If you are already nervous about computer attacks, here’s some unwelcome news: there are many ways in which our technology is vulnerable based on physics, rather than on software. At the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in mid-February, U-M computer scientist Kevin Fu and his colleagues reported a scary find: your computer hard drive could—without… Read More »
J. Alex Halderman, a U-M professor of computer science and engineering, testified on February 27 in front of the US House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Service and General Government, urging lawmakers to approve additional funding for election cybersecurity prior to the upcoming 2020 elections. Halderman described the need as critical, citing two years of investigation by Congress and… Read More »
Web accessibility is a key ingredient to successful product development that can make or break many peoples’ experience. The U-M Library Digital Accessibility Team (DAT) helps library teams “bake in” web accessibility from the beginning of their projects and helps coordinate accessibility work across the Library. The Library’s Digital Accessibility Team collaborates primarily with U-M Library partners to… Read More »
Precision Health at U-M is is funding a new use case focused on the effects of wearable and mobile technology on mental health outcomes. The project, “Enhancing Mental Health Care through Mobile Technology,” is led investigators Amy Bohnert and Srijan Sen from Michigan Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry. Researchers will use machine learning to identify key predictors of treatment… Read More »
School of Information graduate student John Traylor knew the work he was doing in Puerto Rico to shore up communications infrastructure some nine months after Hurricane Maria was important, but it wasn’t until the project was finished that he fully understood the impact. That’s when one of the residents came by and uttered one very recognizable word—”Wi-Fi”—and delightedly… Read More »
Michigan Medicine will replace Omnicell with a new automated medication dispensing system. Pharmacy and Nursing will begin using new dose dispensing cabinets before January 2020. Anesthesiology will also begin using new automated storage cabinets next year. “Our current system works pretty well, but it is not Windows 10 compliant,” said Stan Kent, Michigan Medicine chief pharmacy officer, referring… Read More »
U-M is full of rich core resources, but they are often challenging to find. The new Michigan Research Cores web portal enables researchers to easily find and identify the location and capabilities of 70 research cores across campus. Cores are centralized facilities or labs that offer services, equipment, resources and expertise on a recharge basis to scientific researchers.… Read More »
In a finding that runs counter to a common assumption in physics, researchers at U-M ran a light emitting diode (LED) with electrodes reversed in order to cool another device mere nanometers away. The approach could lead to new solid-state cooling technology for future microprocessors. “We have demonstrated a second method for using photons to cool devices,” said… Read More »
Artificial Intelligence has received tremendous attention for its ability to transform how health care uses Electronic Health Records. EHR are already an invaluable tool for organizing a patient’s demographic information and their past and current medical data. EHR can support physician decision-making, help increase the efficiency of administrative processes, and make clinical data available to researchers for advancing… Read More »
By zeroing in on humans’ gait, body symmetry and foot placement, U-M researchers are teaching self-driving cars to recognize and predict pedestrian movements with greater precision than current technologies. Data collected by vehicles allow the researchers to capture video snippets of humans in motion and then recreate them in 3D computer simulation. With that, they’ve created a system… Read More »
A study conducted by U-M professor of public policy Brendan Nyhan suggests that the effect of fake news on the 2016 election has been overestimated. Using laptop/desktop web traffic data from a nationally representative online panel allowed Nyhan and his colleagues to measure who visited fake news sites before the 2016 election with unprecedented precision. “Relatively few people consumed this form… Read More »
Financial technology research and education at U-M will get a boost with $1 million from Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative. The funding will support academic research, technical development, and innovation in blockchain, cryptocurrency, and digital payments. Ripple enables global money transfers using blockchain. With the funds, U-M will establish the FinTech Collaboratory to build curricula in the booming… Read More »
In an advance that could one day provide a comprehensive, publicly available window into worldwide internet censorship, a team of researchers at U-M has turned public internet servers across the globe into automated sentries that can monitor and report when access to websites is being blocked. Censored Planet, a first-of-its-kind system, has begun collecting data on three different… Read More »
MiDAS, an algorithm-based administration and fraud collection system implemented by the state of Michigan, ran without human intervention between 2013 and 2015. During that time, it accused about 50,000 Michiganders of unemployment fraud. A 2017 review by the state found that more than 90 percent of those accusations were false. A growing number of people have been harmed… Read More »
In September, 2018, the university completed the move of more than 20 million museum specimens from its zoology, paleontology, and anthropology collections to a state-of-the-art collections and research facility on Varsity Drive. Not as well known, however, is that a second large move was occurring at the same time—this one digital. LSA Technology Services team members John Torgersen… Read More »
As a researcher of computing education at the College of Engineering, Mark Guzdial sees the growing role computing plays in every layer of people’s lives. “I suggest that programming is a literacy,” he writes in a recent essay on the goals of his field. “It’s a way of expressing thought, communicating with others, and testing and exploring new ideas.” Computing… Read More »
Search the web for information about what to feed your new puppy, and you’ll soon start receiving ads from pet food companies. Or read an article about a cruise ship, and you’ll start seeing vacation travel offers in your news feed. This monitoring of online activity might be off-putting for some, but research shows that many of us… Read More »
As part of its work supporting faculty member Anita Gonzalez with an online course, Academic Innovation has developed a tool that allows learners to share their text- or image-based work with other learners in an easy and open manner, and to also receive robust feedback from other learners. “Because of the nature of our learners’ work in the course,… Read More »
H.V. Jagadish has been appointed director of the Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS), effective February 15, 2019. Jagadish, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, was one of the initiators of an earlier concept of a data science initiative on campus. “I have a longstanding passion for data science, and I understand its importance in addressing a… Read More »
Official medical records are protected by strict privacy laws. But everyone who wears a fitness tracker, uses a health app, shops online, searches the internet for health information, or posts about their health creates a “shadow record” of that data. A team led by U-M researchers Nicholson Price and Kayte Spector-Bagdady reviewed current laws and regulations surrounding these… Read More »