Tag Archives: SI

Conversational assistants could be used to improve African American health around COVID-19

By | December 1, 2020

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 »

Online news needs a new pay model, UMSI study shows

By | October 20, 2020

The revenue model that has sustained the newspaper industry for centuries no longer works in the digital age, but another age-old concept with some modern adaptations could be the answer to profitability, says Paramveer Dhillon, assistant professor at the School of Information. As newspaper and other similar content has gone digital over recent years, publishers have tried several… Read More »

UMSI researchers to present award-winning research at virtual 2020 CSCW

By | October 16, 2020

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 »

SI’s Silvia Lindtner examines China’s place in the global IT industry

By | October 14, 2020

Silvia Lindtner, an associate professor at U-M’s School of Information, is the author of the new book Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation, which tells the story of China’s shifting place in global geopolitics and its contested place in the global tech industry. It is the culmination of nearly a decade of research Lindtner conducted in China, Silicon… Read More »

U-M professor’s ‘fractal simulation tools’ appear in new TV series

By | September 21, 2020

A fractal is a pattern that repeats itself at different scales and is ideal for modeling nature. But modern computer scientists aren’t the only ones to use fractals—Africans have been using them for centuries to design textiles, sculptures, architecture, hairstyles and more. U-M professor Ron Eglash is widely known for his work in the field of ethnomathematics—particularly for… Read More »

Virtual senior center helps older adults in Detroit connect while social distancing

Gloria Moroshan has been in quarantine since March. Her few social interactions have been when her 4-year-old great grandson calls during his lunch breaks or by waving at neighbors when the weather is good enough to sit on the porch. So the octogenarian, who is visually impaired and does not know how to work a computer, takes every… Read More »

Michael Hess honored for technical support of research at U-M

By | June 2, 2020

Michael Hess, adjunct lecturer and alumnus, has received the Research Technical Staff Recognition Award for his efforts in supporting and strengthening U-M’s research enterprises. The award recognizes staff members who have advanced their unit’s research mission in a way that exceeds ordinary fulfillment of their duties.  For more than 15 years, Hess has supported U-M faculty and research.… Read More »

Why we adopt then abandon online safety practices

By | April 28, 2020

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 »

U-M researchers train tech tool to find relationship clues from written conversations

By | April 27, 2020

Social scientists have identified 10 dimensions to describe the nature of human relationships but little research has focused on how these concepts are expressed through written language, and what role they have in shaping social interactions. New research from U-M and Nokia Bell Labs has used crowdsourcing and a tech tool to detect how these characteristics are expressed… Read More »

Extreme interest in crowdsourced projects requires more traditional management

By | April 24, 2020

Collaborative crowdsourcing has become a popular way to advance a technology idea or to spin it off for new uses, but U-M research shows when faced with extreme interest, team leaders must often rely on traditional organizational management structure to get the work done. When a collaborative crowdsourced project is thrust into the limelight, the impact—or shock—of so… Read More »

Florian Schaub earns Google Award to improve phishing protections

By | March 9, 2020

A newly announced Google Faculty Research award will fund a research project on developing better phishing warnings co-led by School of Information assistant professor Florian Schaub. Phishing attacks trick victims into clicking malicious email links to get them to disclose sensitive information such as personal data and passwords, or install malware. Building on prior work, Schaub says this project… Read More »

U-M, Coursera offer Chinese learners nearly free access to online courses amid coronavirus outbreak

By | February 21, 2020

In response to the coronavirus epidemic that has restricted millions of Chinese people to their homes and towns, U-M and online learning platform Coursera are offering three popular online data science specializations to learners in China for $1 a month. The specializations are Python for Everybody, the most popular specialization on Coursera; Python 3 Programming; and Applied Data Science with Python.… Read More »

CoE, SI react to allegations of misconduct by computer science professor Jason Mars

By | February 17, 2020

The faculty at U-M’s computer science and engineering department wrote a letter calling for professor Jason Mars to take a leave of absence, following an investigation from The Verge into his behavior as CEO of Clinc, an AI startup with ties to the school. Michigan’s School of Information also said it was suspending its recruiting relationship with Clinc due to Mars’… Read More »

Temporary social profiles may help adults vet feedback on sensitive topics

Temporary social profiles are being used for more than just online scams and disinformation. Tawfiq Ammari, a PhD candidate in the School of Information, says these “throwaway” accounts might help adults collect helpful comments and feedback on “socially stigmatizing” topics such as divorce, postpartum depression, and mental health.

Computer science classes may have positive social effects

Researchers from U-M, Cornell University, and the Nairobi Play project studied the social and cultural effects of computer science classes. The researchers found that computer science classes can encourage children to work together overcome cultural barriers. Kentaro Toyama, a professor in the School of Information, was part of the team. The researchers interviewed and observed children from a… Read More »

UMSI gets $1 million grant for research on data curation

By | October 23, 2019

Researchers from the U-M School of Information (UMSI) and the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) have received grants totaling nearly $1 million from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Science Foundation to study the impact of data curation on reuse.  Funding agencies increasingly are requiring researchers to share and archive their… Read More »

SI’s Ericson talks women in computer science with BBC

By | September 12, 2019

In the movie “Hidden Figures,” the computing power of a group of women drove successes in the early space program. In fact, the early history of computer science is filled with stories of the accomplishments of women. So why aren’t more women interested in computing careers? UMSI assistant professor Barbara Ericson has some thoughts. Much of her research has centered on… Read More »

Advertising in apps: Decisions behind those targeted, sometimes invasive ads we see

By | August 15, 2019

New research from the School of Information shows those who create the apps we use are not making decisions about which ads are attached to their apps, but they are picking which ad networks are used. And those often-arbitrary choices may be making us vulnerable to questionable ads and data privacy concerns. “Despite this reliance on ads, we… Read More »