Today's Headlines
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Microsoft Teams available for videoconferencing, collaboration
Faculty, staff and students at Ann Arbor, Flint and Dearborn have a new option for videoconferencing and team-based collaboration: Microsoft Teams at U-M. It is available at no additional cost.
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$15M continues U-M partnership with Toyota Research Institute
Building on a successful five-year collaboration with U-M faculty, the Toyota Research Institute will renew its research partnership with U-M for an additional five years, with projects funded up to $3M per year.
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U-M licenses Mcity’s automated-vehicle testing software
A unique new cloud-based operating system for testing connected or automated vehicles has for the first time been licensed for use beyond Mcity at U-M, where it was developed.
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Leaders address new Ann Arbor campus COVID-19 cases
The university has identified additional cases of the more contagious B.1.1.7 variant of COVID-19, and says it is working with public health officials to consider additional mitigation measures.
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Athletics pauses activity in all sports for up to 14 days
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Dow Sustainability Fellows Program extended at U-M through 2023
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XR Initiative funds 13 new extended reality projects
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Eleven ways to make the most of masks
Coming Events
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Jan 25
Attend at Home — Week of Jan. 25
Each week, U-M’s Arts & Culture website highlights selected virtual events or exhibitions around the university.
This week includes: Books for Social Justice; “MLK, Agency and Action” North Campus carillon concert; talk on African Diasporic Modernism; Story, Word, Sound, Sway exhibition.
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Jan 26
COVID-19: Treatments and Long-Term Effect
U-M experts share their research on novel treatments and therapeutics for COVID-19, noon-1 p.m.
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Jan 27
Donia Human Rights Center Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Lecture
U.S. Race Relations and Foreign Policy with Susan Page of the Ford School and Law School, 4-5:30 p.m.
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Jan 27
Equity in Science
Representation, Culture, and the Dynamics of Change in Graduate Education, with Julie Posselt of the University of Southern California, 4-5 p.m.
Building vaccine confidence
More than 26,000 first doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine have been administered to U-M faculty, staff and patients. For some, the decision to be vaccinated was based on science and the clinical trial data, which have shown the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine. For others, getting inoculated was about helping others. In this video, faculty and staff share why they decided to receive the vaccine.
Read more about the reasons faculty and staff are getting vaccinatedFaculty/Staff Spotlight

“I was happy to bring a little bit of joy and spark some of those happy memories everybody else has about campus.”
— Adam Mael, a graduate coordinator in the College of Engineering who recently completed a LEGO model of part of Central Campus
Read more about Adam MaelThis Week in U-M History

Biden on campus
On Jan. 25, 1990, then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., spoke to law students about Supreme Court appointments. Read about some of the other things that happened in U-M history during the week of Jan. 25-31.
Read more about U-M in HistoryMichigan in the news
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“I think we can probably all ubiquitously say that before the presidency, the name Trump stood in for wealth. It stood in for business, and for being business savvy,” said Marcus Collins, lecturer of marketing. “In the last two years of his presidency, his brand has stood for other things: the divisiveness, the misogyny, the xenophobia and the racism — all of these things that he’s demonstrated in his time in office.”
Vox -
“We’ve been socialized to have a very limited definition of the right space for fitness. And if we couldn’t make it to that gym or studio we signed up for, we’re conditioned to think of that as a failure,” Michelle Segar, director of the Sport, Health, and Activity Research and Policy Center, on the rapid growth of at-home fitness.
The Wall Street Journal -
“This is the most fraught, controversial issue in my 45 years in tobacco control, it has torn the field asunder,” said Ken Warner, dean emeritus of public health, regarding the debate in which some researchers see vaping as a useful way to reduce harm to existing smokers, while others argue it is too dangerous and will lead a new generation to start smoking.
WIRED