Category Archives: Campus News

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Protecting your privacy in the wake of FaceApp

By | September 2, 2019

In an interview with “Kiplinger” magazine, Florian Schaub, assistant professor in the U-M School of Information, discusses how to protect your data given recent concerns about FaceApp, a Russia-based photo manipulation app whose privacy policy made broad claims about how they might reuse images. According to Schaub, unbundling specific aspects of opt-in privacy policies would provide users more… Read More »

Reclaiming indigenous forms of knowledge through “ethno-computing”

By | August 29, 2019

Ron Eglash, professor of information and of art and design, was recently featured in a wide-ranging interview on NPR affiliate WBEZ’s program Worldview. Eglash discusses his passion for bringing the sophisticated math and computing ideas at the center of cultural traditions to classroom settings to inspire underrepresented students to pursue studies in STEM fields.  According to Eglash, indigenous… Read More »

LSA Technology Services launches new website

A year ago, LSA formed LSA Technology Services to: Provide faculty, students, and staff easier access to service and support. Enhance existing services and provide new services that meet college needs. Offer more opportunities to improve LSA Technology Services staff skills and support professional advancement and development. As part of that effort, we recently revised and relaunched our… Read More »

Great Lakes HPC cluster available for general access

Information and Technology Services is happy to announce that ARC-TS is rolling out the Great Lakes high-performance computing cluster. It is now available for general access to the university community. Until the migration from Flux is complete on November 25, 2019, there will be no charge for using the Great Lakes HPC cluster. Every current Flux user can… Read More »

Inaugural MIDAS Michigan Data Science Fellows cohort announced

The Michigan Institute of Data Science (MIDAS) announced its inagural cohort of seven Michigan Data Science Fellows. The international group of data scientists will bring data science methods to domain sciences and data science application areas. The two-year program offers each data scientist, recent PhDs, the opportunity to work independently on research with scientific and career guidance from… Read More »

Facilitating a smooth technological transition for citizens returning from prison

By | August 16, 2019

Formerly incarcerated individuals—or returning citizens—struggle to find work and reintegrate due to a lack of digital literacy, according to a recently published article by U-M researchers. “For some returning citizens, there’s a ‘Rip Van Winkle effect’ when they are offered digital technology upon reentry,” said Kentaro Toyama, senior author of the study. Many returning citizens rely heavily on… Read More »

Advertising in apps: Decisions behind those targeted, sometimes invasive ads we see

By | August 15, 2019

New research from the School of Information shows those who create the apps we use are not making decisions about which ads are attached to their apps, but they are picking which ad networks are used. And those often-arbitrary choices may be making us vulnerable to questionable ads and data privacy concerns. “Despite this reliance on ads, we… Read More »

Deploying technology, enhancing care: Q&A with Carleen Penoza

Carleen Penoza became Michigan Medicine’s chief nursing informatics officer in April. As CNIO, she leads the strategic planning and deployment of technology for nursing. She previously served as the director of inpatient applications and interim senior director for clinical and operational applications in Health Information Technology & Services (HITS). Michigan Medicine Headlines recently caught up with Penoza to… Read More »

Michigan Medicine makes AI, machine learning a top tech priority

The academic medical center of the University of Michigan is leveraging investments in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics to unlock the value of its health data. According to Andrew Rosenberg, chief information officer for Michigan Medicine, the organization currently has 34 ongoing AI and machine learning projects, 28 of which have principal investigators. “There’s a lot… Read More »

Designing social technology for rural areas

By | August 12, 2019

When we think about the technological divide between urban and rural communities, our minds likely go to infrastructure—a lack of a physical grid, wiring, or towers to connect those in remote communities. While this is a large part of the issue, School of Information doctoral student Jean Hardy says a bigger concern is the lack of innovation in the way… Read More »

U.S. universities confront a security storm in Congress

By | August 9, 2019

Sol Bermann, U-M’s chief information security officer, is quoted in a recent article in “Science” magazine about legislation moving through Congress that aims to prevent foreign entities from taking unfair advantage of the traditionally open U.S. research system. Both House and Senate bills focus heavily on enhancing cybersecurity, seen as an essential tool in protecting intellectual property and… Read More »

IT helps transform medical student’s learning experience

First-year medical student Jacob Lowy has moderate-to-severe hearing loss in his right ear. Working together, HITS, ITS, and other units on campus leveraged IT that has transformed his experience—including adding captions to lecture videos and setting up realtime captioning (CART) during lectures. Lowy realizes that when something isn’t visible, it’s not always easy to understand. This often happens… Read More »

The end of notetaking?

By | August 7, 2019

In a recent article for “Inside Higher Ed,” Perry Samson, professor of atmospheric science at U-M, suggests that digital transcribing tools might free students up to do more beneficial things with their time in class. “Just as speech-to-text technologies like Amazon Alexa or Google Home can answer your questions in the kitchen about the latest news and weather… Read More »

“Mind reading” study connects spatial problem solving with computer science

By | August 6, 2019

A group of researchers led by engineering professor Westley Weimer and grad student Yu Huang used real-time fMRI readings to look inside coders’ brains while they program. This “mind reading” project studied whether manipulating data structures in a program (like balancing a tree) uses the same parts of the brain as spatial reasoning (rotating a map or turning… Read More »

American College of Clinical Pharmacy recognizes HITS employee’s work

Chris Zimmerman, HITS electronic health record clinical decision support coordinator and informatics pharmacist, is now a co-author of the Pharmacotherapy Self-Assessment Program (PSAP). A compilation of chapters, the PSAP provides a means for thousands of pharmacists nationally to maintain their board certification in various specialty areas. The PSAP also forms a cutting edge education tool for pharmacists to… Read More »

Dearborn pairs sports and tech to keep young women dreaming big about STEM

By | August 2, 2019

The City of Westland and UM-Dearborn’s College of Engineering and Computer Science (CECS) have joined forces to create an innovative way to target STEM’s gender gap. “Studies have shown that the middle to high school transition is when some young women start shifting away from things like engineering and computer science,” says Jeanne Girard, director of Extended Learning… Read More »