In the News
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May 15, 2026
U-M generated $396 million in research-related spending nationwide last year, including $164 million for Michigan-based businesses. “Research funding doesn’t stay on campus. It ripples through the economy as investigators buy goods and services, build industry partnerships, and hire and train research teams,” said Jason Owen-Smith, executive director of the Institute for Research on Innovation & Science. Arthur Lupia, vice president for research and innovation, said, “Research universities like U-M are not only engines of discovery, they are also powerful drivers of economic opportunity across Michigan and beyond.”
MLive -
May 15, 2026
“The time has come that we need to be cautious, we need to verify every voice and any image or any video that we interact with,” said Khalid Malik, director of cybersecurity and professor of computer science at UM-Flint, about AI-generated media. “It’s become a lot more important than five years ago to act like a journalist, find out what the true source of it is, verify.”
WXYZ Detroit -
May 15, 2026
As inflation rates have climbed to their highest levels in three years, U.S. consumers are bracing themselves for “quite a bit of short-term pain,” said economist Joanne Hsu, director of the U-M Surveys of Consumers. “For the next 12 months, consumers are absolutely expecting those gas price increases to pass through to consumer-facing prices overall.”
Marketplace -
May 14, 2026
Sumit Agarwal, assistant professor of internal medicine and public health, and colleagues found a significant decrease in the number of Child Protective Services investigations in Flint after the implementation of Rx Kids, a prenatal and infant direct cash support program. “These results show that providing early economic support to families can make a real difference and should challenge us to rethink how we can proactively support families,” he said.
Michigan Advance -
May 14, 2026
A new study shows a growing number of “fabricated” research citations that do not reference real papers — and tools using generative AI are likely to blame. “Is AI making science more efficient, helping us do better work, or even the same work, but faster, or is it just creating slop?” said Misha Teplitskiy, assistant professor of information. “This is one of the first papers that’s telling us something about the quality of what’s being produced with (large language models), and it’s a signal of slop.”
STAT -
May 14, 2026
“I don’t think many people realize that the risk of suicide and mental health conditions is a leading cause of preventable maternal morbidity and mortality, which we typically measure as up to a year postpartum, not just in the immediate aftermath of delivery. And when you put it that way, it’s a much bigger problem than I think people are aware of,” said Kara Zivin, professor of psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, and public health.
Michigan Public -
May 13, 2026
Kristine Ajrouch, research professor at the Institute for Social Research and School of Public Health, is leading groundbreaking efforts to document dementia prevalence in Arab American communities. “We want to humanize them, give them voice. But it’s been incredibly hard to find people willing to talk about it. The stigma is so strong,” she said. “Once you have a diagnosis, there’s an opportunity for an improved life. But first we have to make it speakable.”
Planet Detroit -
May 13, 2026
“No one disputes that the regime in Iran is awful … But the reality is that Trump is ad-libbing the war with Iran from day to day,” wrote Rusty Hills, teaching professor in public policy. “With the lives of America’s young soldiers, sailors and Marines on the line, Congress must meet the moment, find its spine and hold President Trump’s administration accountable.”
USA Today -
May 13, 2026
“It’s the oldest tool in the epidemiologic toolbox,” said Preeti Malani, professor of internal medicine and infectious diseases, about the practice of contact tracing, which is being used to contain the hantavirus from spreading. “By identifying people who are at risk of infection, you try to get ahead when people don’t have symptoms yet with the goal of preventing the infection from continuing to propagate.”
National Public Radio -
May 12, 2026
Many career and technical education programs operate in silos, and several areas lack coordination and alignment among K-12, post-secondary options and the workforce, said Walter Ecton, assistant professor of education. Governments would have to be “willing to make the investment in connecting these different data systems so that we can really understand the outcomes of these programs for students.”
Education Week
