Category Archives: Campus News
Q&A: Leveraging technology to improve the customer experience
During a recent panel discussion, “Delivering a Patient Experience Across the Continuum of Care,” Barbara Rotondo, a Senior Manager in Solutions Consulting at ServiceNow, sat down with Erik Zempel, HITS Director of Performance and Improvement Management and Michael Warden, HITS Senior Director of Service Management, to gather insights on the connection between technology and the customer experience. Read… Read More »
Millennials are the most tech-saturated generation of parents yet
The spectrum of digital child-rearing resources for millennial parents is huge. Beyond social media and forums and Google, there are smartphone apps that log the duration of every breast-feeding session, record an infant’s nap times to the minute, and send push notifications reminding parents of upcoming developmental milestones. Those tools can be useful. But when it comes to… Read More »
Knox Center celebrates five years in expanded location
Although many features of Sites computer labs are responsive to the needs of disabled students, there are some types of accommodations that can best be provided from a customized location. This location is the James Edward Knox Adaptive Technology Computing Site, commonly known as the Knox Center, which completed its move to the second floor of the Shapiro… Read More »
Protecting your privacy in the wake of FaceApp
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”
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 »
Research shows certificates boost MOOC completion rates
New research on the popular massive open online courses (MOOCs) finds that one way to keep students engaged in the free classes offered by hundreds of universities is to offer a certificate of completion for a fee. “The act of paying for the certificate and the motivation derived from wanting to earn the certificate lead to a 10-… Read More »
Engineering instructors encourage inclusive student teamwork with Tandem app
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 »
J. Alex Halderman discusses election interference and the 2020 presidential election
A cautious approach to tech innovation
Facilitating a smooth technological transition for citizens returning from prison
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
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
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
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 »
