Category Archives: Top Stories

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IT leaders gather for day of learning, networking at U-M

By | October 16, 2018

IT leaders from U-M and peer academic research universities from the Midwest spent a day of learning and networking at the Michigan League. The Office of the Vice President for IT and Chief Information Officer partnered with Gartner, Inc. to host the Great Lakes IT Leadership Forum on Thursday, September 20, 2018. Ravi Pendse, vice president for IT… Read More »

Discovering new efficiencies and savings through data center consolidation

Vaccinations, early detection, and new cures have led to incredible medical breakthroughs over the past several decades. Today, advancements in precision health, wearable technology, genetic sequencing, and big data analytics promise to reshape modern medicine even further. A critical, yet often overlooked factor in the advancement of healthcare is the underlying health IT infrastructure. As Michigan Medicine faces… Read More »

Participate in National Cybersecurity Awareness Month this October!

Every October, Information Assurance (IA) leads a celebration of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM) by hosting events, sharing tips, and reminding everyone of our shared responsibility to protect and secure university and personal systems and the sensitive information they contain. NCSAM is spearheaded by the National Cyber Security Alliance and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This year,… Read More »

It’s a wrap! Campus WiFi Upgrade and WiFi on the Diag are complete

On Friday, September 7, 2018, ITS held a ribbon cutting ceremony on the steps of Hatcher Graduate Library, in the iconic central Diag, to mark the completion of two projects: the Campus WiFi Upgrade Project and WiFi on the Diag. The event began with remarks from Vice President of Information Technology and CIO, Ravi Pendse. Pendse reviewed the… Read More »

U-M hosts hackathon to lead development of next gen learning analytics platform

On August 2-3, U-M hosted eight of our peer institutions from the Unizin consortium, as well as developers from Google, to participate in a hackathon using the newly developed Unizin Data Platform (UDP). The UDP is a cloud-based, learning analytics infrastructure that commonly models behavioral, performance, and demographic dimensions of teaching and learning data. Participants used a representational… Read More »

Virtual visits provide patients with care from the comfort of their homes

This wasn’t how Terri wanted to spend her weekend. It was Friday night when she first started noticing signs of a urinary tract infection. She had a busy schedule, and now this recurring condition was threatening to derail her plans. Hoping for quick relief, Terri signed into MyUofMHealth.org and initiated an eVisit by answering a series of questions… Read More »

Beyond the classroom: ISS has deep roots in the Ann Arbor community

LSA Instructional Support Services has a professional staff of 53 full-time employees that strives to provide exceptional and professional support for the integration of new technologies, methods, and content into courses across LSA. ISS is also responsible for the audio/visual, computing, and technology needs of all of LSA’s classrooms, auditoriums, and event spaces, as well as most of… Read More »

MiVideo supports collaborative research at U-M

Have you ever wondered how to efficiently manage and and share a collection of more than 15,000 research videos? “With MiVideo, of course!” says Melinda Kraft, ITS Teaching and Learning service manager. MiVideo is the university’s streaming media service, powered by Kaltura, and is approved for use with certain types of sensitive data. “It’s a great option for… Read More »

Role & access management: A smarter way to grant access

The Role and Access Management Project selected and began to create a tool to improve how access is granted and revoked at U-M. The tool is designed to accelerate start-up time for new employees, improve data security, replace some manual processes, increase the ability to track and report on access, and simply make it easier for authorized individuals to access the right U-M resources when they need them.

HITS uses data to improve customer service and communication

Each year, HITS receives more than 265,000 service tickets from the Michigan Medicine community requesting help with password resets, new device orders, video conferencing, software installations, and much more. Until recently, tickets were collected in two systems, making it difficult for HITS to obtain a holistic view of the types of requests coming in and to use that… Read More »

Shared threat intelligence saves the day

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack took down a residence hall network switch at the University of Maryland (UMD) over spring break 2018, but it could have been a lot worse without the collaborative threat information sharing partnership of U-M and other universities. 90% of attack traffic blocked “If we hadn’t been using our shared threat intelligence,… Read More »

Arbor Lakes: A longstanding hub of tech innovation

Long before Arbor Lakes became the residence of U-M Information and Technology Services and Health Information Technology and Services, it was owned by Manufacturing Data Systems, Inc. (MDSI), a pioneer of computer-aided manufacturing. On Friday, June 15, 2018, MDSI returned to Arbor Lakes for their 50-year reunion. For co-founders Charles (Chuck) Hutchins (U-M class of ’57), Ken Stephanz,… Read More »

Call for proposals for the 2018 Michigan IT Symposium

How does your work move U-M forward in its mission to provide world-class teaching, research, and patient care? How is your work changing with the evolution of technology? Showcase your most innovative, IT-related project, service, or process improvement at the fifth annual Michigan IT Symposium, November 28 & 29, 2018 Submit your application before August 10. Important dates… Read More »

Profiles in IT: Melissa Thurber—project manager, customer advocate

Melissa Thurber, was recently interviewed about her work on the Software Delivery Team. The Health Information Technology & Services (HITS) project manager began her career in IT working in the digital marketing space. Thurber understands what customers are looking for, making her contributions to healthcare IT all the more impactful. Tell us about your role and responsibilities. I… Read More »

Export Controls CoP expands to address CUI

A new Community of Practice (CoP) group has been established to address the challenges U-M programs, faculty, students, and employees may face with the federal government’s Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) program. The new U-M CUI CoP has evolved from the Export Controls CoP, which now falls under the umbrella of the CUI CoP. U-M, like all research universities,… Read More »

ITS launches the Cloud Infrastructure Transformation Program

We all have read plenty of stories about organizations moving their systems and applications to the cloud. Many individuals and units at U-M have made their own forays into the cloud, and it’s now time for ITS to provide a way to facilitate the university’s use of cloud services. In March, 2018 ITS formed the ITS Cloud Infrastructure… Read More »