Shanghai-Michigan venture wins award
(China Daily, Jan. 27, 2013)
Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s engineering-education joint venture with the University of Michigan has won the prestigious Andrew Heiskell Award for best practices in international partnership, one of the highest honors in international higher education, the Institute of International Education announced on Monday. The joint institute (JI) was founded in 2006 to be a leading international academic institute for innovative global engineering education and research activities, “using the best practices of both universities,” according to the Chinese university’s website. More

Strapped scientists abandon research and students
(Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 24, 2014)
The numbers and the accompanying litany of woe are getting quite familiar. The budget of the National Institutes of Health, the single biggest supplier of research dollars to universities, hasn’t beat inflation in more than a decade. The National Science Foundation and other federal providers aren’t doing a lot better. On average, university researchers get into their 40s before securing their first independent grant. Full-time faculty research jobs are gradually being replaced by lower-paid contract work. Foreign competitors are matching or exceeding American science performance on a variety of important measures. After several years of growing anxiety over whether those trends are temporary or enduring, thousands of university researchers responding to a Chronicle survey have helped answer a key question: For better or worse, the nation’s scientists have embarked on an unequivocal downsizing of their capability to perform basic investigative research. More

U-M to embark on $500-million buildout, including biological science facility
(Detroit Free Press, Feb. 20, 2014)
A new biological science building on the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus and upgrades to the president’s house are among about $500 million worth of construction and renovation projects approved by the Board of Regents in February. The biggest project is the biological science building, which comes with a $261 million price tag. It will be paid for with funds from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and from the provost’s office. The building will include space for the anthropology, natural history, paleontology, and zoology museums. The new building also will house research laboratories, associated support functions, offices, classrooms, and other services, university officials wrote in their report to the regents. More

Big name CEOs put money into marijuana
(Main Street, Feb. 19, 2014)
Apparently, the lifestyles of the rich and famous include toking on grass. Some very wealthy and some very famous people have kicked into the campaign to legalize marijuana. Some others–who are currently neither wealthy nor famous–stand to become billionaires once marijuana is legalized. There is a lot of green in that green. More

U-M-designed nuclear radiation detector hits the market
(CBS Detroit, March 11, 2014)
A handheld radiation camera developed by University of Michigan engineering researchers that offers nuclear plant operators a faster way to find potentially dangerous hot spots and leaky fuel rods is now on the market. The new ‘Polaris-H’ detector lays a gamma-ray map over an image of a room, pinpointing radiation sources with unprecedented precision. At least four U.S. nuclear power plants are using versions of the camera, which is available commercially through the U-M spinoff company H3D. More

Video: College presidents talk leadership at ACE’s national meeting
(Chronicle of Higher Education, March 11, 2014)
Nine college presidents sat down with Chronicle reporters at the American Council on Education’s annual meeting to talk about leadership. U-M President Mary Sue Coleman offered strategies for juggling the many demands of a major research institution. More

2015 best graduate schools preview: U-M among top 10 law schools
(U.S. News & World Report, March 10, 2014)
Thinking about applying to graduate school? Whether you’re interested in pursuing an MBA, or attending law school or medical school, there are some big decisions to make. To help students find the right school for them, U.S. News & World Report surveys more than 1,300 graduate schools and programs and ranks them according to our methodology. Here, we offer a sneak peek of the 2015 Best Graduate Schools rankings. U.S. News collected data on 194 fully accredited law schools. More

Tweet patrol knows when censors delete online posts
(New Scientist, March 6, 2014)
Most social networks are made up of clusters of communities, the links between them creating a characteristic structure. But when researchers simulated the actions of state censors who deleted at least 10 percent of posts, the missing links changed the shape of the entire network, leaving it malformed and less connected. This was especially true when the censors targeted popular posts that had been retweeted.  More

Taking a step toward a machine that can think
(Los Angeles Times, Feb, 25, 2014)
Jim Gimzewski grabs a silicon wafer with a pair of tweezers and raises it to the light, thinking about Jackson Pollock, snowflakes, and Tibetan mandalas. No bigger than a quarter, the wafer looks like a small circuit board with a dozen or so electrodes converging at a darkened center, which under a microscope is an ugly tangle of wires randomly crisscrossed and interwoven like hairs in a tiny dust ball. He places it inside a box the size of a mini-fridge. He closes the lid, and one of his graduate students, Henry Sillin, begins to run electricity into the box. A nearby monitor shows a sine-wave. The dust ball, messy and anarchic as it is, has come to life. Gimzewski is one step closer toward what he calls his final frontier: building a machine that can think. More

Educators: Teach millennials to be a force for good
(BloombergBusinessweek, March 5, 2014)
Ross School of Business Dean Alison Davis Blake: “The life experiences of 20- and 30-somethings have changed, and so have their attitudes toward business and business education. The next generation of business leaders has witnessed a string of corporate bad actors sentenced to prison. During the recession, they saw their parents’ pensions dissipate. They watched family members lose jobs, homes, and more. These life-changing moments have created a generation with different expectations of how career success is both defined and achieved. Leaders in business education must be prepared to give students the tools–academic and emotional–to redefine the workplace as a setting that creates both profit and meaning. At the Ross School of Business, where I am dean, we call this Positive Business, a focus on creating businesses that generate rewards for shareholders, employees, and society.” More