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 »
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 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
James DeVaney, associate vice provost for academic innovation, explores how U-M’s new Teach-Outs might represent the next step in developing an online education model that moves beyond MOOCs to create a “compassionate public square for the information age.” In his guest commentary for Inside Higher Ed, Devaney writes: “While I continue to encourage patience to those who care to… Read More »
Buckle up your backpack for a futuristic ride through U-M’s new world of cyber-learning. Imagine being able to predict how students will perform in class and then helping them achieve more. Picture students learning policy development by acting as stakeholders in simulated political events. Envision an online platform that can mentor a whole new generation of civil rights… Read More »
During the Enriching Scholarship conference (ES) you will have the opportunity to participate in over 100 sessions about effectively integrating teaching and technology. Enriching Scholarship 2017, brought to you by the University of Michigan Teaching and Technology Collaborative, will be held May 1-5 on the U-M Ann Arbor campus. ES is a great opportunity to expand your horizons,… Read More »
A cardiologist created a computer simulation of a patient’s blood flow, helping surgeons locate the best placement of a stent to address her rare heart condition. Students and faculty developed a mobile app that helps predict which Flint neighborhoods are at high risk of having lead-contaminated water. And an engineer is using predictive models based on high volumes… Read More »
Barry Fishman, known for his gameful learning approach to teaching, has been named Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year by the Michigan Association of State Universities. Fishman, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Learning Technologies, teaches in both the School of Information and the School of Education, and is director of the Undergraduate Bachelor of Science in Information Program.… Read More »
At Hacks with Friends, over 100 Michigan IT staff came together with explosive creativity, demonstrating the value of cross-pollination and, in many cases, the expertise to build working prototypes in under 48 hours.
L. Jay Guo, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, has developed a “stainless” silver film that could change the way touchscreens and flat or flexible displays are made, and also help improve computing power. By combining silver with a little bit of aluminum, the U-M researchers found that it was possible to produce exceptionally thin, smooth conductive layers… Read More »
One of the goals of the NextGen Michigan initiative was to free unit IT from supporting common infrastructure so that it could focus more on unit-specific tasks and innovation. The School of Public Health (SPH) took this very much to heart, on the one hand taking advantage of “commodity” services that ITS can provide more efficiently and at… Read More »
Authoritarian rule and fake news are among the topics for the University of Michigan Teach-Out Series, a new open online opportunity for global learners. President Mark Schlissel kicked off an Academic Innovation forum March 13 with the announcement of the first four global community learning events on the edX platform, intended to encourage public discourse about relevant issues.… Read More »
Extremely short, configurable “femtosecond” pulses of light demonstrated by an international team could lead to future computers that run up to 100,000 times faster than today’s electronics. The researchers, including engineers at U-M, showed that they could control the peaks within the laser pulses and also twist the light. The method moves electrons faster and more efficiently than… Read More »
Gina Brandolino, an instructor in the Sweetland Center for Writing and the English Language and Literature department, wanted to move from grading physical papers to using online tools, but she wanted to preserve her ability to hand write comments as opposed to typing inline comments. An LSA-ISS Teaching Transformed grant enabled her to spend a summer adapting her work… Read More »
CAEN, the College of Engineering IT group, has licensed a service called Kumo that allows users to map cloud-based storage drives such as U-M Box and U-M Google Drive to a drive letter.
Does your digital assistant know who it’s talking to? A wearable device prototype could let voice-controlled assistants like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa recognize their owner so they don’t take orders from anyone else. The VAuth device, developed by U-M computer scientists Huan Feng and Kassem Fawaz, uses an accelerometer hidden in a pair of glasses or earphones… Read More »