An interview with the co-facilitators of the Contact Centers Community of Practice: Lisa Callihan (Customer Experience Manager, LSA IT) and Jennifer Herron (IT Business Planning Lead, ITS Infrastructure). What were the initial goals of the Contact Centers Community of Practice? The initial goals of this community were to: Bring together disconnected contact centers from across our 3 campuses Keep track of… Read More »
AT&T, working with Facilities and Operations, Information and Technology Services and numerous contractors, delivered “stealth” antennas that not only restored the beauty of the skyline, but improved network capacity.
Last year, we reported the amazing, first-day usage statistics that made it clear just how much the U-M community relies on WiFi. That was nothing. On the first day of fall term, September 5, 2017, wireless network traffic increased by three times compared to fall 2016. Total unique devices observed: 100,087 Number of authenticated users on MWireless: 57,789 Number of… Read More »
Lisa Callihan (LSA IT customer experience manager) and Michael Morabito (Secure-24 client services manager) presented at the Help Desk Institute (HDI) local chapter meeting on September 14 in Southfield, MI. Their presentation, “Creating the Ideal Customer Service Experience,” was an interactive experience with two industry experts discussing the importance of building a customer service philosophy and culture. They… Read More »
This month marks one year since Health Information Technology & Services formed. To celebrate its first anniversary, HITS published a Year in Review, which highlights the organization’s major accomplishments, measures the breadth and impact of Health IT, and introduces inspiring staff who play a key role in advancing the mission of Michigan Medicine through technology. “Over the last… Read More »
Ever since I was a child, September has been my favorite month. While the last weeks of summer are one of the busiest times of the year for those of us in IT, I still feel that same sense of excitement when students and faculty return to campus, bringing their energy and vibrancy. I appreciate all the work that takes place across our campuses to make this happen.
ITS communication staff unveiled the Bicentennial IT Historic Timeline at the Michigan IT booth at the MStaff200 bicentennial event, Tuesday, June 27. More than 720 current and retired U-M staff members and their immediate families stopped by the display to interact with the timeline and reminisce about university technology through the years. The team handed out promotional “punch cards” with… Read More »
Over 4,000 faculty, students, and staff attended this year’s Researchpalooza on August 16, 2017, many of whom visited the Health Information Technology & Services (HITS) booth. The HITS Research Applications and Advanced Computing team shared a broad range of technological tools that enable research at the enterprise and individual levels with efficiency and security. Central biorepository—annotated, accredited biospecimen… Read More »
How do we make sure higher ed teams are prepared and supported as the pace of academic technology moves ever more quickly? In a wide-ranging article in “EDUCAUSE Review,” U-M’s VPIT-CIO Kelli Trosvig writes that higher education IT leaders must commit to a journey of continuous change and improvement, driven sometimes by technology and sometimes by culture. “Expectations… Read More »
This fall, the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) is launching an online collections and learning resource tool, the UMMA Exchange. The UMMA Exchange will let students and faculty create and collaborate using Museum objects, along with text, video, and images online. “In addition to being a collection database, The Exchange is an ever-growing public repository of… Read More »
Most web traffic today comes from smartphones and tablets, but the mobile web remains frustratingly slow. Even on fast 4G networks, a page takes 14 seconds to load on average—an eternity in today’s connected world. A team of computer science researchers at U-M and MIT has found a way to dramatically speed up the mobile web. Their new… Read More »
As more employers turn to sites like LinkedIn and CareerBuilder to recruit talent, job seekers from low-income areas or who have limited education often are left out. Tawanna Dillahunt, assistant professor at the U-M School of Information and College of Engineering, hopes to change that. Dillahunt has received a $499,729 National Science Foundation grant to help improve digital employment… Read More »
What if circumventing internet censorship didn’t rely on some app or service provider that could eventually get blocked, but was instead built into the very core of the internet itself? After six years in development, three research groups including the University of Michigan have joined forces to conduct real-world tests of an experimental new technique called “refraction networking.” They… Read More »
New research involving U-M’s Transportation Research Institute found that apps like Uber and DriveNow may be doing to cars what the web already did to newspapers. Two academic studies published this year have shown that people say they will reduce their use and ownership of private cars when they have access to ride-sharing or car-sharing apps. The U-M study of… Read More »
What were the initial goals of the Advocacy Community of Practice? The initial goals of this community included: Build relationships among those that are trying to solve similar IT issues. Leverage each other’s work so that research on a particular solution is done only once. Share information and success stories for how services are described and communicated. Create… Read More »
Last week’s announcement from Disney that it will end its distribution deal with Netflix and launch its own direct-to-consumer movie portal indicates the arrival of a new phase of Internet-distributed video, according to Amanda Lotz, a media studies professor with LSA. In an article for fortune.com, Lotz writes that services like Netflix and Amazon Video created a different television experience:… Read More »
At first glance, the Michigan Medicine Inpatient Rehabilitation Computer Therapy Lab might appear to be all fun and games. That’s the intent. Many of the rehabilitation programs developed in the lab are based on gaming technologies — and designed to get patients active and engaged. Such patients include those recovering from strokes as well as spinal cord and head injuries.… Read More »
In a high school classroom in Lima, Peru, a group of students are programming a 3-D printer. Later on, the students—who until then have not had previous programming experience—will be learning to code with Python, eventually building tech projects with social impact. It’s all part of United Technologies for Kids (UTK), an NGO startup that U-M sophomore Giuliana… Read More »
A new UM-Dearborn graduate program will teach students how to effectively process, analyze, and use massive data collections. The 30-credit-hour Master of Science in Data Science degree teaches students how to locate relevant data, clean it, manage it, analyze it, interpret it and use insights drawn from it. Housed in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (CECS)… Read More »
Five research teams from U-M and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China are sharing $1 million to study data science and its impact on air quality, galaxy clusters, lightweight metals, financial trading and renewable energy. Since 2009, the two universities have collaborated on a number of research projects that address challenges and opportunities in energy, biomedicine, nanotechnology, and… Read More »