With the study of social genomics — or sociogenomics — scientists argue that genes and environment truly coexist and influence another throughout a person’s lifetime.
University of Wisconsin-Madison associate professor Silvia Helena Barcellos said social genomics really just got started roughly 10 years ago, around the same time that scientists decoded the human DNA sequence and began to better understand it.
Nearly 800 business leaders and organizations have signed a letter urging state lawmakers to increase funding for the University of Wisconsin System.
The letter pulls a page from UW-Madison’s playbook. The university in 2023 gathered signatures from dozens of business leaders who supported an engineering building Republicans held up in the previous state budget and shared their support in a statewide campaign.
Sametz, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin—Madison, captured her mother overcome with emotion during a FaceTime call as she, in her cap and gown, prepared for her ceremony with her dad.
As Elissa and Russell said their vows, Xu and Cain were working to build HistoSonics, the company they’d formed in 2009 with Tim Hall, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and J. Brian Fowlkes, a professor of radiology and biomedical engineering at U-M.
Their company created the Edison System, a device with a robotic arm that delivers precision histotripsy treatments using a specialized, high-powered ultrasound transducer through a tub of water.
In the summer before I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I had the opportunity to intern with Meta. I loved the scale of the projects the company worked on, and I returned to the company full time as a software engineer in 2023 — Meta’s “year of efficiency.”
“Ideally, if it’s not a huge challenge, trying to see (the) use of thumb sucking or pacifier use stop by 18 months is a good thing, but I wouldn’t get too worked up about it if it was still happening at age two, maybe even three,” said Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health who is also a pediatrician and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Early Childhood.
Wisconsin’s technical colleges get about 70% more in-state aid per full-time student than the Universities of Wisconsin get for one of theirs, new data shows.
The ongoing gap is a talking point the UW system has used for years to lobby for more state funding.
Chris Vagasky explains how reduced weather balloon launches and staffing shortages at the National Weather Service may compromise the ability to predict dangerous weather events.
More than 350 students will graduate in Madison this weekend with a distinction no one else before or after can claim: They are the final graduating class of Edgewood College.
The Horizon Elm tree was developed by UW Madison to make sure it was the best tree, in the best spot.
Part of this path to acceptance was to get out in front of audiences and talk again – slurred speech, flailing tongue and all. A pivotal moment came at an interdisciplinary conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall of 2023, about a year to the day that I began suffering from symptoms. I was terrified of embarrassing myself, but I walked to the podium and, before I began, openly and honestly described my condition to the audience.
New research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that mindfulness and therapy led to lasting improvements in chronic back pain. We hear from an author of the study, Dr. Bruce Barrett.
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health OB/GYN Dr. Ryan Spencer explains the difficulties that arise when fewer obstetric providers are available to serve mothers in a community.
Shocked, disappointed, troubled, concerned, confused — all reactions to news of longtime Wisconsin politician Jim Sensenbrenner being rewarded with an honorary degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“There are always midges coming out of the lakes, but most people don’t really notice them because they’re not very abundant. So it’s not really on the radar,” said Jake Vander Zanden, who studies the biology of lakes as chair of the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“This year does really seem to be standing out in terms of the intensity of the midge activity,” PJ Liesch, extension entomologist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said.
According to Liesch, midges are born and spend their young life down in the sediment of Madison’s lakes.
John Gross, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said he wasn’t surprised by the grand jury indictment.
“The prosecutor has an enormous amount of control over that proceeding, and so it’s never surprising to hear that a grand jury voted to indict,” Gross said.
“It is truly the pinch point. It is the one place where you have a large canal that connects the two,” said Jake Vander Zanden, who directs the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Limnology.
Manu Raju was a Badger who broke a legendary story in 1999 before he ascended to CNN as an anchor and the network’s chief congressional correspondent.
On Wednesday morning, Raju met a small group of people with Wisconsin ties at The Monocle, a restaurant just steps away from the U.S. Capitol, for a breakfast put on by WisPolitics. That’s where he told the room about his first scoop.
Astronomers have identified hundreds of exoplanets – planets orbiting stars other than our own – but very few exist in habitable zones that could support life. We talk to Thomas Beatty, an exoplanet researcher and collaborator with The Wisconsin Center for Origins Research, and Jim Lattis, director of the UW Space Place, both at UW-Madison.
Ruppel graduated from UW-Madison with master’s degrees in urban planning and public affairs. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Still, other researchers argue broad restrictions on gain-of-function research could stifle studies that could ultimately protect people from risky viruses. The University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Medical College of Wisconsin testified against the bill last year.
“Gain-of-function experiments allow investigators to understand the complex nature of host-pathogen interactions that underlie transmission, infection, and pathogenesis and can help attribute biological function to genes and proteins,” a UW-Madison spokesperson said in a statement to WPR.
UW-Madison conducts a wide range of health and disease studies, including research that helps track viruses like avian influenza. The university is assessing how the order and related NIH guidance might affect research on campus, the spokesperson said.
In a 2024 study conducted by Chloe Grace Hart, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she found that Americans were less likely to say they believed a Black woman describing a sexual harassment experience compared to a white women describing the same thing.
“That suggests that when it comes to sexual violence, Black women survivors face a particularly steep uphill battle to be believed,” Hart previously told USA TODAY.
“The sediment deposition gets really complex,” David M. Lovelace, a geoscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led a comprehensive study of the cave’s stratigraphy, explains. “Sediment that’s washing in can leave little pockets of deposition in one area. Then the inlet or the stream will shift slightly, so it deposits in another area.” Sometimes a fresh stream cuts through older sediment to drop in new surface material. “It literally forms almost a new cave through the old sediment, so you can deposit younger material under older, previously existing material. The complexities become outstanding.”
The audit was part of a settlement agreement reached in 2009. Formally known as Legal Beef Conduct Adjustment Agreement, it aims to stop companies from purchasing cattle raised in illegally deforested areas of the Amazon. It has technical support from civil organizations, such as Imaflora and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Dr. Yi Fuxian of the University of Wisconsin, an expert in China’s demographics and prominent critic of that country’s one-child policy, has been digging into the details of China’s population claims — and what he has found is not good.
For starters, Yi believes that China’s population is overestimated by at least 130 million — more than one-third of the U.S. population. In a recent monograph, Yi details the many discrepancies buried within China’s current and past census data.
Nationally, there’s been a flurry of no-confidence votes at universities in recent years, including at two other Wisconsin institutions.
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh faculty expressed their disapproval in Chancellor Andrew Leavitt’s leadership last school year. Marquette University professors voted no-confidence in President Kimo Ah Yun last fall.
“Without the continued research that’s made possible with federal funding, it would set us back,” said John Shutske, an agricultural safety and health specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We’ve seen over the last several decades a pretty dramatic decrease overall in our farm fatality rate. And while I think [the number of deaths] would probably plateau, I don’t think we would be able to continue to make the kind of progress that we’ve had.”
Over 48,000 people packed into sunny Camp Randall Stadium Saturday to celebrate the latest graduates from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Library Mall on UW-Madison’s campus looks much different than it did one year ago as pro-Palestinian protests were stationed there for nearly two weeks.
Protesters were demanding that UW disclose its investments and divest from companies that profit from the war in Gaza. They met with university leaders over the span of their encampment to reach an agreement.
Almost 15 years ago, professor Betty Chewning of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy was struck by an idea. Instead of focusing only on helping students learn how to speak with patients, what if she could help teach patients, as well?
Her idea became Med Wise Rx, an education program aimed at teaching older Wisconsinites to better communicate with pharmacists and safely manage multiple prescriptions.
li’s sales and strategy teams are spending three days at what he calls “Meat School,” a Chomps-designed course on meat-stick manufacturing at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, learning exactly why Chomps “is a very hard product to make.”
Realta raised $36 million in a round led by Future Ventures with participation from other investors, including Avila VC, GSBackers, Khosla Ventures, Mayfield, SiteGround, TitletownTech, and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
Dorothea Salo, an expert in privacy at UW-Madison’s Information School, said personal data has become extremely valuable for companies to purchase.
“There is a sense that advertising and a lot of other businesses, work better, are more effective, make more money if they have access to personal data,” Salo said.
Nonprofit organization 5 Lakes Institute announced a regional fusion energy alliance at the Great Lakes Fusion Energy Summit at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Tuesday. The alliance focused on “connecting the dots” between stakeholders, John Myer, 5 Lakes Institute fellow, said in a press release.
Jason Swarens recently uncorked a throw of 70 feet, 1.5 inches (21.37 meters) in a home meet at the McClimon Track Complex.
In the last few decades Wisconsin has experienced some unusual weather–lakes freezing later and thawing earlier, summer nights with the temperature never going below 70 degrees, and heavier rainfalls. Climatologists Daniel Vimont and Steve Vavrus get into the reasons for the change and discuss how we can adapt to it.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison ($5.5 million) would work on improving the ability of certain bacteria to deliver nitrogen to crops – and on introducing nitrogen-fixing traits into corn and sorghum.
John Hitchcock, a professor of printmaking in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, pitched “Ceremonial (Pow-wow ribbon chair)” specifically for the Icon staircase in the museum’s west-facing atrium.
“It is a really important moment in this three-year cycle,” said museum director Paul Baker Prindle, who took over as the head of the museum in 2024. “We’re celebrating 20 years in the building. We’re coming up on 125 years as an organization.
Written by Juliette Becker, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a founding member of the Wisconsin Center for Origins Research. She studies exoplanet dynamics and planet formation, and she is passionate about teaching UW–Madison undergraduates how to conduct scientific research.
Written by Dave Schroeder, associate director of intelligence and security initiatives in the College of Letters & Science and research director of the Wisconsin Security Research Consortium.
When you’re graduating, all eyes are on the new places you’re going. But for University of Wisconsin–Madison medical school grad Shane Hoffman, he’s excited to get back to places like the ones where he came from.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s class of 2025 arrived Saturday at Camp Randall Stadium to celebrate the largest commencement in university history as speakers — including graduates, alumni, Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin and Wall Street Journal Sports Columnist Jason Gay — emphasized resilience and learning to bridge political divides.
State Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz assured law school graduates Friday that they’re prepared to face this moment of “intense polarization.”
“We are living in a time of impassioned debate about what is and is not allowed in our country, about what should and should not be allowed in our country, and those debates often take place in courtrooms,” Protasiewicz told more than 275 University of Wisconsin-Madison graduates during a ceremony at the Monona Terrace Community & Convention Center.
On Saturday, nearly 7,000 UW-Madison students entered Camp Randall Stadium as students, holding hands and posing for pictures in their caps and gowns. The stadium functioned like a super cocoon, and those same people emerged two hours later as alumni.
UW-Madison had its 172nd spring commencement to celebrate graduating students on Saturday at Camp Randall. According to UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, 8,679 students graduated, making it the largest in the school’s 176-year history.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison held its 2025 Spring Commencement Saturday at Camp Randall Stadium.
More than 8,000 students moved their tassel from right to left at the ceremony. Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said this year’s graduation is the university’s largest ceremony.
On Saturday, the University of Wisconsin-Madison celebrated its 172nd spring commencement ceremony.
This year marked the largest commencement celebration in the school’s history. This spring, 8,679 students graduated from UW-Madison.
As of May 3, UW-Madison has been ordered to stop work on three federally funded projects and told to stop work on 10 others involving other organizations. Another 62 research grants have been terminated.
UW-Madison has appealed three of the terminations; one of those has already been denied. The numbers have been in constant flux for weeks as new cancellations are handed down and judges authorize temporary restraining orders.
Consider the humble soft drink. A well-known 1996 study by linguists at the University of Wisconsin inspired a now-famous map illustrating the regional divide: in the Northwest and Midwest, people say “pop”; on the East and West Coasts, it’s “soda”; and across the South, it’s simply “coke” – regardless of the brand.
“I think it’s all about energy: energy use, energy storage, and the type of pathways that are being engaged to derive energy,” said Rozalyn Anderson, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (per Business Insider).
According to Cortland Dahl, a research scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds, a mindful body scan is a powerful way to ease chronic stress and mental rumination. You can do this simple mindfulness exercise while lying in bed.
“Bring attention to each part of your body, starting with your head and moving slowly down until you reach your toes,” he told HuffPost. “Pay attention to the sensations you notice in your body with a sense of warmth and non-judgmental curiosity. This activates the brain network critical for self-regulation and inner balance. It’s also a great way to de-stress and let go of all the tension that builds up in our busy lives.”
“I was there as both a scholar and an activist,” said Kass, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies land struggles and teaches environmental social sciences to undergraduates.
These statements appear to blame parents for vaccinating their kids and causing autism, a developmental and neurological condition that is overwhelmingly genetic, said Jessica Calarco, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.
“That’s very much what he’s implying and how it’s going to be read,” Calarco said.
Kevin Jarek, regional crops and soils educator with UW-Madison’s Division of Extension for Outagamie & Winnebago counties, noted, “If I were to go to counties like Shawano and Waupaca, especially the western parts of those counties, they get much lighter in soil. It’s a sandy loam texture, whereas here as we get closer to Lake Michigan, we tend to have a lot of clay.”
The silence by our administrative and faculty leaders, specifically in my field of the sciences, is deafening. Graduate students are looking for someone to step up for us, while our class sizes are shrinking, our stipends do not meet the cost of living, and our future job prospects are disappearing. Yet UW leadership is all too concerned with playing politics, if that is what you call rolling over for legislative Republicans. The few scientific faculty who will speak publicly shrug off the inevitability of layoffs and decreased class sizes for graduate workers, who do the majority of scientific labor toward cancer cures and Alzheimer’s research.
State facilities in Madison, home to the state Capitol and UW-Madison, have a property value of more than $8.3 billion, according to the DOA spreadsheet. State facilities account for roughly $10.7 million in police and $10.7 million in fire costs to the city. But the city of Madison’s reimbursement is a little less than $8.1 million.
In a statement, Dylan Brogan, a spokesperson for the city of Madison, said the city’s fire department responded last summer to a large fire at UW-Madison’s Agricultural Research Station, which required firefighters to work “through the night to contain the threat.”
Whenever you do a Google search or send a Gmail, an office in Madison, Wisconsin has a supporting role.
The office, in a nondescript commercial building overlooking Wisconsin’s Capitol, is more than 2,000 miles from Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. But it’s home to over 100 engineers at work on designing hardware and software for the tech giant’s data centers.
Evers and Republicans have been talking about a tax cut plan they both could support but have not released details. Republicans argue that most of the state’s roughly $4 billion surplus should be returned as tax cuts rather than used to support spending on K-12 schools, the University of Wisconsin and other state programs.
In Wisconsin, Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul has joined more than a dozen multistate lawsuits seeking to push back against the Trump administration. The American Association of Universities, a national association that UW-Madison belongs to, also finds itself in the midst of multiple legal battles with the administration.
