In the last few years, the number of technology-based start-ups in Wisconsin has grown rapidly, creating opportunities for leaders who want the thrill of building a company despite the risk that nearly 6 of 10 new businesses fail.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison unveiled its new radio-frequency identification test laboratory Friday, which will help Wisconsin businesses find ways to use the technology in their operations.
It could make for a long, emotional roller-coaster ride if Barry Alvarez pauses to reflect on every “last time” he will encounter during his 16th and final season as coach of the University of Wisconsin football team.
So Alvarez, who announced last month that he will step down following the 2005 season and turn the program over to defensive coordinator Bret Bielema, doesn’t plan on stopping to reminisce at every stop.
The owner of a set of sheds sandwiched between two University of Wisconsin-Madison primate labs wants to sell them to the university instead of animal rights activists who claim they have first dibs on the land.
Quoted: Gordon Baldwin, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor.
I THINK I can predict with some certainty that an exhibit set to open later this month at the Wisconsin Historical Museum on the Capitol Square will draw a lot of interest.
“Resistance or Terrorism? The 1970 Sterling Hall Bombing” opens Aug. 23 – one day before the 35th anniversary of the bombing of the Army Math Research Center on campus.
The passing years have not diminished interest in the bombing, which was meant as a protest against the U.S. military presence in Vietnam but killed a young physics researcher, Robert Fassnacht, who was working late in the building.
Madison’s cherished self-image as a bastion of liberalism may be slipping. A new study released today shows the Mad City isn’t among the top 10 most liberal cities in the country or even among the top 25.
(A spokesperson for the Berkeley-based Bay Area Center for Voting Research said) that while college towns with modest black populations – such as Madison – remain among the most liberal, “these white communities are more reminiscent of penguins clustering together around a shrinking iceberg than of a vibrant and growing political movement.”
A legislator who earlier introduced a bill that would reduce the drinking age from 21 to 19 for Wisconsin soldiers is now circulating a measure under which soldiers 19 and 20 would be fined no more than $5 for underage drinking.
The news headlines revealing that the University of Wisconsin-Madison has kept at least two professors on the campus payroll while they are serving time behind bars for serious crimes are the latest indication that UW Chancellor John Wiley needs to get serious about addressing the growing sense that the school’s administration never seems to hold itself or its employees accountable.
The owner of property wedged between two University of Wisconsin primate research facilities says he’s likely to sell the land to the university instead of to two animal rights groups.
The groups, the Alliance for Animals and the Primate Freedom Project, say they have a written agreement with the owner to give them nine months to buy the land. They hope to put a museum about animal experimentation on the property.
The National Multiple Sclerosis Society has awarded a $3.4 million grant to University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers to study the disease.
The researchers, led by Professor Ian Duncan of the School of Veterinary Medicine, will attempt to develop new ways to repair and protect the nervous system in patients with multiple sclerosis. The research will include the use of human stem cells.
The group is developing cell transplant techniques, which might someday be used to repair nervous system fibers.
What exactly do you have to do to lose your job at the University of Wisconsin-Madison? If you do your job poorly, that isnââ?¬â?¢t enough. If you take off seven months for ââ?¬Å?personal issuesââ?¬Â and then go job-hunting somewhere else, that isnââ?¬â?¢t enough. And now we find out that being an incarcerated child molester isnââ?¬â?¢t enough.
A north central Wisconsin legislator said he plans to send letters to University of Wisconsin officials by today to ask them if any of their employees are convicted felons, following the convictions of three UW-Madison educators in the past several months.
Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, has called for the university to fire such employees without pay once they have been convicted.
In yet another embarrassment for the University of Wisconsin System, professors in Madison have found a new place to use their vacation time: in jail.
University of Wisconsin football coach Barry Alvarez needed only a few minutes to end months of speculation regarding which of his co-offensive coordinators will handle play-calling in 2005. “I will give approval of every play,” he said.
State of Wisconsin Investment Board trustees on Wednesday began studying the possibility of making more investments in young state firms.
….Madison’s University Research Park is betting on the emerging technology effort in Wisconsin. It recently spent $8 million to acquire about 300 acres of land and will make $15 million in infrastructure improvements, the park’s director told trustees. The additional acreage more than doubles the park’s size, allowing it to provide more space for companies that spin out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We’re writing the check because we think this economy in the science and technology area is where the action will be in the next several years,” said Mark D. Bugher, the park’s director.
“What you’re going to be seeing today is the tip of the iceberg. … The idea being, you, as a coach, using this technology, for the first time are literally able to look through your quarterback’s eyes.”
— Curt Krull, founder of RST (Reality Sports Technologies)
….As part of his sales pitch to the UW coaches, Krull said, “We’re brand new, and if you’re on board, you’re going to be literally two or three years ahead of the rest of the Big Ten in terms of this technology.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has tapped a longtime UW Press employee to lead the publisher on an interim basis.
Sheila Leary will take over as interim director on Aug. 22, Graduate School Dean Martin Cadwallader said.
A legislator has lashed out at University of Wisconsin-Madison officials for not immediately dismissing several professors who have been convicted of crimes and keeping two of them on the payroll while they serve time behind bars.
Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, said Tuesday that once university employees are convicted of a crime, they should be dismissed immediately and given no pay.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will use $16 million from the federal government to find ways to improve the flow of goods through the Upper Midwest.
UW-Madison will set up one of 10 new national research centers with money included in the federal transportation bill President Bush was expected to sign this week. The center at UW will build on regional transportation studies the school already is doing at its Midwest Regional University Transportation Center.
Kevin McSweeney, the interim director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum, has won the permanent position, the university announced today.
McSweeney is also a professor of soil science.
Martin Cadwallader, dean of the graduate school, said in a statement that McSweeney’s leadership will “work wonders for the Arboretum,” the UW’s 1,260-acre ecological facility.
Ball State University officials took their time to find a new director of the school’s nationally ranked entrepreneurship program. But they believe they now have their man. The school hired Larry Cox, 51, who has been director of the University of Wisconsin Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship since January 2003. He starts Aug. 22.
Biotech startup Excorp Medical Inc., which recently moved to Minneapolis, now might move on to Madison, a possible setback to Minnesota’s efforts to build the sector. Excorp, which is developing a bioartificial liver system, is pursuing a “competitive” proposal from Wisconsin to establish production facilities in that state. It could wind up putting its headquarters and other administrative facilities there as well. Locating production and administrative functions in Wisconsin would give Excorp access to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which is one of the nation’s top transplant centers
Quoted: UW-Madison entomologist Phil Pelletteri.
US scientists say they have successfully tweaked a common heart drug to make it fight cancer. Digoxin or digitalis, which comes from the foxglove plant, is normally used to steady the rhythm of the heart and help it beat more efficiently. Now a University of Wisconsin-Madison team has changed some of its building blocks to make it target tumours.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will use $16 million from the federal government to find ways to improve the flow of goods through the upper Midwest.
Quoted: William Cronon, a University of Wisconsin-Madison history professor who has spent considerable time on the Apostle Islands.
City officials are really struggling to come up with crowd control ideas for State Street during the annual Halloween celebration.
The Halloween festivities have gotten out of control in recent years, and there is no question that city and University of Wisconsin officials need to do a lot more strategizing to determine the best way to manage 75,000 people and avoid disturbances. But, so far, the strategizing has a seat-of-the-pants quality that fails to inspire confidence.
….What’s disturbing is that, at this late date, officials seem to be grabbing for straws rather than advancing a coherent plan.
The crooked lines on the Kohl Center basketball floor are history, thanks to a Three Lakes company that resurfaces hardwood courts all summer from dawn to dusk, from Wausau to West Point, N.Y.
Jeff Baseman and his three-man crew spent 62 hours apiece to sand down and repaint the University of Wisconsin’s home court and its adjacent practice facility, the Nicholas-Johnson Pavilion. Baseman Bros. Inc. started the $24,425 job last Friday and wrapped up Thursday, working straight through the weekend.
A University of Wisconsin Medical School professor was sentenced to eight years in prison and 10 years of supervision Friday for sexually assaulting three young girls over the past 10 years.
Dane County Circuit Judge Diane Nicks ordered the sentence for Roberto B. Coronado, 52, a professor of physiology on the UW campus since 1989. Referring to the crimes, she observed, “to say they are serious almost understates what happened.”
Coronado was charged and entered no contest pleas to assaulting two girls over a period of years and with assaulting a third girl on one occasion.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher has found that national forests have become islands of wilderness, increasingly blocked off from other forests by creeping residential development.
An organization associated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison is considering spending $1 million to purchase buildings next to the school’s primate research center that animal rights activists want for a museum to protest the work going on next door.
Wisconsin is on track to have another strong year for new-business starts. If the current rate of business openings continues, this will be the fourth straight year of double-digit growth. So far this year, 20,341 new companies have registered with the state, a rate that’s 12.5% ahead of last year. Some are high-tech companies spawned by professors and proximity to the state’s universities, but many more are in the traditional business categories of services, retail and manufacturing.
Two animal rights groups are wrestling with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s real estate buyer to purchase a property wedged between two primate research facilities.
The university has offered to buy the property for $1 million, outbidding the activists by $325,000. But the animal rights groups say they have a contract allowing them to buy it first.
The groups, Alliance for Animals and the Primate Freedom Project, want to create a museum at 26 Charter St. The groups say the museum would detail the suffering of animals who serve as research subjects.
Quoted: Phil Pellitteri, an entomologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
To the many duties of state Administration Secretary Marc Marotta – promoting the policies of Gov. Jim Doyle, negotiating casino compacts with Indian tribes, trimming waste – add this: Modeling for Hewlett-Packard. Doyle’s top aide appears on the cover of the computer company’s spring “Government Solutions” catalog. Other Wisconsin agencies have appeared in similar materials for other companies. For instance, in a February case study for Microsoft, University of Wisconsin-Madison accountant Jeff Sailor touts the company’s Great Plains software.
Three friends of Sarah Stellner, who died last spring of a drug overdose, and the woman who allegedly sold them heroin were charged Wednesday with negligent homicide in the death.
Stellner, 20, was found dead in her Langdon Street apartment on April 26. Her roommate, 18-year-old Morgan E. Fenick, admitted to police that she injected Stellner with heroin.
South Korean researchers Wednesday said they have created the world’s first cloned dog: a playful, black, tan and white Afghan hound named Snuppy.
No matter how many games are won on the football field in 2005, University of Wisconsin fans who will attend the Badgers’ six home games at Camp Randall Stadium should be treated to a state-of-the-art facility and a yearlong program celebration.
Quoted: Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The biggest angel investing network in Wisconsin said Wednesday it has invested $535,000 in eMetagen Corp., a drug-development company in Madison. The firm’s business is based on proprietary technology for finding and developing drugs that was discovered at UW-Madison.
The state auditor Tuesday called on Gateway Technical College to stop paying a former administrator more than $135,000 a year for what is often less than 80 hours a month of legal counsel – a compensation level that exceeds what he made as a full-time employee.
The players simply want to play. The NCAA approved legislation in April that will extend the college football season from 11 to 12 games beginning next year. It’s a decision that appears to go against the grain of the organization’s increased academic standards but many players don’t care, at least not those in the Big Ten.
Quoted: Benjamin Marquez, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Has anyone seen the University of Wisconsin football program lately? When six national publications published their top 25 pre-season polls earlier this summer, UW was MIA. When the Big Ten Conference released its pre-season poll showing only the top three teams on Monday, the first day of the league’s pre-season meetings, UW was again absent.
….University of Wisconsin bioethicist Alta Charo says a number of factors have come together to embolden the Republican majority in the state legislature to push efforts to restrict birth control.
Sen. Alan Lasee, president of the Wisconsin Senate, has asked Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager for a legal opinion on the governor’s controversial partial vetoes in the state budget.
Kelly Kennedy, a spokesman for Lautenschlager, said Lasee’s request was received late Friday afternoon and that the Justice Department is still reviewing it.
Craig Grau, UW Extension plant pathologist, is quoted.
….To his credit, Alvarez swallowed his pride as a coach and instead chose the good of the program over any ego-driven happy-ending scenarios he may have dreamed up.
The athletic director in Alvarez clearly took over. He realized a transition season will benefit his successor, current defensive coordinator Bret Bielema, much like it did for Alvarez on his way to taking over the AD gig from Pat Richter.
Quoted: Charles Jones, a presidential scholar and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In his dual role as director of athletics and football coach, Barry Alvarez has joked that when he walks into the office each day, people are lined up to meet with him. That probably won’t change after he steps down as football coach after the 2005 season, but his life on the job will change. Gone will be the non-stop juggling act that he has performed for the past two years. In its place will be a focus on two key aspects of the department’s success: coaches and money.
So what highlights will Barry Alvarez’s Big Ten Conference farewell tour provide Wisconsin football fans in 2005? Will they witness a title run similar to last season, albeit one that petered out with consecutive losses to Michigan State and Iowa? Or will the staggering personnel losses UW suffered in the off-season and unresolved questions that linger on offense conspire to render Alvarez’s 16th and final season as head coach mundane, perhaps even mediocre?
Mentions a survey of 1,499 state residents during 2004-’05 by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found that 43% opposed the payment of public funds to reimburse for lost hunting dogs.
Tony Escarcega spent 20 hours trolling the patent archives of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s technology transfer arm before finding five ideas he thought could spawn a good company. He talked to all five inventors and whittled the list down to one promising technology: a large-molecule-drug delivery patch. Escarcega became partners with a graduate student working on the technology, and the two spent five months tweaking a business plan. The result is Ratio – a start-up biotech company that won the $10,000 prize in UW-Madison’s G. Steven Burrill Technology Business Plan Competition.
Quoted: Joel Rogers, director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
It’s the stuff of soap operas – an extramarital affair, allegations of handgun-waving, lawsuits in four counties, all involving two public officials and their families – except it’s playing out in real life. Includes a mention of a dispute over whether one of the participants wrote his own doctoral thesis at UW-Madison.
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on Friday threw his support behind House-passed legislation to expand federal financing for human embryonic stem cell research, breaking with President Bush and religious conservatives in a move that could impact his prospects for seeking the White House in 2008.
Over at the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art, it’s out with the new and in with the old.
The spacious second-floor Paige Court at the Chazen (formerly the Elvehjem) is full again, and the contrast with last year’s installation could not be more striking.
Not even that famously descriptive Jewish word “chutzpah” is strong enough to describe the gall of some Wisconsin legislators.
In all my years covering and writing about the Wisconsin Legislature, I can’t recall a more sorry bunch of hypocrites than the cabal that controls both houses in the State Capitol these days.
The first notion that Bret Bielema wants to dispel as the anointed successor to the man who resurrected the University of Wisconsin football program is that coaching is a young man’s game.
“I don’t believe that. I really don’t,” he said, fully aware that come January, by becoming a first-time head coach at the ripe old age of 35, he will be the youngest coach in the Big Ten Conference and one of the youngest ever at the Division I level.
