News Staff

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Author Archives: News Staff

New how-to resources and data offerings on Precision Health Analytics Platform

By | December 17, 2020
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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 »

Extended reality: U-M online courses make XR accessible to everyone

By | December 15, 2020
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female student wearing VR headset using hand conrollers, monitor in background

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 »

Season’s Greeting from ITS!

By | December 14, 2020
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Happy Holidays from ITS

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.

Research reproducibility in data science and the role of IT staff

By | December 8, 2020
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two men looking at a computer screen

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 »

After five years, Let’s Encrypt, a non-profit based on tech developed at Michigan, has helped to secure the internet

By | December 4, 2020
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screens of monitor & smarphone with lock graphic, circle arrows between them

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 »

Algorithm & Blues: Machine-aided personnel decisions aim for fairness, risk side effects

By | December 3, 2020
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womans face superimposed over screen of computer code

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 »

Cybersecurity experts discuss election, research security

By | December 3, 2020
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Ravi Pendse and Javed Ali on Zoom call.

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 »

IBM fired U-M professor Lynn Conway for coming out as trans in 1968. 52 years later, the company apologized

By | December 2, 2020
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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 »

Major side-channel discovery wins NSA contest

By | December 2, 2020
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Spectre ghost image over code in background

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 »

Conversational assistants could be used to improve African American health around COVID-19

By | December 1, 2020
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hand holding mobile phone with medical graphic

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 »

Engineering undergrads prep for a modern workforce with expanded data analytics courses and support

By | November 25, 2020
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many graphs and magnifying glass on dark blue background

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 »

Young kids’ YouTube viewing dominated by consumerism, ads

By | November 24, 2020
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young boy watching YouTube on a tablet

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 »

2020 CSE Graduate Student Honors Competition highlights outstanding research

By | November 23, 2020
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CSE wordmark

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 »

Democratizing genetic data for cancer research

By | November 20, 2020
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graphic showing to people icons next to DAN strings.

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 »

UM-Dearborn’s artificial intelligence center having great first year

By | November 20, 2020
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DAIR logo

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 »

Dearborn prof’s wearable technology improves at-home physical therapy

By | November 19, 2020
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African American man doing exercise with a dumbell

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 »

Epic MegaGrant will support development of XR projects

By | November 18, 2020
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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 »

New tool automates popular system security technique

By | November 18, 2020
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illustration of sandbox with shovel over computer code background

Working with researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, Xinyu Wang, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, co-authored an award-winning paper that demonstrates how to automatically build sandboxing policies to keep a computer system safe. Sandboxing is a software management strategy that isolates applications from critical system resources and other programs. One common sandbox approach… Read More »