Author Archives: News Staff
Voting counts: How U-M grad students answered the question ‘Did you get my ballot?’
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
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
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 »
Tracking monarch butterfly migration with the world’s smallest computer
In a project funded by National Geographic, electrical and computer engineering researchers are teaming up with the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology to advance our understanding of monarch butterfly migration with the most ambitious iteration of the Michigan Micro Mote yet. The M3, created by David Blaauw, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and several other… Read More »
Pearson to lead UM-Flint’s new College of Innovation & Technology
A UM-Flint physics professor will take the helm of the new College of Innovation & Technology that is being established on the Flint campus. Christopher A. Pearson was approved as the inaugural dean of the college at the Oct. 22 Board of Regents meeting. Pearson begins his duties Nov. 1. He currently is the associate dean of the College… Read More »
Why don’t we click on some social media posts?
Why do we click on some social media posts but not on others, even if we’ve taken the time to read and think about them? That’s what researchers at the School of Information asked in a recent study, taking a deeper dive to better understand a concept they coined as the “non-click.” Their study found that the decision… Read More »
CISO Tuesdays features U-M’s Sol Bermann
CISO Tuesdays is a Medium blog, crowdsourced from higher education, that provides a snapshot of a “typical” day for a chief information security officer. Recently, U-M’s own CISO, Sol Bermann, shared a post describing how the pandemic has less changed things in regard to information security and higher ed, but rather simply “made them more.” Entitled My days… Read More »
Google lawsuit could have downstream chilling effect on emerging tech startups
The U.S. government’s lawsuit alleging violations of antitrust laws by technology giant Google marks a new era of uncertainty for emerging startup companies in Southeast Michigan and beyond, according to Erik Gordon, a clinical assistant professor at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business. The immediate impact of the lawsuit, said Gordon in a recent story in Crain’s Detroit Business, will… Read More »
Support extended for program to engage underrepresented students in CS research
A team led by computer science professor Rada Mihalcea has been awarded a Google grant to continue a program designed to expose undergraduate students to computer science research, specifically aiming to encourage women and underrepresented minority students. The project earned $10,000 from Google’s exploreCSR: Google Grant Pilot Program for Undergraduate Computer Science Research Focused Workshops for Women. The… Read More »
CSE researchers report over $10M in research grants last quarter
Researchers in Computer Science And Engineering earned over $10M in research grants in the first quarter of the 2021 U-M fiscal year (July–October, 2020). The awards were distributed to 18 different primary investigators from sponsors including the NSF, the State Department, and the Department of Defense. The projects are listed below, most of which began work between July… Read More »
Online news needs a new pay model, UMSI study shows
The revenue model that has sustained the newspaper industry for centuries no longer works in the digital age, but another age-old concept with some modern adaptations could be the answer to profitability, says Paramveer Dhillon, assistant professor at the School of Information. As newspaper and other similar content has gone digital over recent years, publishers have tried several… Read More »
How to protect your online calls from ‘Zoom-bombing’
The Michigan Daily recently spoke to experts on campus — including Ravi Pendse, vice president for information technology and chief information officer, and Kyle Lindsey and Hanah Stiverson, two doctoral students who are working on a book with Professor Lisa Nakamura about Zoom-bombing — to compile a list of tips to ensure calls for classes or clubs remain… Read More »
UMSI researchers to present award-winning research at virtual 2020 CSCW
U-M School of Information (UMSI) faculty and PhD students are presenting nearly two dozen papers, posters and workshops at the 2020 ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) October 17-21. Two UMSI researchers have earned an honorable mention designation for their paper, and three more received the conference’s Diversity and Inclusion Recognition for their research. UMSI researchers were also… Read More »
UM-Dearborn’s effort to help teachers is paying off big in some area classrooms
Teachers face some serious challenges this school year. But the innovation that’s happening amidst the chaos should give us hope for the future, says U-M Dearborn’s Stein Brunvand, associate dean and professor of educational technology with the College of Education, Health, and Human Services Back in the summer, Brunvard led a free workshop for 33 area teachers and… Read More »
U-M alum expands new global communications network
U-M alum Sara Spangelo, co-founder and CEO of Swarm, is establishing the world’s lowest-cost global communications network for customers in remote locations by using breakthrough satellite and ground hardware technology. In September, Swarm launched its first 12 commercial satellites from the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou, French Guiana. This set of 12 satellites joins Swarm’s existing nine experimental satellites. The company… Read More »
Professor rolls with changes in the digital media world
Since Lisa Nakamura began teaching courses about digital media in 2001, the course themes have evolved every year to match the fast-paced change within the online world. In addition to the changes within digital environments, student interests and aspirations have also changed. “I see more that students want to build an app that helps society,” she says. “There’s… Read More »
SI’s Silvia Lindtner examines China’s place in the global IT industry
Silvia Lindtner, an associate professor at U-M’s School of Information, is the author of the new book Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation, which tells the story of China’s shifting place in global geopolitics and its contested place in the global tech industry. It is the culmination of nearly a decade of research Lindtner conducted in China, Silicon… Read More »
Turning chaos into quality: HITS makes improvements during pandemic
COVID-19 created many challenges for health care organizations like Michigan Medicine as faculty and staff had to balance providing world-class patient care with keeping their colleagues and themselves safe. This transition impacted every department, most notably Health Information Technology & Services (HITS). “Shifting to a remote work environment is not as simple as taking your computer to a… Read More »
New framework developed at U-M helps streamline EHR data extraction
A cross-disciplinary team of researchers from U-M have developed an open-source framework that streamlines the preprocessing of data extracted from the electronic health record. The framework, which the researchers call FIDDLE (Flexible Data-Driven Pipeline), has the power to greatly speed up EHR data preprocessing and assist machine learning (ML) practitioners working with health data, according to a study published in… Read More »