Regents meeting set for Feb. 20
The Board of Regents is scheduled to meet at 4 p.m. Feb. 20 at the Richard L. Postma Family Clubhouse at the U-M Golf Course, 500 E. Stadium Blvd. To offer public comment at the meeting, sign up in advance at regents.umich.edu/meetings/public-comments/form. Public comments on agenda items will be taken prior to their consideration. Comments on nonagenda items will follow the regular business agenda. People with disabilities who need assistance should contact the Office of the Vice President and Secretary of the University in advance at 734-763-8194. For more information about regents meetings, go to regents.umich.edu.
Symposium to focus on how data can be used to serve others
The third annual University of Michigan Data for Public Good Symposium will run from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Feb. 25 on the 10th floor of Weiser Hall, 500 Church St. The event will highlight the unique ways in which students, faculty, staff and community members have worked together to analyze and assess data to benefit others. It will highlight several data-driven projects and include a presentation from Data Driven Detroit, an organization that provides accessible, high-quality information and analysis to drive informed decision-making in the city. U-M’s Statistics in the Community program is the lead sponsor of the symposium, hosted by the Michigan Institute for Data Science. For more information or to register, visit myumi.ch/xmpPl.
Michigan Law Human Trafficking Clinic gets $500,000 grant
The Human Trafficking Clinic at the Law School has been awarded a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to train Michigan prosecutors on how to better represent people who have experienced human trafficking and sexual assault or domestic violence. The three-year grant will enable the HTC to provide in-person and web-based training to members of the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan, a nonprofit organization that includes 83 county prosecutors, the state attorney general and U.S. attorneys serving in Michigan. The grant will also allow the HTC to continue its work of helping to expunge prostitution convictions from the records of survivors of human trafficking.
School of Information launches new website
The School of Information has launched a new, updated website that is easier to use. The site, si.umich.edu, is the result of 18 months of input, design and iteration involving students, faculty and staff. UMSI Marketing and Communications coordinated the effort with the help of faculty and staff committees and an external vendor, Palantir. The site better organizes more than 20 years of data that was stored on previous websites, is friendlier to mobile visitors and includes updates to the directory and other information. The site will eventually have a new feature, Courses 2.0, which will create an interactive system that marries course information, concepts and employment outcomes.
U-M team targets muscular dystrophy in mice
A team led by U-M researchers has found that using drug compounds to target specific molecules within muscle cells can ameliorate Duchenne muscular dystrophy in mice. People with Duchenne muscular dystrophy have a genetic flaw that causes muscle membrane damage, preventing muscle cells from repairing themselves. The researchers discovered that targeting a string of molecules called a calcium ion channel in the lysosomes of muscle cells can increase membrane repair, ameliorating muscular dystrophy in mice afflicted with the disease. Lysosomes are sort of the “recycling bins” of cells, taking in broken bits of proteins and other damaged organelles and putting out recycled amino acids and sugars for the cell to reuse. The U-M team partnered with researchers from the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. To read more about this research, go to myumi.ch/jxdVz.
Record number of posters expected at Dentistry’s Research Day
Dental and dental hygiene students, graduate students, Ph.D. candidates, postdocs, faculty, staff and visiting scholars will present the latest scientific research at the School of Dentistry’s annual Research Day on Feb. 19. Organizers expect to set a record this year for the highest number of posters — 121 — at a Research Day event, breaking the previous record of 119 posters set last year. Sarah Knox, associate professor of dentistry at the University of California, San Francisco, will give a keynote speech at 1 p.m. in Room No. G005 in the dental school’s Kellogg Auditorium. The research presentations with a poster session and exhibitor forum begin at 2 p.m. on the second floor of the Michigan League. Awards will be announced at 4:30 p.m. The event is hosted by the school’s chapter of the American Student Dental Association and the Office of Research. For more information, visit dent.umich.edu/research.
— Compiled by Ann Zaniewski, The University Record
