Many cities and residents in Michigan have already begun to feel the effects of climate change. Such changes can damage the environment and public health. Trish Koman, a research investigator for the School of Public Health, and her colleagues have developed the Michigan Environmental Project, an online mapping tool designed to track climate change impacts in Michigan. The new… Read More »
Artificial intelligence that can hold a “real” conversation has long been one of the sci-fi standards of future technology. Enter the Amazon Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge. Among the ten schools from around the world selected to compete is a team from U-M co-advised by assistant professor David Jurgens from the School of Information and assistant professor Nikola Banovic in… Read More »
Svetla Sytch joined ITS Information Assurance (IA) as assistant director of privacy and IT policy on November 25. In this role, she will work with partners across the university to craft strategies and lead operational efforts that weave privacy, policy, and data governance into the way the university engages in its teaching, learning, research and administrative activities. “Svetla… Read More »
Mobius is a mobile-friendly, web-based portal that helps students, facility managers, faculty, and staff find the tools they need, and how to access the makerspaces that are available to them. Mobius is available to all members of U-M. Designed by MIT, Mobius helps members of the Make Impact Consortium navigate the vast array of resources used to make,… Read More »
An interdisciplinary group of U-M researchers turned to Twitter to see whether online discussions about food can help inform policy makers. They used community-based surveys to gather demographic and health-related behavior information that might help explain health status and disparities between groups, and whether there were differences between how groups of residents of a given region discussed food. Their… Read More »
With a shortage of new tuberculosis drugs in the pipeline, a software tool from U-M can predict how current drugs can be combined in new ways to create more effective treatments. Dubbed INDIGO (INferring Drug Interactions using chemoGenomics and Orthology) the application can also identify the genes that control these drug responses. “This could replace our traditional trial-and-error… Read More »
On November 19, 2019, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) named several award winners, including ARC-TS research cloud programmer senior, Bob Killen. Killen was one of six to earn the “Chop Wood Carry Water” award, given to CNCF community members who help behind the scenes, dedicate their time to open source projects, host and build community meetups, and… Read More »
Silicon integrated circuits, which are used in computer processors, are approaching the maximum feasible density of transistors on a single chip—at least, in two-dimensional arrays. Now, a team of engineers at U-M have stacked a second layer of transistors directly atop a state-of-the-art silicon chip. They propose that their design could remove the need for a second chip… Read More »
The Michigan Council of Women in Technology Foundation named Diane Jones its “Woman of the Year in Technology.” Jones is executive director of administration for Information and Technology Services and the Office of the CIO. The award recognizes women in Michigan leading or driving change for other women in information technology careers or fields of study. Jones has… Read More »
The Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS) recently announced the awardees of its first round of Propelling Original Data Science (PODS) Grants. Fifteen interdisciplinary teams will receive over $1 million in combined funding support for an array of exciting projects with data science as the common thread. The projects range from detecting patterns of illicit wildlife trade networks, to… Read More »
The percentage of websites protected with HTTPS secure encryption—indicated by the lock icon in the address bar of most browsers—has jumped from just over 40% in 2016 to 80% today. That’s largely due to the efforts of Let’s Encrypt, a nonprofit certificate authority co-founded in 2013 by J. Alex Halderman, a U-M professor of computer science and engineering.… Read More »
U-M began creating online learning content over a decade ago. Since then, over six million students have enrolled for these courses, a tenth from India. Coursera, the US-based edtech platform that U-M partners with, has 4.8 million users in India. U-M’s online course “Programming for everyone” is the second-most popular in the country. During his recent visit to… Read More »
The Sloan Equity and Inclusion in STEM Introductory Courses project has agreed to incorporate ECoach, a learning tool developed at the University of Michigan, into new STEM courses at all participating institutions.
Temporary social profiles are being used for more than just online scams and disinformation. Tawfiq Ammari, a PhD candidate in the School of Information, says these “throwaway” accounts might help adults collect helpful comments and feedback on “socially stigmatizing” topics such as divorce, postpartum depression, and mental health.
Researchers from U-M, Cornell University, and the Nairobi Play project studied the social and cultural effects of computer science classes. The researchers found that computer science classes can encourage children to work together overcome cultural barriers. Kentaro Toyama, a professor in the School of Information, was part of the team. The researchers interviewed and observed children from a… Read More »
University of Michigan researchers are studying the Russian government’s widespread internet censorship and monitoring. Its campaign to control its citizen’s access to the internet is easily exportable, even in a decentralized internet service environment.
UM-Dearborn’s professor Birhanu Eshete, computer science, is developing new technology to keep up with malicious parties on the dark web. Eshete is in a continuous race against cyberattackers who wield weapons that are ever-evolving.
A team of researchers including Kevin Fu and Daniel Genkin, U-M professors of electrical engineering and computer science, have found a way to take over Google Home, Amazon’s Alexa, or Apple’s Siri devices from hundreds of feet away by shining laser pointers, and even flashlights, at the devices’ microphones. “We’ve shown that hijacking voice assistants only requires line-of-sight… Read More »
Data science is an important tool that can help researchers tackle challenges ranging from mobility and health to public safety and education. But having access to information comes with great responsibility, so researchers at the University of Michigan are working to ensure data science is not misused to disproportionately harm underrepresented groups.
Perry Samson, U-M atmospheric science professor, has developed a backchannel tool to encourage his students to ask questions during class. He says this new participation model has increased the overall level of inquiry in his classes and has allowed underrepresented student’s voices to be heard.