Author Archives: News Staff
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.
Extended reality holds immense potential as a teaching tool, especially in today’s increasingly online instructional environment. On Thursday, October 29 from 1-2:30 p.m., Academic Innovation at Michigan (AIM) will feature an immersive experience using the virtual platform, VirBELA. AIM Extended Reality (XR): Developing a Chemotherapy Treatment Simulation in Virtual Reality with Professor Michelle Aebersold will share her experience working in virtual… Read More »
Self-erasing chips developed at U-M could help stop counterfeit electronics or provide alerts if sensitive shipments are tampered with. They rely on a new material that temporarily stores energy, changing the color of the light it emits. It self-erases in a matter of days, or it can be erased on demand with a flash of blue light. With… Read More »
U-M’s COVID-19 data dashboard earned high marks in a recent evaluation by a team of Yale and Harvard researchers. “We Rate Covid Dashboards,” a new Twitter account and website that grades pandemic dashboards created by colleges and universities, awarded U-M an “A” grade for being easy to read, sharing community data trends, and identifying how many students are… Read More »
Roya Ensafi, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, has been named an inaugural Digital Lab Fellow by Consumer Reports, with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The 2020-21 cohort consists of five public interest technology researchers from around the world, working on a 10 month collaboration with support and a stipend. As a fellow, Ensafi will… Read More »
The kinesiology students in Scientific Inquiry Using Wearable Technology class represent one of four groups that came to campus to experience the lab-based course that uses the latest technology to study how movement and function impact health. The experiment the team designed uses a Bioharness3 worn as a chest strap, a Biostrap worn on the arm (new technology… Read More »
A fractal is a pattern that repeats itself at different scales and is ideal for modeling nature. But modern computer scientists aren’t the only ones to use fractals—Africans have been using them for centuries to design textiles, sculptures, architecture, hairstyles and more. U-M professor Ron Eglash is widely known for his work in the field of ethnomathematics—particularly for… Read More »
A new, cutting-edge academic unit at UM-Flint will open in 2021 that will educate and prepare students for key roles in the diverse technical career fields of the 21st century. The U-M Board of Regents enthusiastically approved the establishment of the new College of Innovation & Technology at its Sept. 17 meeting. UM-Flint will join a small group… Read More »
Mark Guzdial, professor in computer science, wants more people to have access to the power of programming, so he has proposed a new way to engage high school students: integrate the use of purpose-built computer science tools that include programming into history courses. Under a new grant from the National Science Foundation, Guzdial is working with high school… Read More »
Two U-M researchers are steadily building their young company, SkyGig, to bring the next generation of high-speed wireless connectivity to the 5G ecosystem, satellite communications (Satcom), and beyond. Since founding the company in 2019, co-founders Armin Jam and Avish Kosari have attracted $1M in new funding and are now expanding their team to accelerate development and commercialization of… Read More »
New York-based high school teacher Sean Swider knew he had to develop a creative project to keep his advanced history students engaged, especially after a transition to remote learning. Swider then discovered the U-M role-playing simulation tool ViewPoint and decided to simulate an oil spill disaster. Modeled after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, Swider created the… Read More »
For the last two years, a project team of the U-M Library I.T. Division has been working on the redesign of the library’s primary website at lib.umich.edu, which launched in July. It features new technology infrastructure, designs, and information architecture, as well as fully rewritten content. “The response to the new site has been overwhelmingly positive,” writes project lead… Read More »
A field of study called human pose estimation focuses on teaching AI to identify how a person in an image or video is positioned. However, current models typically use videos with an entire person fully in view. Of the huge libraries of video content uploaded to public websites, only around 4% ever show an entire person. New research… Read More »
Google.org announced that a team of School of Information (UMSI) researchers has been selected to receive funding as part of the company’s efforts to support projects using innovative artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics to help understand COVID-19 and address its impacts. Faculty members Tiffany Veinot, Vinod Vydiswaran, Lorraine Buis, and Anna Laurie will receive $200,000 in funds to… Read More »
A 3D bioengineered model of lung tissue built by U-M researchers is poking holes in decades worth of flat, Petri dish observations into how the deadly disease pulmonary fibrosis progresses. Some clinicians are concerned that critically ill COVID-19 patients may develop a form of pulmonary fibrosis after a long stay in the ICU. Researchers are searching for better treatments.… Read More »
U-M classes are overwhelming being taught remotely this semester. This means that some instructors may, for a variety of reasons, wish to record their classes. The Safe Computing website has guidelines for instructors who plan to record class activities. Recordings where students can be identified—from in-person sessions or remote instruction via Zoom, BlueJeans, or any other videoconferencing application—are:… Read More »
In the course “Cybersecurity for Future Leaders” (EECS 498 / PUBPOL 475), students will gain a better understanding of the science, technology, public policy, and national security considerations behind cybersecurity in order to protect the very tenets of democracy. Election security will be one of the course’s six focus areas this fall 2020. The course is taught from… Read More »
In a new Center for Academic Innovation Teach-Out, Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at Graphika, an online social media monitoring company, outlines tactics everyday people can use to anticipate, spot, and react to disinformation from potential “threat actors.” He calls it the “Four D’s” — Dismiss, Distract, Distort, and Dismay. The Disinformation, Misinformation, and Fake News Teach-Out helps people understand the… Read More »
Although federal privacy laws prohibit digital platforms from storing and sharing children’s personal information without verifiable parental consent, a study led by U-M researchers finds that those rules aren’t always enforced, and privacy violations are most likely to affect children from lower-education households. Children raised by parents without college degrees showed two to three times higher rates of… Read More »
Solar storms and other space weather events have the potential to impact society on a national or global scale. U-M researchers lead two multimillion-dollar projects to improve forecasting by developing next-generation space weather modeling software. Funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA, the U-M projects aim to accurately predict solar storms and coronal mass ejections and to… Read More »