Multimedia Features | The University Record

October 15, 2017

Architecture challenge

Teams of architecture students in an engaged learning workshop called Practice Sessions work with professional mentors over a long weekend to help solve real-world design challenges. In this video, students, faculty and professionals discuss the project, which is funded with a $350,000 grant through U-M’s Third Century Initiative.

October 12, 2017

Floodproofing cities

In this video, Brandon Wong, doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering, discusses how he and his team from the Real Time Water Systems Lab are trying to change not only how a city can dynamically manage water on-site, but also how they can control water. He is working with Branko Kerkez, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, to develop “smart” stormwater systems to lessen the impacts of flooding. The project has received a $1.8 million National Science Foundation grant.

October 11, 2017

Frogs in Peru

A U-M ecologist and his colleagues have discovered three more frog species in the Peruvian Andes, raising to five the number of new frog species the group has found in a remote protected forest since 2012. In this video, Rudolf von May, a postdoctoral researcher in the Rabosky Lab at the Museum of Zoology and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, talks about how they found the tiny creatures that live in the mountain forests and Andean grasslands of central Peru.

October 10, 2017

2017 faculty awards

Provost Martin Philbert presents a Faculty Recognition Award to Margherita Fontana, professor of dentistry, during Monday’s annual faculty awards ceremony at the U-M Museum of Art. She was one of 31 faculty members honored for their teaching, scholarship, service and creative activities. (Photo by Scott C. Soderberg, Michigan Photography)

October 9, 2017

Engineering Laboratory Building

This video takes a look at UM-Dearbon’s new Engineering Laboratory Building, for which construction is expected to begin in spring 2018. Once completed, it will include 123,000 square feet of space — 57,000 square feet of renovation and 66,000 of new building construction.

October 8, 2017

Moving museums

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LSA’s museums are continuing the process of moving to new homes. The museums of anthropological archaeology, paleontology and zoology are now housed in the Research Museums Center on Varsity Drive, and the Museum of Natural History will eventually take up residence the new Biological Science Building. Meanwhile, here’s a visual history of LSA’s museums from 1817 to the present.

October 5, 2017

Racing with the sun

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The U-M Solar Car Team and its bullet-shaped vehicle Novum — Latin for “new thing” — will attempt to win the 2017 Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, a biennial race across the Australian Outback that begins this weekend. More photos of the team in action.

October 4, 2017

Making fitness trackers work for you

Popular fitness trackers don’t inherently make us move. Rather, it’s the way that exercise makes us feel that ultimately motivates us to get active. In this video, Michelle Segar, director of the Sport, Health and Activity Research and Policy Center, explains how finding the right “why” and the right “way” will help people get the most out of their fitness tracker.

October 3, 2017

Precision Health at U-M

Precision Health at the University of Michigan, a new initiative that President Mark Schlissel announced Tuesday, will bring together researchers from across the university to facilitate new and exciting research on health solutions. In this video, the initiative’s co-directors — Sachin Kheterpal, Gonçalo Abecasis and Eric Michielssen — discuss the goals of Precision Health, what it will do and how it promotes multidisciplinary collaboration.

October 2, 2017

Construction robots

Robots haven’t been equipped to deal with the changing elements of on-site construction work, but recently U-M researchers have developed modeling techniques that allow a robot to adjust to differences from a project’s original model and update its plan of action, all without additional programming. In this video, Vineet Kamat, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and doctoral candidate Kurt Lundeen explain the possibilities of this development.