In July 2015, the University of Michigan opened Mcity, the world’s first controlled environment specifically designed to test the potential of connected and automated vehicle technologies that will lead the way to mass-market driverless cars. It was designed and developed by U-M’s interdisciplinary Mobility Transformation Center (MTC), in partnership with the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT).

Mcity is a 32-acre simulated urban and suburban environment that includes a network of roads with intersections, traffic signs and signals, streetlights, building facades, sidewalks and construction obstacles. It is designed to support rigorous, repeatable testing of new technologies before they are tried on public streets and highways. In particular, Mcity allows researchers to simulate the environments where connected and automated vehicles will be most challenged. Even seemingly minor details a vehicle might encounter in urban and suburban settings have been incorporated into Mcity, such as road signs defaced by graffiti and faded lane markings.

The types of technologies that will be tested at the facility include connected technologies—vehicles talking to other vehicles or to the infrastructure, commonly known as V2V or V2I—and various levels of automation all the way up to fully autonomous, or driverless vehicles.

MTC was launched in 2013 and Mcity construction began in 2014. About $10 million has been invested in the test facility with funding coming from U-M and MDOT. Mcity will be available for use by any organization, but priority will be given to MTC partners and U-M faculty and students.

Recently, the U-M Center for Entrepreneurship in partnership with MTC launched the pilot of TechLab at Mcity, a new opportunity for collaboration among university researchers, advanced transportation startups and student innovators. TechLab is designed to create unique educational opportunities and accelerate the success of participating companies. The program leverages nationally recognized U-M engineering talent and the cutting-edge facilities to drive connected and driverless innovation closer to market.

“MTC and Mcity highlight the interdisciplinary strengths of U-M,” said U-M President Mark Schlissel. “The initiative also demonstrates the great potential in working with partners outside the university to address compelling issues of broad impact.”

The facility also underscores Michigan’s emergence as a leader in advanced mobility, building on the state’s position as the global center of automotive research and development for more than a century. Today, Michigan is home to 375 automotive research centers, and has the highest concentration of industrial and mechanical engineers in the country.

The University of Michigan plans to invest $100 million over the next five years in a new Data Science Initiative (DSI) that will enhance opportunities for student and faculty researchers across the university to tap into the enormous potential of big data.

Progress in a wide spectrum of fields ranging from medicine to transportation relies critically on the ability to gather, store, search and analyze “big data”: collections of information so vast and complex that they challenge traditional approaches to processing and analysis.

“Big data can provide dramatic insights into the nature of disease, climate change, social behavior, business and economics, engineering and the basic biological and physical sciences,” said U-M President Mark Schlissel. “With our widely recognized strengths across all of these areas and our longstanding culture of collaboration across disciplines, U-M is in a unique position to leverage this investment in data science for the good of society.”

Under the auspices of the Data Science Initiative, U-M plans to:

• Hire 35 new faculty over the next four years and engage existing faculty across campus
• Support interdisciplinary data-related research initiatives and foster new methodological approaches to big data
• Provide new educational opportunities for students pursuing careers in data science
• Expand U-M’s research computing capacity
• Strengthen data management, storage, analytics and training resources

“Data science has become a fourth approach to scientific discovery, in addition to experimentation, modeling and computation.”

– U-M Provost Martha Pollack

“Data science has become a fourth approach to scientific discovery, in addition to experimentation, modeling and computation,” said U-M Provost Martha Pollack. “To spur innovation while providing focus, the DSI will launch challenge initiatives in four critical interdisciplinary areas that build on our existing strengths in transportation research, health sciences, learning analytics and social science research.”

Industry engagement is also central to the initiative, with a particular focus on the automotive, advanced manufacturing, chemical, finance, health care and pharmaceutical sectors.

Reflecting the broad promise of big data, all academic units on campus are supporting the initiative. As part of the initiative, U-M will establish the Michigan Institute for Data Science to lead research and educational activities in big data.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health, awarded $9.5 million in Sept. 2015 to the university to study the impact of the environment on children’s health.

U-M is serving as one of six national research hubs over the next four years as part of the new NIEHS Children’s Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR) Program.

Through the Michigan hub of the CHEAR Laboratory Network (M-CHEAR), U-M will support scientists across the country whose research focuses on the causes of adverse child health, such as preterm birth, reproductive tract anomalies, obesity, asthma/allergies, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism and early-onset puberty.

“Our own research and that of colleagues around the world have produced mounting evidence and concern that the environment may profoundly impact child health and development,” said M-CHEAR Director John Meeker, professor of environmental health sciences and associate dean for research at the School of Public Health (SPH).

Environmental factors like poverty, malnutrition, maternal smoking and drinking and lead exposure long have been known to adversely affect children’s health, Meeker and colleagues wrote in their proposal. But research is still in its infancy as to the effects of other commonly encountered chemicals, such as endocrine-disrupting compounds (like BPA and phthalates), and other chemical or nonchemical exposures.

M-CHEAR builds on work in these areas by researchers at SPH and the Medical School who have established world-class labs focused on exposure science, environmental epidemiology, molecular biology, child growth and development, human nutrition, metabolomics (the study of cell chemical byproducts), epigenomics (modifications of the genetic material in cells), analytical chemistry, biostatistics/bioinformatics and the study of biomarker development, validation and utility.

“We have unique expertise in each of these broad areas, which makes Michigan an exceptional place to conduct this sort of cutting-edge and collaborative research,” Meeker said.

The University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study has received significant support from the National Institutes of Health in order to carry out three important enhancements to this important resource for aging research.

The study, which began in 1992, follows more than 35,000 people over the age of 50, interviewing participants every two years, from pre-retirement to advanced old age. It is conducted by the U-M Institute for Social Research under a cooperative agreement between U-M and the National Institute on Aging at NIH.

“This study is one of the most important in the world.”

– David Lam, director of the U-M Institute for Social Research

“The new initiatives are innovative across a range of scientific areas and will further broaden our understanding of aging in America,” said ISR Research Scientist David Weir, who directs the Health and Retirement Study.

With the additional support, researchers will be able to extend the scope and value of the study as they:

• Add a new cohort of late baby boomers to their ongoing research sample, using innovative sampling methods to reduce cost while keeping the study representative of the U.S. population age 50 and over.
• Collect blood samples that will provide valuable information on the aging of the immune system and related molecular and cellular age-related changes.
• Carry out a new population study of dementia in collaboration with sister studies around the globe.

Funding for the new initiatives is expected to total $40 million over the next three years. That amount is in addition to funding for the basic Health and Retirement Study. The U.S. Social Security Administration provides additional support.

“This study is one of the most important in the world,” said David Lam, director of the U-M Institute for Social Research. “It brings together scientists from a broad range of disciplines and is a prime example of Michigan’s strength in interdisciplinary research and ISR’s commitment to collaboration.”

In fall 2o15, U-M President Mark Schlissel announced that a new campus-level biological sciences position will be created to lead the effort to make the University of Michigan “a powerhouse in the biosciences and a global leader in discovery and societal impact.”

According to the president, the vice provost for biological sciences position will be filled by a senior bioscientist, with broad creative vision and extensive leadership experience, who will chair a coordinating committee comprised of leaders from the many units that do life science and related research.

Schlissel also noted that new faculty positions will be added and $150 million will be allocated by the new vice provost and the coordinating committee with the goal of catalyzing the development of research and educational programs that tap into U-M’s great breadth.

“I  believe the key to our future success and leadership is our potential to be more than the sum of our many excellent parts.”

– U-M President Mark Schlissel

The new vice provost for biological sciences will report directly to Provost Martha Pollack, will also work closely with the president and will serve as “the overall leader of one of our most critical academic priority areas,” Schlissel said. A biosciences coordinating committee will serve as a forum for schools and colleges to discuss and coordinate their recruitment, space and infrastructure plans so they can strategically leverage one another’s efforts.

One of U-M’s great advantages in the biosciences is its world-class schools of medicine, dentistry, kinesiology, pharmacy, public health, nursing, engineering and natural resources and environment, as well as its outstanding academic medical center, the Life Sciences Institute and large biological sciences departments in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, Schlissel noted.

“Few, if any, other institutions can match our scale and breadth in this arena,” he said. “I believe the key to our future success and leadership is our potential to be more than the sum of our many excellent parts. If we can develop a way to invest and collaborate strategically across this broad expanse of disciplines, our potential for discovery, societal impact and outstanding bioscience education would be unmatched.”