This week’s MiXR Studios podcast focused on diversity, race, ethnicity, and gender related to embodiment virtual reality (VR) in conversation with Lisa Nakamura and Chris Quintana. Nakamura and Quintana discussed their XR experiences in the humanities and the possibilities of creating an XR classroom to study affordances in society and culture. Nakamura explained how she constructed a course… Read More »
The University of Michigan’s Bioastronautics and Life Support System (BLiSS) was selected by NASA, in partnership with the National Space Grant Foundation, to develop innovative design ideas that will help NASA advance and execute its Artemis project objectives. BLiSS is a student-run research team at U-M open to undergraduate and graduate students. It was founded by Daniil Abramov… Read More »
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s (DTRA) has announced it is rewarding $51.5 million of funding to the newly formed Interaction of Ionizing Radiation with Matter University Research Alliance (IIRM-URA) program. IIRM-URA is comprised of 12 universities and 8 partner institutions, national laboratories, and industrial companies. The University of Michigan is one of IIRM-URA’s four permanent university members. IIRM-URA… Read More »
As lockdown restrictions lift, COVID-19 is changing how we use indoor spaces, challenging those who manage these spaces, from homes to offices to factories. One of the biggest challenges concerns heating and cooling. In response to the need for smart, more flexible climate control to keep people comfortable without heating and cooling entire empty buildings, researchers from the… Read More »
A team of researchers from the University of Michigan, Microsoft Research, and Carnegie Mellon have created Armada, a system that uses a technique called formal verification to prove whether a piece of software will output what it is designed to produce without bugs. Armada targets software that uses concurrent execution, a method of performance boosting, and passes systems… Read More »
After more than forty years of experience in institutional and global service, Prof. Nikolaos Katopodes’s CV lists a litany of awards, presentations, visiting professorships, and publications. Katopodes earned his BSc from Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece, before receiving his MS and PhD in Engineering at the University of California at Davis. Following his service in the Greek Army… Read More »
Wendy Skinner, like thousands of K-12 Michigan teachers, wasn’t sure where to turn when the Michigan Department of Education released its “Learning at a Distance” guidelines in early April which required teachers to continue student learning at home during the pandemic. Looking for guidance, Skinner attended a webinar on the Collabrify Roadmap Platform. Roadmaps, developed by the Center… Read More »
Students in a Michigan Engineering spring/summer course called “Software against COVID-19,” taught by David Chesney, are working on six projects to help people during the COVID-19 pandemic. The course is usually called “Software for Accessibility,” but Chesney, the Toby Teorey Collegiate Lecturer in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, decided to offer this special session from May through August. … Read More »
Sarah Keane, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, was chosen by the Pew Charitable Trust to join the Pew Scholars program in the Biomedical Sciences. Keane is one of only 22 early-career researchers to be selected for the program. Keane and other scholars will receive funding for four years to invest in foundational research in pursuit… Read More »
On May 28, 2020, the XR Initiative brought faculty and staff from the University of Michigan and institutions across the globe to explore how Extended Reality (XR) could be used to deliver hybrid teaching and learning during a four-hour teaching symposium. More than 150 people attended the symposium to share learning goals and objectives for their areas of… Read More »
Although there are many benefits to the smart internet of things (IoT), like being able to ask a speaker questions and receive immediate answers, security and privacy for these devices remain a challenge. To address this, a team of researchers from seven universities will work together on a national research project on the life cycle of security, privacy,… Read More »
Prof. Herbert Winful has been given the IEEE Photonics Society Quantum Electronics Award “for pioneering the field of nonlinear optical periodic structures and for foundational contributions to nonlinear dynamics of semiconductor laser arrays.” Herbert Winful is a professor of electrical engineering, computer science, and physics at U-M. He earned a BS degree in electrical engineering from MIT in… Read More »
![A heat map of thermogenic fat cells [artistic rendering]. (Image courtesy of Life Sciences Institute, multimedia designer Rajani Arora.)](https://michigan.it.umich.edu/news/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/u-m-researchers-identify-new-approach-to-turning-on-the-heat-in-energy-burning-fat-cells-LEAD-scaled-1-200x140.jpg)
Researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered a new set of signals that cells send and receive to prompt one type of fat cell to convert fat into heat. The signaling pathway was found in mice and has potential implications for activating this same type of thermogenic fat in humans. Thermogenic fat cells, also known as beige… Read More »
Lei Ying, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science, is developing algorithms to quickly and accurately identify COVID-19 “patient zero” and reconstruct the virus’s path with limited information. Ying’s approach combines big data, network science, and stochastic systems, using information such as human mobility data, social network data, and genetic network analysis to track the spread of… Read More »
University of Michigan students from the Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint campuses have free access for a limited time to more than 4,000 learning experiences from top universities and industries through the new Coursera for Campus initiative. With more than 70% of the world’s students impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, Coursera worked with its partners, including U-M, to provide free… Read More »
The first step of preparation for hybrid teaching, with some in-person time and some remote time, is to plan what activities will have the strongest impact done synchronously (live, at the same time). Synchronous time, whether in-person or via videoconference, is a precious resource in hybrid courses. Do not use your synchronous time for extended lectures, demonstrations, or… Read More »
The model is a practical method for robots to look for target items in complex, realistic environments. Robots can learn how to find things faster by learning how different objects around the house are related, according to work from the University of Michigan. A new model provides robots with a visual search strategy that can teach them to… Read More »
The virtual interviewer uses therapeutic writing techniques to help users cope with difficult situations. A virtual interviewer powered by natural language processing offers socially-distanced support for people facing trying times. The dialogue system, designed by a collaborative team from the University of Michigan and the University of Texas at Austin, takes inspiration from counseling strategies like motivational interviewing… Read More »
Accessible materials are a good basic practice precisely because they are often easier for all students to understand and process. Creating accessible materials helps all learners in your course and provides them with equal access to course materials and learning opportunities. Digital accessibility like consistent semantic markup and clean links makes it easier for everyone to navigate and… Read More »
ECE Senior Electronics Technician Jesse Cross and MSEL Assistant Director Shawn Simone both have their assigned 50-pound MakerBot Replicator 3D printers running on their kitchen tables. Senior engineering technician Matt Brown figured out the basement was the best place to muffle the printer’s regular “beeps and boops.” And Engineering Technician Josh Postell tucked his in a spare bedroom… Read More »