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Taking Machine-Learning Models in Health Care from Concept to Bedside Machine learningan application of artificial intelligence in which large amounts of data are processed, patterns are identified, and the information then applied to help answer real-life questionsholds enormous promise for precision health applications. But implementing machine learning in clinical healthcare has been challenging. As the authors of a recent Nature Medicine article point out, The potential impact of machine learning (ML) in health care warrants genuine enthusiasm, but its limited adoption in clinical care to date indicates that many of the current strategies are far from optimal. [Full Story] DARPA Award for more responsive AI that combines human and machine Prof. Walter Lasecki has been awarded a DARPA Young Faculty Award for his project, Hybrid Intelligence Agents for Deploying Robust AI Systems. The award recognizes rising research stars who hold junior faculty positions, with the goal of developing the next generation of scientists who will address national security challenges. His project seeks to combine human and robotic intelligence to make AI systems more responsive and robust. [Full Story] Year of growth, experiments for May Mobility Its been a busy year for autonomous vehicle startup May Mobility, co-founded by CSE Prof. Edwin Olson. Its six-seat electric shuttles are deployed in cities across the Midwest, and with a new round of financing its undertaken a nationwide expansion. On top of that, the company has facilitated over 100,000 rides in autonomous shuttles across its different routes, now including Grand Rapids, Michigan, Columbus, Ohio, Providence, Rhode Island, and Detroit alongside their headquarters in Ann Arbor. [Full Story] New browser strategy game has players tackle real-life bat catastrophe Austin Yarger, lecturer in CSE, is working on a grant from the US Fish and Wildlife Service to spread the word about a widespread fungal infection in bat populations with a public service video game that simulates the predicament. The strategy simulation, which will enter beta testing in the fall of 2019, takes inspiration from the popular Plague Inc. and has players manage research resources and monitor bat migration to mitigate infection and prevent as many bat deaths as they can. [Full Story] Mind reading study connects spatial problem solving with computer science A group of researchers led by Prof. Westley Weimer and CSE grad student Yu Huang set out to identify how computer scientists think, using real-time fMRI readings to look inside coders brains while they program. This mind reading project studied whether manipulating data structures in a program (like balancing a tree) uses the same parts of the brain as spatial reasoning (rotating a map or turning a key in a lock). [Full Story] U-M researchers provide control software to ensure autonomous vehicles stay in their lane The team was awarded a Best New Application Paper Award by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society for their work developing reliable control systems for Lane Keeping and Adaptive Cruise Control. [Full Story] Prof. Kamal Sarabandi welcomes Emperor and Empress of Japan at IGARSS 2019 Predicting future disasters is an important goal of those participating in the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium [Full Story] AI video recognition startup nabs $2 million in seed round Prof. Jason Corso's company, Voxel51, receives investment from eLab Ventures, a Silicon Valley and Ann Arbor-based venture capital fund started by U-M alums. [Full Story] AURA students celebrate experiences, projects at program reception Ten students from Ethiopia have completed a new summer-long exchange program in engineering at the University of Michigan. [Full Story] Ford Buys Defense Contractor to Get Robot Rides on the Road Quantum Signal will still operate independently, with its own human resources department, and continue to be run by co-founder and ECE Council Member Mitchell Rohde (BSE MSE EE 1994 1996; MSE PhD BME 1997 2000). [Full Story] Army-funded researchers earn top scientific honors U.S. Army announces Prof. Alfred Hero's 2020 IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing. [Full Story] First Programmable Memristor Computer aims to bring AI processing down from the cloud IEEE Spectrum highlights the Michigan team's memristors built atop standard CMOS logic to demo a system that can do a variety of edge computing AI tasks. [Full Story] Paper recognized for lasting contributions to AI decision making Intelligence relies on remembering information, retaining skills, planning aheadso abstracting knowledge over time is a key problem in #AI research. Prof. Satinder Singh Baveja tackled this in a 1998 paper that's been recognized for its lasting impact with the 2019 Classic Paper Award by the Artificial Intelligence Journal. [Full Story] The new quantum spurs action by the Michigan Quantum Science & Technology Working Group The new working group showcased Michigans strength in Quantum Science at a workshop attended by researchers throughout the University of Michigan. [Full Story] Xianhe Liu receives Best Poster Award at ICNS 2019 The research impacts development of high-efficiency, micro LEDs, used in a variety of applications [Full Story] Beyond Apollo 11: U-M ECE's role in advancing space exploration For the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, U-M ECE takes a look back and a look forward to how our professors, students, and alums have made their mark on the field. [Full Story] Prof. Winick retires, leaving a legacy that empowers students to seek life and learning outside of the lab For the past 31 years, Prof. Winick has helped define undergraduate courses and curriculum both at U-M and abroad while inspiring all to engineer their future by understanding the past. [Full Story] The National Academy of Engineering invites Prof. Johanna Mathieu to symposium to advance the engineering frontier The symposium brings together 82 young engineers from different technical areas from around the country. [Full Story] First programmable memristor computer aims to bring AI processing down from the cloud Professors Wei Lu, Zhengya Zhang, and Michael Flynn have developed the first programmable memristor computer, which could lead to the direct processing of artificial intelligence on small devices, including smartphones. [Full Story] Six teams of ECE researchers make the finals at AP-S/URSI 2019 Second Prize overall went to doctoral student Xiuzhang Cai for his radar target classification research applicable to autonomous vehicles. [Full Story] Counting snowflakes for better water resource management Mostafa Zaky has built an award-winning model that helps estimate the amount of water stored in snowpacks, which could improve climate change and flood forecasting, as well as overall water resource management. [Full Story] Univ. of Michigan: Hun-Seok Kim describes approach to low-cost, high-accuracy location solution Prof. Hun-Seok Kim outlines the progress his team has made to develop an infrastructure-light location solution that is designed to leverage 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz Wi-Fi signals to deliver location data that is accurate within 10 centimeters. [Full Story] Harvard's Tiny, Solar-Powered Flying Robot Prof. Shai Revzen shares his thoughts on the RoboBee X-Wing, a solar-powered micro-aerial vehicle from Harvard Microrobotics Lab. [Full Story] May Mobility reveals prototype of a wheelchair-accessible autonomous vehicle Autonomous transportation startup May Mobility, co-founded by Prof. Ed Olson, is doing more than just talking about accessibility when it comes to self-driving transportation tech development. The company recently began developing a wheelchair-accessible prototype version of its autonomous shuttle vehicle, and just concluded an initial round of gathering feedback from the community of people in Columbus, Ohio, who would actually be using the shuttle. [Full Story] Kirigami can spin terahertz rays in real time to peer into biological tissue The rays used by airport scanners might have a future in medical imaging. [Full Story] Alfred Hero Receives 2020 IEEE Fourier Award Hero's research in signal processing has explored theoretical foundations and applications including personalized health imaging and information networks. [Full Story] Prof. Louise Willingale creates extreme plasma conditions using high-intensity laser pulses Willingale's research in plasma physics advances many research areas from spectacular astrophysical phenomena to cancer treatment to fusion power. [Full Story] Jenna Wiens Named New Precision Health Co-Director Jenna Wiens, PhD, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, will become a Michigan Precision Health Co-Director. Weins succeeds Eric Michielssen, PhD, the Louise Ganiard Johnson Professor of Engineering and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, who is stepping down as Co-Director to take sabbatical leave. [Full Story] 25-year paper award for power-saving approach to high-performance computing A paper by Bredt Family Professor of Engineering Trevor Mudge that was first published in 2000 has been recognized for its lasting impact on computer design. The paper, Power: A first class design constraint for future architectures, earned the Most Impactful Paper Award at the International Conference on High-Performance Computing (HiPC) in December 2018. [Full Story] By Cannibalizing Nearby Stromal Stem Cells, Some Breast Cancer Cells Gain Invasion Advantage Cancer biologists and engineers collaborated on a device that could help predict the likelihood of breast cancer metastasis. [Full Story] Stephen Forrest named Henry Russel Lecturer for 2020 Stephen R. Forrest has been selected as U-M's 2020 Henry Russel Lecturer, the university's highest honor for senior faculty members. [Full Story] GitHub Releases New Tools to Report Vulnerabilities A team of researchers including Prof. Atul Prakash found that many open-source projects lack a clear way to report security problems prompting Github to release a new set of tools for reporting vulnerabilities. [Full Story] Proprietary chip design allows PsiKick, now Everactive, to power wireless sensors entirely from harvested energy, eliminate the need for batteries PsiKick, the company pioneering wireless, batteryless Internet of Things (IoT) systems and co-founded by a U-M Prof. David Wentzloff, announced it has changed its name to Everactive and closed a $30 million funding round. [Full Story] Building community through clean energy with GRID Alternatives From Long Beach, CA, to a Nepalese national park and world heritage site, undergrads Ashley Gee and Camille Burke came away with unforgettable experiences and a greater appreciation for how engineering can change the world for the better. [Full Story] KLA opens new R&D office in Ann Arbor The global capital equipment company is looking to harness the engineering talent at U-M and power a brighter future with tech. [Full Story] Computer vision: Finding the best teaching frame in a video for fake video fightback The frame in which a human marks out the boundaries of an object makes a huge difference in how well AI software can identify that object through the rest of the video. [Full Story] Advancing AI for video Prof. Jason Corso's startup launches powerful video processing platform. [Full Story] David Blaauw named Kensall D. Wise Collegiate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Blaauws innovations in low-power computing led to development of the Michigan Micro Mote, the worlds smallest computer. [Full Story] Two U-M students receive scholarships from the International Society for Optics and Photonics Hanzhang Pei (ECE) and Darwin F. Cordovilla Leon (Applied Physics) were selected for their potential contributions to the field of optics, photonics or related field. [Full Story] Huanting Huang improves accuracy of remote sensing Huang won the Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Computational Electromagnetics for her work developing better electromagnetic models that calculate microwave interactions with tree and vegetation cover. [Full Story] Nooshin M. Estakhri receives the Helen Wu Award Estakhri is a PhD student studying quantum optics and its potential to impact communication and biomedical imaging. [Full Story] Advancing AI for video: Startup launches powerful video processing platform Voxel51, a University of Michigan startup co-founded by Prof. Jason Corso, today launched its flagship producta software platform designed to make it easier, faster and more affordable to access the untapped potential of video data. The software is aimed at companies that work with video but struggle to extract the information they need from it. While video is a rich form of data, it is difficult to analyze and search because of its complexity, large file sizes and lack of defined units like words. [Full Story] Michigan takes first place at Exoskeleton Competition The STARX suit helps first-responders bear greater weights and spend less energy. [Full Story] Analog AI Accelerator Startup Raises $30m AI accelerator chip start-up Mythic, founded in 2012 at U-M by EECS alumnus Mike Henry and Dave Fick, has raised $30 million in a B1 funding round. [Full Story] Mingxin Liu receives award for advancements in green chemistry Dr. Mingxin Liu received a 2019 IUPAC-Zhejiang NHU International Award for Advancements in Green Chemistry from the Int. Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. Liu is a visiting researcher working with Prof. Zetian Mi on photo-catalyzed material and energy conversion using semiconductors. [Full Story] New lecture series brings AI to the public The Michigan AI Lab in CSE hosted the first in its series of Friday Night AI events. Open to the public and drawing a full house, the evening featured a panel with Profs. Benjamin Kuipers and Edwin Olson as speakers, and Prof. Rada Mihalcea as moderator, on ethical questions surrounding AI and self-driving cars. [Full Story] Student team brings augmented reality to the operating room Three CS students and alumni have launched operating room monitors and screens into the virtual world of augmented reality. Mitchell Bigland (BS CS 2019), Nicholas Keuning (BS CS 2018), and Chase Austin (BS CS expected Fall 2019), working with Dr. David Chesney and Dr. Marcus Jarboe of Pediatric Surgery, have developed an app for the Microsoft Hololens to stream a video feed of a patients internals directly to the surgeons field of vision, helping them keep their eyes on their tools [Full Story] New DOE project aims to convert a traditional engine into a hybrid OP engine with the help of control algorithms A new project funded by ARPA-E partners Achates Power and the University of Michigan in the development of a novel hybrid electric engine. [Full Story] Michigan Mars Rover Team has best ever finish at the annual University Rover Challenge MRover placed 7th overall at the annual challenge where rovers use AI to navigate tough terrain while collecting soils samples to practice testing for evidence of life in the universe. [Full Story] Afshari group receives Best Invited Paper award at the 2019 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference Terahertz and sub-terahertz imaging can provide superior results in some biomedical imaging, spectroscopy, and water saturation detection. [Full Story] | ||||||
