The National Science Foundation, in partnership with Amazon, has awarded U-M a Fairness in Artificial Intelligence (AI) grant for research on identifying and mitigating bias in AI and Machine Learning systems to achieve long-lasting equitable outcomes. “There is an increasing awareness in the AI research community of the issue of bias,” says Mingyan Liu, professor of electrical and… Read More »
Henyard has spent his career leveraging IT to improve the education experience for students and actively works to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion concepts into the projects he consults on.
According to new research from U-M, LGBTQ professionals’ pride in their science, technology, engineering, and math work is not reciprocated. These STEM professionals are more likely to experience career limitations, social exclusion and harassment, and devaluation of their scientific and technical knowledge than their non-LGBTQ peers.
When you think of tech startup companies, what comes to mind? Is it Silicon Valley, black turtlenecks, and billion-dollar IPOs? Or perhaps something about college drop-outs and the proverbial idiosyncrasies of “tech-bro culture”? While stereotypes can be helpful for getting the big picture of things, when you look more closely they’re often misleading caricatures, and this has proven especially true in the case of the tech industry.
When it comes to making human resources decisions, can humans be fair? What about relying on algorithms to make decisions instead? The answer to the first question is not always, which leads some business leaders to pursue the second. Yet, it turns out decisions made by machines are perceived as even less fair than those made by humans.… Read More »
At a public event celebrating LGBTQ+ inclusion, the International Business Machines Corporation presented Lynn Conway, professor emerita of electrical engineering and computer science, with a rare lifetime achievement award. The award accompanied IBM’s apology to Conway, which came 52 years after the company fired her for coming out as transgender. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Conway… Read More »
U-M researchers say employing a conversational assistant could be one way to narrow the gap in health disparities impacting the African American community, particularly around the current COVID-19 pandemic. Lionel Robert, associate professor at the School of Information and senior author of a study in the journal Digital Government: Research & Practice, says a technological solution could keep… Read More »
The Michigan Institute for Data Science held its Data Science Annual Symposium Tuesday, November 10 and Wednesday, November 11. The keynote featured Lauren Klein, English professor at Emory University, and Catherine D’Ignazio, urban science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The pair discussed their book, “Data Feminism,” published last February. Klein and D’Ignazio introduced what they call the… Read More »
A team led by computer science professor Rada Mihalcea has been awarded a Google grant to continue a program designed to expose undergraduate students to computer science research, specifically aiming to encourage women and underrepresented minority students. The project earned $10,000 from Google’s exploreCSR: Google Grant Pilot Program for Undergraduate Computer Science Research Focused Workshops for Women. The… Read More »
U-M School of Information (UMSI) faculty and PhD students are presenting nearly two dozen papers, posters and workshops at the 2020 ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) October 17-21. Two UMSI researchers have earned an honorable mention designation for their paper, and three more received the conference’s Diversity and Inclusion Recognition for their research. UMSI researchers were also… Read More »
Since Lisa Nakamura began teaching courses about digital media in 2001, the course themes have evolved every year to match the fast-paced change within the online world. In addition to the changes within digital environments, student interests and aspirations have also changed. “I see more that students want to build an app that helps society,” she says. “There’s… Read More »
Google.org announced that a team of School of Information (UMSI) researchers has been selected to receive funding as part of the company’s efforts to support projects using innovative artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics to help understand COVID-19 and address its impacts. Faculty members Tiffany Veinot, Vinod Vydiswaran, Lorraine Buis, and Anna Laurie will receive $200,000 in funds to… Read More »
The pandemic has created new and unique challenges for students. To support a culture of caring and to create safe computing options, ITS developed a new laptop loaner program called “Sites @ Home.” The program provides the best that ITS has to offer: Campus Computing Sites with access to specialized software, a Windows PC, and computers with higher… 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 »
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 »
Frances Allen (MA Math 1957), the first woman to win the Turing Award and first female IBM Fellow, died on August 4, 2020. Allen was known for her pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of optimizing compiler techniques that laid the foundation for modern optimizing compilers and automatic parallel execution. Allen intended to be a math teacher… Read More »
This week’s MiXR Studios podcast continues a conversation with Dr. Courtney Cogburn from Columbia University and discusses her groundbreaking work in virtual reality with 1000 Cut Journey and how it is as important as ever in the midst of the current Black Lives Matters movement. In the “1000 Cut Journey” virtual reality experience, the user becomes Mike Sterling,… Read More »
A Zoom beta feature is now available, providing automatic live transcription for meetings and webinars. “Now more than ever, creating opportunities for the entire academic community to participate in discussions, presentations and lectures about today’s issues is vitally important,” said Ravi Pendse, vice president for information technology and chief information officer. “We want to improve the ability for… Read More »
As Black Lives Matter protests continue throughout the nation and deadly run-ins with police repeatedly make headlines, the University of Michigan explores the topic with a “Police Brutality in America Teach-Out.” Online now, the self-guided learning event on Coursera explores the history of policing in the United States and the legacy of mistrust between police and minority communities.… Read More »
In the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd and other recent incidents of police brutality, a coalition of Black computer scientists drafted an open letter calling for action in the computing community to address systemic and structural inequities Chad Jenkins, a roboticist and associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, is among… Read More »