Read More »
As we close out 2020, Information and Technology Services would like to thank our Michigan IT colleagues, faculty, staff, and students for their flexibility and willingness to adapt to so many changes this year. Happy holidays and best wishes for the winter term! Visit the ITS website for IT resources to make 2021 a successful new year.
A significant challenge facing a wide variety of disciplines is the ability to reproduce research results. Researchers across U-M are working together to develop best practices that promote reproducible data science, and Michigan IT staff play an important role in this effort. “Many IT staff members don’t normally get involved directly in specific research projects, so the reproducibility… Read More »
Just five years ago, most websites relied on unencrypted HTTP, the aging and inherently insecure protocol that provides no protection to sites or visitors from threats that range from surveillance through phishing and identity theft. Today, the internet is a much more secure place, with over 80% of websites protected by HTTPS secure encryption. That dramatic transformation –… Read More »
The MiXR Studios Podcast exists to educate the University of Michigan community about what is happening in XR (Extended Reality) on campus. It will share best practices and exciting learnings while helping to shape the future of teaching and learning in higher education and beyond.
When it comes to making human resources decisions, can humans be fair? What about relying on algorithms to make decisions instead? The answer to the first question is not always, which leads some business leaders to pursue the second. Yet, it turns out decisions made by machines are perceived as even less fair than those made by humans.… Read More »
Almost a month after Election Day, experts discussed the threats to election security and cybersecurity and its role within the University of Michigan community in the second installment of the Trotter Distinguished Leadership Series. Javed Ali, former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, discussed the connections between technology and election security. Ali said the shift towards paper… Read More »
At a public event celebrating LGBTQ+ inclusion, the International Business Machines Corporation presented Lynn Conway, professor emerita of electrical engineering and computer science, with a rare lifetime achievement award. The award accompanied IBM’s apology to Conway, which came 52 years after the company fired her for coming out as transgender. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Conway… Read More »
The National Security Agency recently recognized a major breakthrough in the field of side-channel attacks as the winner of the 2020 Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper competition. Daniel Genkin, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, worked on the paper with collaborators from around the world. The winning paper, describing an exploit called Spectre, broke open a new… Read More »
U-M researchers say employing a conversational assistant could be one way to narrow the gap in health disparities impacting the African American community, particularly around the current COVID-19 pandemic. Lionel Robert, associate professor at the School of Information and senior author of a study in the journal Digital Government: Research & Practice, says a technological solution could keep… Read More »
In 2018, U-M Industrial and Operations Engineering (IOE) faculty set their sights on fully-preparing students for the modern workforce and advanced studies by incorporating computing and data analytics into many existing courses, creating a new advanced analytics course for seniors, and implementing a new help desk to support students. One of the main changes was to emphasize R and Python… Read More »
A recent report by Michigan Medicine and non-profit Common Sense Media finds children are often consuming pervasive and inappropriate advertising, violence, and other questionable content while watching online videos. Children ages eight and under are now spending more time on YouTube than ever before, with online video viewing for the first time surpassing live television and streaming video… Read More »
Computer Science And Engineering held its seventeenth annual CSE Graduate Student Honors Competition on November 11, 2020. The competition recognizes the research done by PhD students at CSE and the final competition is the culmination of a process that narrows a field of entrants to a handful of finalists, each of whom gives a summary presentation on an… Read More »
By distilling information from hundreds of data sources, U-M Precision Health researchers have launched an open-access, online repository called Cancer PRSWeb that will help accelerate advancements in cancer prevention and prediction. The researchers created polygenic risk scores (PRS) for 35 cancer traits and then evaluated the scores using electronic health record data from the Michigan Genomics Initiative and the… Read More »
U-M Dearborn founded the Dearborn Artificial Intelligence Research Center less than a year ago with a strategy of “think big, start small, and scale fast.” Organizers have already made impressive progress toward making AI one of Dearborn’s topline areas for research, education, and industry collaboration. Over the past year, several DAIR Center projects have won funding and the… Read More »
Samir Rawashdeh, UM-Dearborn assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and a colleague have developed RehabBuddy, a physical therapy system that employs a wearable sensor that records a “map” of the correct movement of exercises. The RehabBuddy system starts with an in-person visit to a physical therapist. The patient wears a small sensor that records a “map” of… Read More »
A team of undergraduate students is on the path to releasing a commercial video game with Yolked – a game that began life as their final project in EECS 494, Introduction to Video Game Development. This is the first time that a team from the class has signed a funded publishing deal to deliver a polished up version of their… Read More »
U-M’s Extended Reality (XR) Initiative, a part of the Center for Academic Innovation, received $120,000 from an Epic Games MegaGrant. CAI will use the funds to hire 20-30 student fellows over the next two years and educate them in different tools and processes like Unreal Engine, a game engine developed by the company Epic Games. “While the university has… Read More »