Category Archives: Campus News

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UMSI researchers to present award-winning research at virtual 2020 CSCW

By | October 16, 2020
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CSCW logo 2020

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

By | October 16, 2020
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African American teacher on screen with students around perimeter

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

By | October 16, 2020
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Swarm logo

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

By | October 15, 2020
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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

By | October 14, 2020
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Prototype Nation book cover

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

By | October 14, 2020
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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

By | October 14, 2020
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Doctor in white lab coat sitting at laptop. Overalay of medical and data icons.

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 »

CoE’s Baris Kasikci recognized as rising star by Intel

By | October 13, 2020
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Baris Kasikci

Baris Kasikci, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, has been selected as a recipient of Intel’s Rising Star Award, which recognizes early career faculty who show great promise in developing future computing technologies. The program also fosters long-term collaborative relationships with senior technical leaders at Intel. Kasikci’s work is at the intersection of software systems, computer… Read More »

Library IT overhauls its portfolio management system

By | October 12, 2020
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M Library logo

Academic library service portfolios are mostly a mix of big to small strategic initiatives and tactical projects. Some are well-defined development projects with a fixed timeline, while others are ongoing support and legacy systems needing IT resources in order to update and sustain them. The needs and aspirations of the service and programmatic areas of the library are… Read More »

Using machine learning to study wildlife refuge wetlands habitats

By | October 9, 2020
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A U-M School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) student team is working with the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge to study how fish move through different wetland habitats. Their work is primarily dependent on being in the field, but in March the pandemic delayed fieldwork. In June, the team of SEAS master students was allowed to begin socially distant… Read More »

Hardware model checker takes gold at international competition

By | October 5, 2020
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illustration of computer chip

Work by Karem Sakallah, professor of computer science and engineering, and PhD student Aman Goel took first place at the 11th edition of the Hardware Model Checking Competition, an event hosted by the Conference on Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design to determine the best current method for formally verifying a hardware system. The event featured nine categories composed… Read More »

COVID-19 dashboard adds data sets, gets high rating from researchers

By | September 25, 2020
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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 named inaugural Consumer Reports Digital Lab Fellow

By | September 25, 2020
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Roya Ensafi

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 »

Movement science students test latest tech in on-campus course

By | September 24, 2020
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Female athlete wearing mask measuring blood oxygen. Two researchers in BG.

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 »

U-M professor’s ‘fractal simulation tools’ appear in new TV series

By | September 21, 2020
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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 »

UM-Flint will create College of Innovation & Technology

By | September 18, 2020
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(Image of a computer monitor showing code in a dark, glowing pinkish purple room with a man typing on the keyboard.)

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 »

History class as a vehicle for learning computer science

By | September 18, 2020
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Prof. Mark Guzdial

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 »

U-M startup SkyGig aims to take 5G to the next level

By | September 17, 2020
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skygig logo

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 »

High school teacher uses U-M developed role playing simulation tool to keep students engaged

By | September 16, 2020
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ViewPoint logo

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 »