Joyce Chai named ACL Fellow for significant contributions to grounded natural language processing and the interaction between language processing and robotics

Prof. Chai has been recognized for significant contributions to grounded natural language processing and the interaction between language processing and robotics.

Generating 3D spaces from a single picture

New model PixelSynth creates an interactive experience given just a single image.

Helping autonomous agents make smarter decisions in chaotic environments

A new algorithm gives autonomous agents the ability to take in batches of multiple instructions at once while responding dynamically to changes in their surroundings.

Best paper award for a robot that can see and move transparent objects

A new method enables robot arms to build a tower of champagne glasses.

Jaylin Herskovitz selected for NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Through her work in augmented reality, Jaylin hopes to improve the accessibility of emerging technologies for people with disabilities and expand access to computing.

Sky CH Wang selected for NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Through his work in NLP and computational social science, Sky hopes to understand complex social interactions and contribute towards the democratization of technology.

Zhizhuo Zhou selected for NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Zhizhuo is interested in computer vision and its ability to make breakthroughs in interdisciplinary fields such as ecology and climatology.

CSE doctoral student Tara Safavi receives Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship

The fellowship will advance her work in inferring relational world knowledge in machines with explicit and implicit representations.

Lu Wang earns CAREER Award to summarize long text with machine learning

Wang hopes that, by summarizing longer documents, she can make a new class of information more accessible to a variety of audiences.

Qi Zhang selected as first recipient of David J. Kuck Dissertation Prize

His work is in the area of coordinating systems of autonomous agents that operate in uncertain, dynamic environments.

Seven papers by CSE researchers presented at AAAI 2021

Twelve students and faculty co-authored papers spanning several key application areas for AI.

Zeyu Zheng selected for JP Morgan PhD Fellowship

His work on reinforcement learning is aimed at accelerating the training of RL agents.

Incoming faculty Anhong Guo named one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Science

This distinction recognizes young researchers with exceptional promise who are having an impact on the world.

Student NASA award supports work on more dexterous, collaborative space robots

PhD student Emily Sheetz is working to design more dexterous robots to work alongside humans in space.

New research teaches AI how people move with internet videos

The project enables neural networks to model how people are positioned based on only partial views of their bodies, like perspective shots in instructional videos or vlogs.

$1.8M DARPA project aims to protect cars, trucks and spacecraft from hackers

Ironpatch could head off growing danger of security vulnerabilities in vehicle systems.

Prof. Danai Koutra recognized as rising star with ACM SIGKDD Award

The Rising Star Award is based on an individual’s whole body of work in the first five years after the PhD.

Baris Kasikci earns CAREER Award to automatically improve software quality with data from everyday program use

Kasikci will sift through the byproducts of hundreds of millions of common program executions to determine how this data can automate some key steps in bug finding and fixing.

Enabling fairer data clusters for machine learning

Their findings reduce average job completion time by up to 95% when the system load is high, while treating every job fairly.

The Wolverines Behind the Next Generation of Autonomous Vehicles

The Center for Entrepreneurship profiles a team of EECS students, who are working to develop the next generation of delivery vehicles.

Technology that serves all: a single step could pave the way

A Q&A with Chad Jenkins.

Model helps robots think more like humans when searching for objects

The model is a practical method for robots to look for target items in complex, realistic environments.

AI-powered interviewer provides guided reflection exercises during COVID-19 pandemic

The virtual interviewer uses therapeutic writing techniques to help users cope with difficult situations.

Research on human biases in AI learning earns best student paper award

The project, which received a best paper award, demonstrated that a certain bias in humans who train intelligent agents significantly reduced the effectiveness of the training.

Faster than COVID: a computer model that predicts the disease’s next move

Predictive model could help care providers stay safe, anticipate patient needs.

Faculty Profile: Emily Mower Provost

Mower Provost talks about getting awards, doing industry research, understanding human behavior – and Star Wars.

Computer scientists employ AI to help address COVID-19 challenges

Five multidisciplinary research teams are working on projects to assist with the coronavirus outbreak and to help find solutions to pressing problems.

Emily Mower Provost named Toyota Faculty Scholar

Her work uses machine learning to measure mood, emotion, and other aspects of human behavior for purposes of providing early or real-time interventions for people in managing their health.

CSE researchers present 9 papers at leading AI conference

The students and faculty submitted projects spanning several key application areas for AI.

Alumnus Peter Wurman inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame

Wurman and his cofounders were recognized for their invention of the Kiva system, a revolutionary warehouse order fulfillment system that uses mobile robots and control software to bring inventory shelves to workers.

Michigan AI celebrates second annual symposium

The goal of the symposium is to facilitate conversations between AI practitioners from Michigan and beyond.

New attack on autonomous vehicle sensors creates fake obstacles

Up to this point, no attacks had been discovered targeting a car’s LiDAR system—but a major new finding from researchers at the University of Michigan has demonstrated what that might look like.

Taking machine-learning models in health care from concept to bedside

The authors provide an overview of common challenges to implementing ML in a health-care setting, and describe the necessity of breaking down the silos in ML.

Creating more efficient data centers for AI

Tang’s project will redesign data center systems to support large-scale use of hardware accelerators to meet future computational demand.

Year of growth, experiments for May Mobility

May Mobility intends to gradually acclimate the public to the experience of autonomous driving.

DARPA Award for more responsive AI that combines human and machine

The goal of Lasecki’s proposal is to create methods for making AI systems more robust and flexible.

Paper recognized for lasting contributions to AI decision making

Baveja’s paper tackled the difficult problem of giving artificial intelligence a way to understand and represent knowledge collected over time.

Advancing AI for Video: Startup launches powerful video processing platform

Voxel51 uses AI processing to identify and track objects and activities through video clips.

New lecture series brings AI to the public

The new event series aims to create an educational environment for the public.

A quicker eye for robotics to help in cluttered environments

New algorithm can help robots go from structured environments like factories to complex, unstructured places like our homes.

Rackham Fellowship for enabling autonomous agents to learn continuously

“What I’m doing is trying to come up with ideas to let the agent continue learning different skills across its life.”

‘Air traffic control’ for driverless cars could speed up deployment

Human-generated responses could remotely assist autonomous vehicles decision’s during times of uncertainty.

Precision Health Award for measuring moods

The result will be new measurement methods to determine how moods are shaped by both the behavior of an individual and daily interactions over time

Two papers announced among 10 most influential in healthcare and infection control

The papers provide data-driven solutions to hospital infection and the use of machine learning in healthcare.

The logic of feeling: Teaching computers to identify emotions

A Q&A with machine learning expert Emily Mower Provost.

Fake news detector algorithm works better than a human

System sniffs out fakes up to 76 percent of the time.

Jason Corso on artificial intelligence

The most exciting use of AI for me focuses around a better collective use of our available resources, says Prof. Corso.

Exploring the source of social stereotypes

Carvalho plans to pursue research at the intersection of reinforcement learning, machine learning, and computational cognitive science.

Faculty spotlight: Rada Mihalcea

Rada Mihalcea is a rock star professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at U-M’s College of Engineering and a champion for the growth and retention of women in that field.

Connected cars can lie, posing a new threat to smart cities

The day when cars can talk to each other – and to traffic lights, stop signs, guardrails and even pavement markings – is rapidly approaching.

Paper award for training computer vision systems more accurately

PhD student Jean Young Song offers an improved solution to the problem of image segmentation.

Exoskeletons compete to boost strength of rescue workers

Five college teams test robotic suits that could enhance humans’ abilities.

CSE Graduate Student Xinchen Yan Selected for Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship and Google PhD Fellowship

Xinchen Yan was selected for both fellowships to support his research in machine learning and its application in computer vision, graphics and robotics.

Preventing deadly hospital infections with machine learning

Model successfully applied to data from medical centers with different patient populations, electronic health record systems

Duplicate text detection system now integrated with conference management software

The system is currently being used by IEEE and ACM, and helps them enforce their new 30%-policy.

BMW, Toyota invest in U-M startup May Mobility

Other investors include Detroit Venture Partners, Maven Ventures, SV Angel, Tandem Ventures, Trucks Ventures, and YCombinator.

Prof. John Laird and CSE Alumna Shiwali Mohan receive award for research on learning in autonomous intelligent agents

The award is for papers that present ideas and visions that can stimulate the research community to pursue new directions, such as new problems, new application domains, or new methodologies.

Professor Michael Wellman shares expertise in Asimov Memorial Debate

The debate was held at the American Museum of Natural History and was hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Emotions predicted by examining the correlation between tweets and environmental factors

External factors, ranging from weather, news exposure, social network emotion charge, timing, and mood predisposition may have a bearing on one’s emotion level throughout the day.

Bringing smart banking to market

Jason Mars, CEO of Ann Arbor startup Clinc, was named #2 in Bank Innovations’s “10 Most innovative CEOs in Banking 2017” list. Clinc is leading the pack for development of intelligent banking assistant software.

Michigan, Georgia Tech researchers funded to deter financial market manipulation

Increasingly, market manipulators are attacking market integrity through complex computer-controlled attacks.

Improving natural language processing with demographic-aware models

Word associations vary across different demographics, allowing researchers to build better natural language processing models if they can account for demographics.

“Learning database” speeds queries from hours to seconds

Verdict can make databases deliver answers more than 200 times faster while maintaining 99 percent accuracy.

Codeon is the intelligent assistant for software developers

With Codeon, developers can request help by speaking their requests aloud within the context of their Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Kurator Will Help You Curate Your Personal Digital Content

Kurator is a hybrid intelligence system leveraging mixed-expertise crowds to help families curate their personal digital content, including videos and photos.

Movie design for specific target audiences

Researchers are working to design a successful movie that will attract the interest of a targeted demographic by leveraging user ratings, reviews, and product characteristics.

Wellman participates in AI doomsday prevention workshop

Michael Wellman, a U-M Engineering professor, recently took part in a workshop to anticipate and prevent possible adverse outcomes of artificial intelligence.

CSE-based startup Clinc receives $6.3M in funding to further develop intelligent banking assistant

Clinc has built Finie, the world’s most advanced voice-controlled A.I. platform for banking.

Emily Mower Provost receives NSF CAREER Award to develop emotion and mood recognition for mental health monitoring and treatment

Prof. Mower Provost’s research interests are in human-centered speech and video processing, multimodal interfaces design, and speech-based assistive technology.

Jia Deng selected as recipient of PAMI Mark Everingham Prize

Prof. Deng and his collaborators received the award for their work on ImageNet.

Clinc launches Finie, an AI personal assistant for mobile banking

Finie, which can be referred to as the “Siri” of personal banking, is an artificial intelligence platform for banks that helps customers talk to their bank accounts in a natural and conversational way.

COVE: a tool for advancing progress in computer vision

Centralizing available data in the intelligent systems community through a COmputer Vision Exchange for Data, Annotations and Tools, called COVE.

Engineering an advantage in debates

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed an algorithm that can analyze and measure the amount that one candidate linguistically matches their opponent and have found that matching your opponent in a debate leads to higher polling numbers.

Chad Jenkins receives NSF National Robotics Initiative Grant to improve robotic control in cluttered environments

This project aims to improve goal-directed dexterous robotic manipulation in cluttered and unstructured environments.

Toyota Research Institute Partners with U-M on Artificial Intelligence

Toyota will invest $22 million to begin research collaborations focused on autonomous vehicles and advanced robotics. Profs. Edwin Olson and Ryan Eustice will assume roles at the facility to lead research into perception and mapping/localization.

CSE-based startup receives funding to develop systems based on intelligent personal assistant technology

Clinc has built Lucida, its state-of- the-art, open-source intelligent assistant and machine learning platform that allows developers and the open-source community to easily create and deploy personalized voice and vision-based intelligent assistants.

Researchers seek to help the disabled with intelligent robotic wheelchair

Vulcan, the intelligent robotic wheelchair, aims to help the elderly and those with disabilities effortlessly move around their environment.

New venture is on the path to build continual learning AIs

Cogitai was formed with the aim of developing AI technology that empowers machines to learn from interaction with the real world.

EECS research highlighted at 2016 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference

The University hosted the 2016 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference, which allowed attendees to hear about the latest in robotics through talks, presentations, workshops, and tutorials.

Prof. Dragomir Radev Teaching Course on NLP Through Coursera

Prof Radev is teaching the 12-week course twice this summer; the course is free and open to the public.

Can slower financial traders find a haven in a world of high-speed algorithms?

A frequent call market may help prevent ‘flash crashes.’

Patented camera calibration tool automates calibration target acquisition

This innovative software guides users through the process of collecting a set of images of a calibration target.

Beyond Asimov: How to plan for ethical robots

As robots become integrated into society more widely, we need to be sure they’ll behave well among us.

Rada Mihalcea co-authors new book on text mining

Text Mining brings together a broad range of contemporary qualitative and quantitative methods to provide strategic and practical guidance on analyzing large text collections.

CSE faculty lead university collaboration with Toyota on autonomous vehicles

Faculty members Edwin Olson and Ryan Eustice are joining TRI as area leads.

Yu-Wei Chao selected for Google PhD Fellowship

Yu-Wei is a third year PhD student whose research focuses on computer vision and machine learning.

U-M researchers launch fight against C. difficile with $9.2M grant from NIH

Prof. Wiens will continue to use machine learning techniques to study the disease.

Machine learning proves useful for analyzing NBA ball screen defense

The team used machine learning to extract information from NBA sports data for automatically recognizing common defense strategies to ball screens.

Honglak Lee selected for Sloan Research Fellowship

His work impacts computer vision, audio recognition, robotics, text modeling, and healthcare.

Jenna Wiens receives NSF CAREER Award to increase the utility of machine learning in clinical care

Her primary research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning and healthcare.

Jason Mars receives CAREER Award to advance system architectures for artificially intelligent services and applications

The award will enable Prof. Mars to understand how future cloud and mobile systems should be designed to support increasing demand from users of intelligent assistants.

U-M, IBM partner on advanced conversational computing system

The project aims to develop a cognitive system that functions as an academic advisor for undergraduate computer science and engineering majors at the university.

U-M, Ford are first to address autonomous driving on snow-covered roads

The solution Ford and U-M are working on involves high-resolution 3D maps. U-M researchers have developed these maps and Ford’s test vehicles are equipped with them.

Lie-detecting software uses real court case data

U-M researchers are building a unique lie-detecting software that works from studying real world data from real, high-stakes court cases.

Ford, Michigan Researchers Test First Autonomous Vehicle at Mcity

The scope of the project consists of a number of thrusts including a key research collaboration led by Profs. Edwin Olson and Ryan Eustice, who are playing a leading role in the development of the critical sensing and decision-making found in the Ford test vehicles.

Brad Campbell and Pat Pannuto Organize Robo Cafe Demo at DARPA Tech Conference

The demo focused on a robot delivery service, called Robo Café, where a team of robots delivered snacks to attendees at the touch of a button.

An Autonomous "SmartCart" Testbed is Coming to Michigan

Over the next year, U-M researchers will develop autonomy capabilities and build a mobile phone interface users can use to request a ride.

Steven Parkison earns NSF Fellowship to design tools for the future of autonomous cars

The goal of Steven’s research is to improve vision-based perception systems on cars and to create an extra layer of safety.

Meet Sirius: An Open-Source Digital Assistant

Sirius as an important platform for research into the development of next-generation warehouse computing. It gives researchers a testbed for studying how the data centers that process voice-enabled queries should evolve.

Jason Corso receives Google Faculty Research Award

Prof. Corso believes that this research could make it easier to search for certain types of videos on the web.

Students to use IBM Watson Cognitive Computing System in class

Michigan is one of seven universities IBM is partnering with to give students access to the technology.

Technological singularity passes, unnoticed until now

John Laird Authors Book on Soar Cognitive Architecture

Professor John E. Laird, the John L. Tishman Professor of Engineering in the EECS Department, has authored a new book entitled "The Soar Cognitive Architecture," which has been published by MIT Press.

Nate Derbinsky Wins Best Poster Award at ICCM

Ph.D. candidate Nate Derbinsky has won the Best Poster Award at the 11th International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (ICCM), which took place April 13 - 15 in Berlin, Germany.