When considering the expansion, Westby sought advice from the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Greenwalt commented that in Europe, cottage cheese is made in closed vat systems, but it isn’t commonly done that way in the United States. The CDR helped the co-op to find the right systems for its expansion.
A recent report from a University of Wisconsin-Madison organization found that Exact Sciences contributed around $6 billion to $7 billion to the state’s economy.
The company grew from small beginnings, starting with 19 employees in 2009 to about 7,200 employees globally. Revenues grew from $4.8 million in 2009 to $3.2 billion by 2025. Researchers attribute this growth to Cologuard’s success.
AI technology is developing so fast, experts say advances are becoming hard to measure.
Recognizing this, the Universities of Wisconsin has launched a free series of videos for people who need a starting point.
The AI Skills Access Passport (ASAP) was developed in partnership with UW Credit Union. The series is designed for the general public.
Written by Jonathan Patz, the Vilas Distinguished Professor & John P. Holton Chair of Health and the Environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute & Department of Population Health Sciences.
There’s europium, which enhanced the color red in early television sets, and neodymium, which strengthens and miniaturizes magnets. These so-called “rare earth permanent magnets” are used in everything from high-speed rail and electric vehicles to the tiny motors that make iPhones buzz, according to Julie Klinger, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a rare earths expert.
Aaron Greer, an independent filmmaker and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who has championed film incentives for years, said without an incentive projects would often look elsewhere.
“There’s an old saying in Hollywood, it takes ten years to become an overnight success. There’s a way it feels like that with this,” Greer said.
John Gross, a clinical associate professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said Briggs is charged because of a newer law in Wisconsin that bans making or having virtual child sexual abuse materials. The statute passed in 2024.
“We’ve added a statute like this to make sure that the law actually captures not just images that were made of actual children, but also images of children that were generated by artificial intelligence,” Gross said.
Menzie Chinn, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it’s a pretty safe bet that the Fed is keeping an eye on the war in Iran and its effect on energy prices.
“I think they will be eager to make sure that they show commitment to not let inflation get out of hand,” he said.
Chinn said the Fed usually focuses on core inflation, which strips out energy prices since they can jump around from month to month. But he said the Fed will also consider scenarios where the conflict drags on, keeping energy prices high for a while.
“And if it’s sustained, then that’s going to feed into core prices, eventually,” Chinn said.
“Adolescence is one of the big time periods of growth, next to infants,” said Taiya Bach, a member of the teaching faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Nutritional Sciences told Gizmodo. “They need way more calories than a grown adult does.”
“Even if you are overweight, you still have that growth piece because a bunch of your calories are still going towards hormones and development and bone growth,” Bach said.
Entrepreneurs launching startups through UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation will soon have a larger presence on the West Coast.
The university and WARF, the campus’ nonprofit patent licensing arm, are partnering with seven other schools to open a two-year pilot workspace in San Francisco that university-founded startups and teams traveling to the Bay Area can use for work and to meet with investors.
First, we learn about the impacts of rising gas prices in Wisconsin. Then, we talk to a researcher and an advocate about Wisconsin’s FoodShare program and new work requirements.
Ron Kean, University of Wisconsin-Madison’s poultry specialist, told Wisconsin Public Radio that poultry producers are also growing frustrated by a lack of solutions in this new era of avian flu response.
“There’s going to have to be more work on vaccination, which is a big international political issue,” he said. “That I think is one of the big frustrations for the poultry industry.”
Outgoing Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin praised the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s artificial intelligence initiatives in her address to the Board of Regents last month, including one new tool researchers have been using to partner with industry partners and collaborators.
“It’s not labor digging if it’s mutually beneficial: He agrees to provide financial resources, and she agrees to make the home a haven,” said Allison Daminger, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the author of “What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life.”
“I’d probably label something like that ‘specialization,’ which has been around for a long time,” she said.
Some young people are using chatbots “to test out being flirty or being romantic or being a little bit sexy and seeing how the chatbot responds to that,” Megan Moreno, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies technology and adolescent health, told me.
That kind of experimentation may be more common among boys, who generally engage in more risky behavior online than girls, Moreno said.
Wisconsin currently has 274 licensed hemp growers, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Last November, that number was 470.
The decline could be due to people waiting to see how the law plays out and if the loophole will close or not, said Shelby Ellison, an agricultural professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It might be clearer in another month how many people reapply for licenses through the USDA.
UW-Madison Data Science Institute associate professor Anna Haensch raised concerns with the potential electrical demands of data centers. In 2024, Wisconsin’s peak demand was 14.6 gigawatts, and the Wisconsin Policy Forum expects it to increase about 17 gigawatts by 2030.
Additionally, Haensch emphasized the need to separate hyperscale data centers from the broader cultural narrative surrounding artificial intelligence.
“Connecting data centers so explicitly to AI has made these projects almost untenable,” Haensch said, noting that AI is often framed in apocalyptic terms.
“The siting study includes looking at nuclear energy systems, anything from similar to today’s reactors that are operating to a variety of advanced reactor concepts, including microreactors and other smaller reactors, as well as fusion energy systems in the future,” said nuclear engineering professor and department Chair Paul Wilson.
Eighteen of the 700 companies on Forbes’ “Best Large Employers” 2026 ranking were headquartered in Wisconsin. Here are the businesses that made the list:
5. University of Wisconsin-Madison (rank No. 251; Madison)
“It’s going to hang in that $18 to $19 per hundredweight price for 2026. It doesn’t look like it’s going to rebound very strong this year,” said Aerica Bjurstrom, a regional dairy educator with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension. “Everybody has a different breakeven point; that’s not breakeven for a lot of dairy producers. It’s going to be a tough year.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison and other employers across the United States face new federal guidelines for highly-specialized H-1B international visa sponsorship that prioritize higher-paying positions and, in some cases, require a $100,000 fee, following changes made by the Trump Administration last fall.
“It’s a huge problem,” UW-Madison journalism professor Katy Culver said about the sheer volume of artificial intelligence-fueled misinformation online. “It predates AI, but AI is making the information more believable for a lot of people.”
The Milwaukee School of Engineering came out on top, which apparently did not sit well with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Two UW-Madison economists dove into earnings data by program. Their recent report, “Degrees of Deception,” found their university came out on top for the most majors of any Wisconsin school. But this point of pride was obscured in the overall rankings because the university offers some lower salary-producing programs that MSOE doesn’t offer, such as music and social work.
A study led by a University of Wisconsin researcher shows the first empirical documentation of digital voter suppression on social media and foreign election interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The study was published Jan. 26 in the official journal of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Imagine getting into a car, putting the directions into your phone, then just sitting back with ease while no one is behind the wheel. That is now reality as self-driving/autonomous cars are now fully operating on busy roads across the U.S.
The visit follows a partnership announcement between the Public Service Commission and UW’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics to study nuclear energy opportunities in the state.
Inside the University of Wisconsin Nuclear Reactor Tuesday morning, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers peered over the shoulders of student operator Nick Tierney, a senior majoring in nuclear engineering, to eye the array of instrumentation on the reactor control panel, then climbed the stairs to look down into the reactor’s cooling pool.
“They don’t solve the long-run problem of higher input costs and low prices; they are a Band-Aid to get us through this short-term problem,” said Paul Mitchell, the director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Agriculture professor and economist Steven Deller, also of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had a similar view.
“We’re hemorrhaging thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, and they’re giving us pennies,” Deller said, adding that farmers want “fair markets” and a “level playing field.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Humanoid Robotics club, founded in November, plans to design and build a humanoid robot from scratch.
Humanoid robots are human-like automatons powered by artificial intelligence, with arms, bipedal legs and the ability to execute a range of mechanical tasks in the same way a human would. An analysis by Morgan Stanley projected the humanoid industry to become a $5 trillion market in the next 25 years. Humanoids could have applications in hazardous industrial work environments, consumer households and even scientific operations beyond Earth.
Ignite Wisconsin’s grant of nearly $800K to the Wisconsin Fusion Energy Coalition will help push Wisconsin as a national hub for fusion energy.
Gov. Tony Evers, along with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), announced Thursday that the coalition, led by 5 Lakes Institute and UW-Madison’s fusion research work, will “accelerate startup formation, supply chain development, and community outreach in a sector projected to reach nearly $3 trillion by 2080.”
State utility regulators and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are partnering to explore potential nuclear energy projects in Wisconsin.
UW-Madison and the Public Service Commission will conduct a siting study to evaluate the suitability of various sites and the impact of projects on local economies. The study will also look at different reactor technologies, including both traditional nuclear power, advanced small modular reactors and fusion energy.
Co-authored by rofessor of environmental medicine, and djunct associate professor of Population Health Sciences, both at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The preparation of this year’s guidelines deviated from the past years’ processes, according to associate professor in the University of Wisconsin Department of Food Science Brad Bolling.
“There was a new scientific review process that didn’t follow the established public accountability and measures that typically the dietary guidelines goes through,” Bolling said.
The revised guidelines are lacking review and thought, retired senior clinical nutritionist of UW Hospital and Clinics Donna Weihofen said. The adaptation of the guidelines into effect is scary, given the existing controversy behind them, according to Weihofen.
The layout and suggestions presented in the new guidelines also confuse Weihofen. The graphic is completely flipped, and the placement of whole grains, an important source of fiber, on the bottom is a confusing choice, according to Weihofen.
“Fiber is really an important part of our diet … so to put that at the bottom of the pyramid doesn’t seem to make nutritional sense,” Weihofen said.
The University of Wisconsin College of Engineering is set to debut its new Aerospace Engineering major this fall after the UW System Board of Regents voted on its approval Feb. 5, according to a College of Engineering press release.
“We are often so externally focused that we don’t recognize what is going on in our minds, and when we begin to pay attention to that, it’s genuinely exhausting for most people,” Richard Davidson, a University of Wisconsin psychologist who studies meditation. It also can make us more anxious, at least at first.
University of Wisconsin-Madison leaders and students urged campus communities to strengthen civil dialogue, protect free expression and adopt a systemwide artificial intelligence vision responsibility at a Board of Regents meeting Thursday.
It’s like the World Cup. The stadium is on edge, and a player kicks the ball, scoring the winning goal.
The crowd erupts.
But at UW-Madison in Morgridge Hall, the soccer stars are autonomous humanoid robots.
Josiah Hanna, a UW-Madison assistant professor of computer sciences, leads the university’s student RoboCup team, which uses artificial intelligence to teach soccer-playing robots humanlike behaviors, all while producing research to advance the field.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison discussed ethical concerns stemming from the rise of generative artificial intelligence in academia and research at a Jan. 30 panel.
The panel, which included experts from the UW-Madison Data Science Institute, Libraries and Institutional Review Boards Office (IRB), provided recommendations for researchers, offering definitions and opportunities for ethical AI use in research.
Many people think that the amount they spend on a gift is directly associated with how much the receiver will appreciate it. But as long as it meets reasonable expectations, the people you are gifting are unlikely to care too much about how you spend, said Dr. Evan Polman, professor of marketing at Wisconsin School of Business at University of Wisconsin, Madison. He also focuses on gift-giving decision-making.
The goal of gift giving should be relationship maintenance, especially on a holiday so focused on love, and gifting an activity or experience you and your loved one can do together is a great way to spend quality time together while communicating your level of care, Polman said.
The scribe who copied Phaenomena, which details how various constellations rise and set, onto the parchment integrated descriptions of the stars’ positions that were probably based on Hipparchus’ work. The celestial objects’ coordinate system and accuracy align with references to the ancient astronomer’s writings, reports Science News’ Adam Mann. “There’s an appendix which includes coordinates of the stars discussed in the poem, and then little sketches of the star maps,” Minhal Gardezi, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who is working on the project, tells the outlet.
Growing up in a first-generation Indian household, Armaan Jain was thrown into activities from a young age — baseball, basketball, soccer and everything but football. The packed schedule forced him to learn time management early, a skill reinforced by parents who deeply valued education and structure.
“From elementary school onward, I had to have systems in place to succeed,” he said. “I learned early that motivation isn’t always there, so you need something that keeps you going anyway.”
As students return to campus this semester, professors are once again evaluating how artificial intelligence can, and cannot, be a tool for learning in their classrooms.
Despite concerns about generative AI impeding learning, some professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are choosing to address and even integrate AI into their course syllabi.
Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman says artificial intelligence is no longer an abstract idea, but is now transforming how the state’s public universities operate.
Rothman penned an op-ed on the future of AI and higher education Monday ahead of the Thursday Board of Regents meeting where he said there will be a “robust discussion” on the topic.
Minimum-wage hikes — depending on the size — can bring a mix of positive and negative economic consequences, according to Callie Freitag, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Social Work.
“The good thing is that earnings would go up for workers. Employers would raise wages and be able to pay workers more,” Freitag said. “But the money to pay workers more has to come from somewhere.”
“Because it’s not dependent on the wind or the sun, nuclear energy operates whenever we want it, pretty much,” said Paul Wilson, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But even if we have to shut it down for refueling, that is very, very infrequent. Nuclear power plants today around the country typically operate for 18 months without shutting off.”
At the top of the list for Wisconsin institutions was the Milwaukee School of Engineering, where median earnings four years out of school topped $93,000.
Coming in at No. 2 was Marquette University, where undergraduates earned nearly $80,000. Bellin College, a private nursing school in Green Bay came in third, with students earning about $79,000.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison ($75,084) and Viterbo University ($70,471) rounded out the top five.
Leaders in Wisconsin agriculture are warning the state’s farmers to brace for another tough year for trade and market conditions.
The discussion at the annual Wisconsin Agricultural Outlook Forum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison focused both on the economic hardships weighing on farmers and what some producers are doing to try to get ahead.
The current executive director of Saint Louis University’s Chaifetz Center for Entrepreneurship will join the University of Wisconsin-Madison to lead the university’s first entrepreneurship center.
Lewis Sheats will become the Associate Vice Chancellor for Entrepreneurship and the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Entrepreneurship Hub on Feb. 2, a Jan. 20 release announced.
Josiah Hanna, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said AI tools can be valuable educational resources but are often misunderstood or misused.
“AI is a dual-use technology,” Hanna said. “You can do some really cool things with it, but yet unfortunately has this really unpleasant use case that people have found and exploited in a really harmful way.”
Hanna said AI-generated images can be particularly damaging because people tend to trust what they see, even when content is fabricated.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison and Immuto Scientific have teamed up to explore new therapeutic targets in colorectal cancer. According to the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, this collaboration aims to use Immuto’s AI-enabled platform to discover novel treatments for solid colorectal cancer tumors.
Dr. Dustin Deming, a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, leads the project. “Our collection of patient-derived colorectal cancer organoids enables exploration of tumor biology and therapeutic vulnerabilities in ways that traditional models cannot,” said Deming.
Within UW-Madison’s Department of Food Science, Professor Bradley Bolling has pioneered research of anthocyanins, natural pigments responsible for the vibrant hues in fruits like cranberries.
“We want to understand how the pigments in cranberry are stabilized,” Bolling said.
Bolling developed a patented process using lecithin, an emulsifier, to extract natural pigments from cranberries without using alcohol or acetone. This makes the process safer and more environmentally sustainable.
Partisan media and shoddy reporting have a long history in the U.S., but one parallel stands out: the era of the so-called yellow press, which got its name from a cartoon strip published in papers featuring a child in a yellow shirt.
“It was a moment before professional news values had really set in, before there were professional codes of ethics,” says Lucas Graves, distinguished researcher at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The biggest newspapers, like the New York World and New York Journal, would run serious, reported news stories. But they “would also run stories to try to generate outrage and almost invent scandals in order to sell more newspapers,” Graves says.
“I think that there was absolutely a market decision behind selecting Bad Bunny,” says Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, a professor of Latin American studies at the University of Wisconsin who has collaborated with Bad Bunny to incorporate Puerto Rican history into his shows and music videos. “The NFL wants to expand internationally, so they are looking to target a broader market beyond the United States. He has a huge following in the United States, but this stage will also be amplified internationally by having someone like him.”
Some analysis will have to wait until the new images can be processed, but the researchers are already able to decode text from many of the raw data. “It’s one of the rare examples in research where you know very quickly that you have gotten good results,” says Uwe Bergmann, a physics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who is overseeing the experiment’s x-ray scanning.
Botulism spores are common in the environment and can be found in most foods at very low levels, said Kristin Schill, a botulism expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Healthy adults consume Clostridium botulinum spores every day without becoming sick. But babies have immature guts that may not be able to prevent the spores from germinating and growing. Once they do, the spores produce a toxin that can cause paralysis and death.
Spores can be found everywhere, including in milk, though typically at low levels, Schill said. Pasteurization doesn’t kill the germs. They can be present in the processing environment, too.
“Cracks can happen at anything below the freezing temperature, so 32 degrees Fahrenheit or zero degrees Celsius,” said Scott Bowe, a professor and wood products specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Bowe clarified that the noises, known as frost cracks, are not caused by expanding sap.
“Some people have explained it as the sap is expanding like ice and causing the crack that actually is not what’s happening. It’s actually the drying of the wood that causes the crack to happen,” said Bowe.
Professor Laura Albert, a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has studied EMS deployment and logistics for decades. She said many departments are being asked to stretch limited resources further than ever before.
“So often these public service agencies like EMS departments are asked to do more and more with less,” Albert said. “You can do that up to a point, but this is kind of hitting a crisis point.”
“In certain neighborhoods, perhaps in Atlanta or Philadelphia or Chicago, maybe you’re reaching a much higher market saturation point,” said Kurt Paulsen, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who studies urban planning. “I’ve not seen any evidence of any even modest market penetration of that product in Dane County and Madison.”
Written by rofessor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
IKEA has dozens of other pickup locations around the country, including at Loyola University in Chicago and near the campuses of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan State University in East Lansing and at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
For UBS, located on the eastern edge of the UW-Madison campus, it gets a flat fee from IKEA for each order.
UW-Madison researchers argue undisclosed organizations targeted users based on race and location to discourage them from voting.
Young Mie Kim is a coauthor of the report and a media professor at UW-Madison. Kim was one of the first independent researchers to discover Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“It was just difficult just to surgically target these people, until now,” Kim said. “But with (today’s) data-driven, micro-targeted, algorithm-based information environment, it’s much more effective.”
