News Staff

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Author Archives: News Staff

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

By | November 25, 2020
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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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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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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 »

‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies

By | November 17, 2020
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Navigate this 3D world map by clicking, holding and dragging the mouse cursor. See how censorship levels range around the globe. The largest collection of public internet censorship data ever compiled shows that even citizens of the world’s freest countries are not safe from internet censorship. A U-M team used Censored Planet, an automated censorship tracking system launched… Read More »

First digital single-chip millimeter-wave beamformer will exploit 5G capabilities

By | November 17, 2020
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The first fully-integrated single-chip digital millimeter-wave (MMW) beamformer, created by electrical and computer engineers at U-M, opens up new possibilities in high-frequency 5G communications. The technology could be used to improve vehicle-to-vehicle communication, autonomous driving, satellite internet, and national defense, to name a few. Beamforming allows a device that is transmitting signals to point them in a particular… Read More »

Jason Flinn honored with 2020 Mark Weiser Award

By | November 16, 2020
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Jason Flinn

Jason Flinn, professor of computer science and engineering, has been recognized by the ACM Special Interest Group on Operating Systems (SIGOPS) with the 2020 Mark Weiser Award, a preeminent honor in the field of operating systems. The award recognizes a career of contributions “that are highly creative, innovative, and possibly high-risk, in keeping with the visionary spirit of Mark… Read More »

U-M Data Science Annual Symposium covers wide range of topics

By | November 13, 2020
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The Michigan Institute for Data Science held its Data Science Annual Symposium Tuesday, November 10 and Wednesday, November 11. The keynote featured Lauren Klein, English professor at Emory University, and Catherine D’Ignazio, urban science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The pair discussed their book, “Data Feminism,” published last February. Klein and D’Ignazio introduced what they call the… Read More »

Ad-free, censorship-free social sites MeWe, Parler see surge in interest postelection

By | November 12, 2020
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Close-up Photography of Smartphone Icons

Since the Nov. 3 election, people—particularly President Trump supporters—have been flocking to social media platforms Parler and MeWe, which promise ad-free or uncensored experiences. MeWe’s promise is “Your private life is not 4Sale: No ads. No Spyware. No BS.” Parler calls itself “the world’s town square,” inviting participants to “speak freely and express yourself openly.” Libby Hemphill, associate… Read More »

HITS announces the rollout of eduroam across Michigan Medicine; improvements to MWireless-UMHS

By | November 11, 2020
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Wifi_icon2

Health Information Technology & Services (HITS) is excited to announce changes and improvements to two of its WiFi networks across Michigan Medicine in November. Michigan Medicine began offering eduroam on November 9 across all of its buildings, including NCRC, the medical school, hospitals and clinics. The eduroam service is a dual band network that allows visitors from other… Read More »

New ERN trainings announced for November and December

By | November 11, 2020
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Throughout November and December 2020, HITS is partnering with LabArchives to offer unique Electronic Research Notebook (ERN) training opportunities to the U-M community. Two types of training sessions will be offered. The first is an introductory session for researchers to provide basic and refresher information for new and current users. The second session is specifically for educators and… Read More »

Voting counts: How U-M grad students answered the question ‘Did you get my ballot?’

By | October 30, 2020
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This election year in Michigan has seen a huge increase in absentee ballot requests. As a result, clerk’s offices are spending a lot of time answering phone calls from voters checking on the status of their ballot. School of Information graduate students Lauren Trimble, Joshua Tooker, and Michael Payne worked this summer on a pilot project to streamline… Read More »

Join weekly CoderSpaces to get research compute support

By | October 29, 2020
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Logos for ARC-TS and ISR, and headshots of the experts that are in the shape of a hexagon.

If you are grappling with a piece of code, trying to compute on a cluster, or just getting started with a new method such as machine learning, CoderSpaces can help. All members of the U-M community are invited to join the weekly virtual CoderSpaces starting Monday, November 3, 2020, to get research support and connect with others.  The… Read More »

Google case study features U-M student learning tool

By | October 29, 2020
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MyLA logo

Google recently featured a case study of U-M’s My Learning Analytics (MyLA) tool as part of its G Suite for Education Higher Ed support materials. Working with Google and Unizin, ITS developed My Learning Analytics (MyLA), a data analytics tool that visualizes course data and activities so students can monitor their own learning behaviors. MyLA uses the Unizin Common Data Model… Read More »