U-M senior Sabrina Corsetti‘s efforts to model the pandemic’s spread using a machine learning algorithm has now been included in those being aggregated for the CDC’s weekly projections. Corsetti had her previous research halted when U-M suspended in-person classes and labs back in March. Thomas Schwarz, one of Corsetti’s research professors, happened to be modeling the pandemic’s data… Read More »
Michigan IT communities of practice (CoPs) are groups where like-minded IT professionals can share information, experiences, and ideas around a particular topic in support of the university’s missions. Below is a summary of August 2020 Governance & CoP meetings, as well as upcoming meeting information for September. To learn more or to add an upcoming meeting to your… Read More »
The Michigan Aeronautical Science Association (MASA) is a student-run engineering team at U-M that has been designing, building, and launching rockets since its inception in 2003. Since late 2017, MASA has focused on developing liquid-bipropellant rockets—which are rockets that react to a liquid fuel with a liquid oxidizer to produce thrust—in an effort to remain at the forefront… Read More »
Michigan Medicine is constantly looking for ways to improve the patient experience, even during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. One way the organization is doing just that is by optimizing eCheck-in and introducing mobile arrival, touchless processes that allow patients to skip the line when they arrive for an appointment. The changes launched on August 26. Prior to an… Read More »
MIDAS Reproducibility Day Join MIDAS on Monday, September 14, 2020, from 2 pm to 5 pm (note: this is a new time), to virtually celebrate the exemplary work of U-M researchers, and attend presentations by the winners of the MIDAS Reproducibility Challenge. The keynote speaker, Beth Plale, director of the Data to Insight Center at Indiana University Bloomington, researches new… Read More »
A more secure and user-friendly version of Procurement Services’ Quote-to-Order (QTO) System is now available for the university community. The QTO System allows university employees to, among other things, easily and conveniently obtain estimates—and place orders—from multiple strategic suppliers for a variety of products and services, including printing/mailing, web design, and IT temp staffing. The security enhancements to… Read More »
Throughout the summer many units, including the Teaching and Technology Collaborative (TTC), have been producing workshops and training sessions under the umbrella “R2GB.” Current and upcoming training sessions are listed in this link. Recordings of similar, past, ITS sessions may be found in this playlist. Recorded topics include, Student Engagement Online, Zoom For Teaching, Recording Techniques for Online… Read More »
Videogame development is a hot topic at Michigan. This summer two teams of U-M undergrads, working remotely because of the Covid-19 outbreak, conceived, designed, and developed two videogames: Desolation Place—a 3D first-person stealth horror game, and Bloom: Tome of Power—a first person shooter inspired by genre defining games such as DOOM, Hexen, and Dusk. Advised by CSE lecturer… Read More »
The MiXR Studios Podcast exists to educate the University of Michigan community about what is happening in XR (Extended Reality) on campus. It will share best practices and exciting learnings while helping to shape the future of teaching and learning in higher education and beyond.
A key ITS area of focus is “to work as one ITS team to improve the way we serve the U-M campus.” This has the potential for significant impact. A recent dialogue between the digital accessibility and collaboration teams is an outstanding example of how ITS can benefit users far beyond our campus. Like many vendors of cloud-based… Read More »
This month’s recommendation is a service that you may have seen referenced in a few of my previous Tech Tips: Mockuuups Studio. The software takes any selected image and inserts it onto the screen of a computer, tablet, or phone within a visually pleasing scene (see examples above). The resulting image is high-resolution, and can be used in… Read More »
In summer 2019, LSA Technology Services began investigating work management platforms (ticketing systems) as a way to enhance the customer experience. The LSA Technology Services team placed a high priority on increasing collaboration both internally and externally as they evaluated tools, vendors, and software solutions. The team sought out departmental partners across the college and worked with Information… Read More »
From cars to space shuttles to drones, keeping vehicle electronics systems updated and free of security vulnerabilities is exceedingly difficult, according to Baris Kasikci, a professor of computer science and engineering. “It’s a little bit of a mess,” said Kasikci. “Traditionally, you fix the bug in the source code, you rebuild the software and you redeploy it. But… Read More »
In June 2020, Information and Technology Services (ITS) announced an agreement to offer Dropbox at U-M—a cloud file storage option that provides automatic back-up and is readily accessible from any device. The first phase of the rollout included individual accounts with a 5TB storage limit for all faculty, staff, and students on the Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint… Read More »
A team of researchers from U-M recently published a paper in the Journal of General Internal Medicine documenting electronic medical record time demands faced by general internists at Michigan Medicine. The findings build on other studies showing that primary care providers nationwide face the highest number of incoming tasks on electronic health records systems. Lead author Laurence McMahon, chief of general medicine at U-M,… Read More »
Brandon Werner is a screen reader specialist at the University of Michigan, where he ensures blind students have what they need in order to be successful in life and throughout college. Alongside his work as a screen reader specialist, Brandon reviews university websites like Canvas and Google to make sure they work with the screen readers and other… Read More »
Michigan Medicine CIO Andrew Rosenberg, MD, is focused on finding methods to sustain the unprecedented level of remote work and clinical care during the pandemic while keeping an eye on the data analytics and IT investments the system will need to drive efficiencies and cost-savings in the future. In a recent article with Becker’s Health IT, he discusses… Read More »
Ransomware is on the rise and you have an important role to play in protecting U-M!!! Cybercriminals and other threat actors continue to ratchet up ransomware attacks on universities, healthcare providers, and other organizations. This summer Michigan State University and the University of California San Francisco, among others, have reported recent attacks. Ransomware attempts often begin with a… Read More »
Boardwork is an essential part of any course that requires free-hand writing, for example math or languages with non-Latin scripts. If you support faculty who use boardwork as part of their teaching, here are two options from LSA Technology Services that achieve the same effect online. Digital whiteboard: The first option is to use an electronic whiteboard. This… Read More »
Research published recently by CSE investigators can make training machine learning (ML) models fairer and faster. With a tool called AlloX, Mosharaf Chowdhury and a team from Stony Brook University developed a new way to fairly schedule high volumes of ML jobs in data centers that make use of multiple different types of computing hardware, like CPUs, GPUs,… Read More »