Category Archives: Campus News

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U-M wins NCWIT NEXT Award

By | June 6, 2017
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The College of Engineering’s Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) division received a NCWIT Extension Services Transformation (NEXT) Award for excellence in efforts to attract undergraduate women to the field of computing. Sponsored by the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) and Google, NEXT Awards honor academic departments that show improved outcomes in increasing women’s meaningful participation in computing education. CSE’s… Read More »

U-M team takes home IMS Global Leadership Awards

By | May 30, 2017
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Anthony Whyte and Lance E Sloan of ITS Teaching & Learning (TL) each received leadership awards at IMS Global’s Learning Impact Leadership Institute 2017 annual conference held in Denver May 16-19. Both were recognized for their work on the IMS Caliper Analytics™ specification. Also recognized was Charles Severance from the School of information who received the Bill Graves… Read More »

LSA & ITS team win President’s Staff Innovation Award

By | May 30, 2017
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Congratulations to Jeff Dils, Victoria Green, Chris Mueller and MaryBeth Stuenkel (ITS), and Monika Dressler (LSA) for receiving the Presidential Staff Team Award for Innovation for ExamScan, a new service that digitizes hand-written and graded exams and makes it easier for instructors to return and review exams with students. ExamScan allows large classes to conduct literature-based, data-driven examinations… Read More »

Assigning meaning to emojis

By | May 29, 2017
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Why is 😂  more popular than 😃 ? Why is a person more likely to use 👍  or 😘  to express appreciation ? These represent the types of questions School of Information doctoral student Wei Ai and his colleagues answered when they examined the use of emojis by one million users through more than 1.2 billion messages. The researchers analyzed the relationship of the… Read More »

Fauber receives Research Technical Staff Recognition Award

By | May 26, 2017
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Kudos to Bennet Fauber for receiving U-M Office of Research’s Research Technical Staff Recognition Award for the computing support and training he provided to researchers collecting and analyzing data on the function and structure of the human brain. Fauber is a senior applications programmer-analyst for Advanced Research Computing-Technology Services. The Research Technical Staff Recognition Award recognizes staff members who… Read More »

Large scale memory swapping

By | May 25, 2017
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Operators of large computer clusters have long searched for an efficient way to share server memory to speed up application performance. Now, U-M engineers led by Mosharaf Chowdhury, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, have developed open-source software that lets servers instantly “swap” memory from other servers in the cluster when they run out, instead of writing to slower storage media… Read More »

HITS hosts successful electronic health records conference

By | May 24, 2017
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Nearly 350 health care IT professionals from 11 different health systems recently gathered in Ann Arbor to share ideas and knowledge to improve patient care. The EHR Michigan User Group, or eMUG, is a collection of health systems in Michigan that use Epic electronic health records software. The 2017 eMUG conference was hosted by Michigan Medicine Health Information Technology &… Read More »

M-Write adds automated text analysis

By | May 22, 2017
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M-Write, a program built on the premise that students learn complex material by writing, will expand in fall 2017 to add automated text analysis (ATA) to its digital toolkit. M-Write was created by U-M professor of English Anne Gere, director of the Sweetland Center for Writing, and Ginger Shultz, assistant professor of chemistry. M-Write helps students develop their conceptual… Read More »

Apple acquires “dark data” startup Lattice

By | May 19, 2017
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Apple has acquired data mining and machine learning company Lattice, co-founded by Michael Cafarella, a professor of computer science at U-M, and Chris Re, a professor of computer science at Stanford. (Cafarella was the co-creator of Hadoop, a widely used big data processing technology.) According to the Lattice website, the startup was born out of a Stanford research… Read More »

Greener computers

By | May 17, 2017
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green circuit board

U-M chemists, led by Stephen Maldonado, associate professor of chemistry, have developed a greener, cheaper way to make single-crystalline semiconductor films, components at the heart of all of our electric gadgetry. Single-crystalline films of inorganic semiconductors are the bedrock of nearly all electronics, including smartphones, computers and solar panels. The fastest integrated circuits feature transistors consisting of germanium films… Read More »

Medical, dental educational tool adds new apps

By | May 16, 2017
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The SecondLook™ Series, an award-winning educational tool that fosters self-review and evaluation, is expanding beyond histology to include mobile applications for musculoskeletal anatomy, neuroanatomy, and oral radiology. The technology behind the SecondLook™ Series was a collaboration between the Health Information Technology & Services (HITS) education and training group and Michael Hortsch, associate professor of cell and developmental biology and associate… Read More »

U-M presents at human-computer interaction conference

By | May 16, 2017
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Challenges of ridesharing among low income populations, personalization of health improvement technology, and possible explanations for why we aren’t overwhelmed with choice when shopping online are among the research papers School of Information faculty, alumni, and current students shared at the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Human-Computer Interaction Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May… Read More »

Mythbusters: “Slow” universities vs. “fast” edtech companies

By | May 15, 2017
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James DeVaney, associate vice provost for academic innovation, thinks the myth that universities are slow to embrace change and edtech companies are always agile is limiting the collective potential of the wide range of actors seeking positive change in higher education. He believes that examining the difference between partnerships and vendor relationships is the key to moving past this paradigm and… Read More »

Computer use can affect child speech development

By | May 11, 2017
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Toddler boy using smartphone

Growing evidence suggests that screen time may have some negative consequences for young children’s development. In a new study of nearly 900 children between six months and two years old, researchers found that those who spent more time using handheld devices were more likely to have delays in expressive speech, compared to children who didn’t use the devices… Read More »

REMINDER: Faculty & Staff Appreciation Day May 17

By | May 11, 2017
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Have you placed your pre-order for Faculty and Staff Appreciation Day yet? If not, don’t worry. We’re still taking advance product reservations through 9 a.m. on Monday, May 15. If you prefer, visit either store between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on Appreciation Day, Wednesday May 17, to shop for one-day discounts on select Apple products—on top of… Read More »

The aces of Spade

By | May 10, 2017
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Growing up in Los Angeles, U-M student Jake Fleshner and his brother liked to visit a local deli, and then nearby stores before heading home. These local businesses often attracted similar customers, so why weren’t they promoting each other to their customer bases? That question eventually led to creating Spade America—a mobile app that lets consumers scan discounts as… Read More »