Research reveals inaccuracy, racial inequity and increased surveillance are the touchstones of a flawed technology. Facial recognition technology should be banned for use in schools, according to a new study by the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy that cites the heightened risk of racism and potential for privacy erosion. The study by the Ford School’s… Read More »
Researchers fear that the same issues with supply chains that caused toilet paper shortages at the beginning of the pandemic in the United States may result in the same problem with the fine chemicals needed to synthesize COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines. Now, a U-M team of medicinal chemists have used artificial intelligence to find alternative pharmaceutical building blocks… Read More »
As COVID-19 swept across the city of Detroit, it brought with it a wave of food insecurity, particularly among low-income residents and seniors who rely on public transportation and can only afford to buy small amounts of food at a time. Now, a U-M research team has stepped in to help identify solutions. Funded by a National Science… Read More »
The Mary H. Weiser Food Allergy Center (MHWFAC) at U-M has been named a Discovery Center of Distinction by FARE, the leading food allergy research, advocacy, and education organization. The prestigious award adds the MHWFAC to the FARE Clinical Network, which was established in 2015 to link top food allergy centers nationwide for collaboration on the development of… Read More »
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is awarding $65 million to support 93 projects spread across 28 different states. The U-M department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences (NERS) has received $1,883,668 to fund seven projects to advance nuclear technology. The awards are through two DOE programs: the Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) and the Nuclear Energy Enabling… Read More »
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s (DTRA) has announced it is rewarding $51.5 million of funding to the newly formed Interaction of Ionizing Radiation with Matter University Research Alliance (IIRM-URA) program. IIRM-URA is comprised of 12 universities and 8 partner institutions, national laboratories, and industrial companies. The University of Michigan is one of IIRM-URA’s four permanent university members. IIRM-URA… Read More »
![A heat map of thermogenic fat cells [artistic rendering]. (Image courtesy of Life Sciences Institute, multimedia designer Rajani Arora.)](https://michigan.it.umich.edu/news/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/u-m-researchers-identify-new-approach-to-turning-on-the-heat-in-energy-burning-fat-cells-LEAD-scaled-1-200x140.jpg)
Researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered a new set of signals that cells send and receive to prompt one type of fat cell to convert fat into heat. The signaling pathway was found in mice and has potential implications for activating this same type of thermogenic fat in humans. Thermogenic fat cells, also known as beige… Read More »
From the fight against the novel coronavirus to ICU transfer and patient rehabilitation, the Michigan Center for Integrative Research in Critical Care (MCIRCC) is developing intelligent prediction software to support health systems. Technology is transforming every corner of the health care industry, including the way clinicians monitor patients. Current systems have demonstrated that early detection of patient deterioration… Read More »
Ph.D. student Matthew Belz received a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship for a new research project to create a jamming-resistant radar chip to improve the safety of autonomous vehicles. Belz will begin the project in the fall. Currently, he is finishing a project joint with the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab to design a specialized circuit to… Read More »
Prof. Euisik Yoon’s research group has developed a new, faster method to identify cancer stem-like cells (CSCs), which could help improve the effectiveness of cancer treatments. CSCs can develop tumors and cause a cancer relapse after a patient’s treatment. CSCs are generally resistant to chemotherapy and radiotherapy, so therapeutics that directly target CSCs may improve the success of… Read More »
The Michigan Institute of Data Science (MIDAS) recently awarded three University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI) researchers COVID-19 data science grants. Research fellow Quan Nguyen, assistant professor Christopher Brooks and assistant professor Daniel Romero will receive funding for “Students’ mobility patterns on campus and the implications for the recovery of campus activities post-pandemic.” This project will examine… Read More »
The U-M Medical School needed an online tool for limited submissions and bridge fund applications. They were struggling with using email and storing a large number of documents on various servers. It wasn’t very open or transparent. InfoReady solved all of those problems.
By donating a few teaspoons of blood, COVID-19 survivors can help U-M researchers find a way to defeat the disease that made them ill. 800 COVID-19 patients cared for at U-M’s Michigan Medicine have already donated more than 17,000 samples; now, it is open to participants who are not Michigan Medicine patients. By studying these samples and more,… Read More »
Michigan Engineering labs are reopening after COVID-19’s ten week ramp down, allowing faculty, staff, and graduate students to continue aspects of their research that couldn’t be completed at home. Reopening the labs means different things to different people. For example, Steve Forrest and his group can continue printing heart cell arrays that could rapidly replace scarred tissue after… Read More »
A model program at the University of Michigan that allows first- and second-year undergraduates to participate directly in research was disrupted by the COVID-19 crisis. While leaders of the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) moved quickly to help many students transition to online experiences to finish the academic year, not everyone could continue their projects. But as the… Read More »
Safe and more affordable nuclear energy is the goal of a new project led by the University of Michigan, bringing together researchers who specialize in nuclear energy technology and computer science. The study, which will develop AI-enhanced “digital twins” of nuclear reactors, is funded with a three-year, $5.2 million grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy. The project… Read More »
The project demonstrated that a certain bias in humans who train intelligent agents significantly reduced the effectiveness of the training. A team of researchers working to more effectively train autonomous agents earned the Pragnesh Jay Modi – Best Student Paper at the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2020). Led by second-year Ph.D. student Divya… Read More »
Last week, the Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS) announced the awardees of its COVID-19 data science grants. Seven interdisciplinary teams, chosen from 49 submissions, received funding for COVID-19 research. With data science methods at the core, these teams combat the pandemic in varied and creative ways, including better clinical decisions for in-patients, strategies to improve testing, data-driven guidance… Read More »
As heart disease and stroke remain the leading causes of death worldwide, a new U-M research initiative aims to investigate how mobile health (mHealth) technology, such as smartwatches and smartphones, can be used to study and improve health behaviors among hypertensive populations. “Mobile technology has changed nearly all aspects of our lives. There is great hope that mHealth… Read More »
To find out why people adopt and then sometimes abandon online safety measures, researchers from the School of Information surveyed more than 900 people about their use of 30 commonly recommended practices to guard against security, privacy, and identity theft risks. The team found that security practices like avoiding clicking on unknown links or emails were much more… Read More »