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
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.
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.
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.
With a newfound interest in weather sciences, Terry Kelly transferred from Harvard to the meteorology program at UW- Madison. After graduation, he parlayed his interest in atmospheric phenomena into a company, called Weather Central, that now provides software and forecasting services to countries around the world.
Craig Grau, UW Extension plant pathologist, is quoted.
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.
Plans for an addition to Grainger Hall that would house graduate programs in the UW-Madison School of Business are being redesigned as a cost-saving move after bids for the project came in over budget.
“In a time of tight resources, we felt that a redesign would deliver more value, even though it will delay the building’s opening,” said Alan Fish, associate vice chancellor for facilities.
The lowest bids came in at $47.3 million, $6.8 million higher than the project’s budget.
Larry W. Cox, director of the UW-Madison Business School�s Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship for the past two-and-one-half years, is leaving his post to teach at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.
Cox will also head the school�s Midwest Entrepreneurial Education Center, which is ranked fourth in the nation behind MIT�s entrepreneur center.
The University of Wisconsin’s research foundation has signed its first licensing agreement with a private company to develop commercial products using embryonic stem cell technology developed at the school.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which holds the patents to human embryonic stem cell discoveries made at UW-Madison, and Chemicon International of Temecula, Calif., announced the agreement this week.
MADISON, Wis. – The University of Wisconsin’s research foundation has signed its first licensing agreement with a private company to develop commercial products using embryonic stem cell technology developed at the school.
with one of China’s leading business schools that will provide the school with a $25,000 annually renewable grant to advance the study of risk management, insurance and finance.
The agreement signed by president and CEO Jeff Post with the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in Beijing was signed on Post’s recent trip to China, his first since assuming the leadership of CUNA Mutual in January. The grant is being coordinated through UIBE’s partnership with the UW-Madison.
David Brown, UW-Madison professor of finance, said Randall’s notes “seem to be valid to the extent that you believe that location matters.
Madison, Wis. – The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation has licensed the California immunological research firm Chemicon to commercialize research products using WARF’s stem cell patents, Chemicon’s parent company Serologicals announced Tuesday.
Associated Bank is closing its branch in University Square on Friday and will open a new office nearby at at 640 University Ave. on Monday. The new branch formerly was a Burger King restaurant, and is more than twice as large at 3,000 square feet.
Overseeing a team of employees may be a no-brainer for an experienced business executive, but for an engineer whose skills and education have focused on technical subjects, making the transition to a supervisory role can be daunting.
“A lot of engineers and scientists are successful in college when you crank out great reports and numbers, and you don’t always necessarily have to work on a team,” said Jan Kucher, senior project engineer at the Madison engineering firm RMT.
Quoted: Norman Fost, who will argue that it’s unethical not to do research on children, and that current regulations are too strict. “The main problem is there’s not enough research,” says Fost, director of the bioethics program at the University of Wisconsin.
Public power and wastewater treatment plants throughout Wisconsin will remain state-owned and operated as a result of Gov. Jim Doyle�s veto of a controversial budget item calling for the privatization of such facilities.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s expert on former President Richard Nixon said he would not appear in court today for a pending disorderly conduct charge in which he allegedly called in a bomb threat to the Dean Health Plan office.
Disgruntled about a pending claim, emeritus history Professor Stanley Kutler, 70, reportedly called the insurance office on April 26 inquiring about the claim. According to the criminal complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court, Kutler allegedly threatened to blow up the Dean Health Plan building if his claim wasn’t settled.
There are several groups in the region working to protect and restore the endangered Karner blue butterfly. Now these efforts could be helped by a new computer mapping and statistical modeling technique. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach has more. (Audio.)
I am an addict. And I�m not alone. There is a new addiction plaguing college campuses: online gambling.
In one case that briefly captivated national attention about student gambling in June 2003, a student at the University of Wisconsin murdered three roommates because he owed them thousands in gambling debts.
American collectors Simona and Jerome Chazen share a rare conviction that one should never differentiate between fine and applied arts. “We believe painting, sculpture and craft are born from the same creative spirit – and are happiest when they live with one another.”
To this end for almost 40 years they have championed the decorative arts, integrating them into their homes so that glass by Dale Chihuly and William Morris and ceramic sculptures from Viola Frey and Anthony Caro sit beside paintings by David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Robert Motherwell and Gerhard Richter.
Madison – Officials who run Wisconsin’s public employee pension system want Gov. Jim Doyle to veto a middle-of-the-night addition to the state budget that would make 31,000 non-union state workers contribute $42 million toward their pensions over the next two years.
A new method to keep computers cool has been developed at UW-Madison.
Air cooling technology no longer can keep pace with the heat generated by today’s powerful supercomputers, said UW mechanical engineering Professor Tim Shedd, who developed a new liquid cooling method with graduate student Adam Pautsch.
A panel of scientists, concerned about the remote possibility of instilling human traits in animals, has recommended caution in efforts to implant embryonic stem cells in the brains of monkeys and apes.
Quoted: Steven Krauth, academic curator of the University of Wisconsin’s Insect Research Center.
Emergency physicians who fear malpractice suits are reportedly more likely to admit and order tests for patients with chest pain or other heart symptoms.
The study involved researchers at the University of Wisconsin, the Medical College of Wisconsin; the University of Rochester; and Tufts-New England Medical Center.
WASHINGTON, July 12 – With President Bush vowing to veto a bill to loosen restrictions on federal financing for embryonic stem cell research, leading Congressional Republicans, including Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, have drafted an alternative that promotes new, unproven methods of obtaining stem cells without destroying embryos.
Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz wants State Street area bars to quit serving alcohol earlier on Halloween weekend to make the unsponsored megaparty safer this fall. The celebration, attended by as many as 75,000, has been marred by violence and broken up by police in the early morning for three straight years.
Quoted: Zhang Hongming, a professor of Chinese linguistics at the University of Wisconsin
“Men seem to have a hard time understanding women, and it really is nice to have someone understand you,” says Jenny Bryers, a UW- Madison graduate student. “I don’t think losing a friendship is necessarily worse for women than for men, but we probably let it bother us more. Women generally let things bother them more than men, especially if it’s something we have no control over, something we can’t change.”
Dear Editor: As an alum and now a faculty member at UW-Madison, I am saddened by the declining quality of resources for educational programs and the waning morale of my fellow UW employees….
Madison travelers headed to international flights Thursday said they were sorry to hear about the London attacks but saw no reason to change their plans.
Gaylord Nelson, a former Wisconsin governor and U.S. senator, died Sunday at the age of 89. He was an eloquent defender of the natural world and a man who brought skill and grace to the practice of politics.
Nelson died of cardiovascular failure at his home in Kensington, Md., a Washington, D.C., suburb. He will always be known as the founder of Earth Day.
Preliminary placement figures for graduates of UW-Madison’s MBA program are up about 20 percent over last year, and graduates are commanding salaries that average nearly $73,000 ââ?¬â?? an increase of almost 5 percent from 2004.
That�s the word from Blair Sanford, director of the school�s Graduate Career Services office. She attributes improved job numbers for 2005 full-time MBA graduates to an improved economy and a refining of the program�s curriculum.
Insurance coverage of medications that help people quit smoking rose 32 percent from 2002-04, according to a survey by the UW-Madison Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention.
Of the more than 3 million insured Wisconsin residents included in the 2004 survey, 74 percent have coverage for at least one stop-smoking medication through their health plans. In 2002, only 56 percent had that benefit.
Universities nationwide are racing to lure top biotech scientists and research dollars, resources that could fuel one of this century’s most promising industries.
Madison has become home to a new laboratory to study radio frequency identification technology, or RFID.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s E-Business Consortium late last year established its RFID lab to put into practice concepts studied by the group’s RFID workgroup. During the first half of this year, the lab has been installing donated equipment and preparing for an official opening Aug. 12, announced Wednesday during the consortium’s second annual RFID Conference in Waukesha.
A new arrangement linking Milwaukee Area Technical College, Waukesha County Technical College and Gateway Technical College could help state employers.
In the first such alliance in Wisconsin, the three neighboring colleges are teaming up to serve manufacturing companies with a Web site, easier access to courses and, if necessary, customized worker training. Known as an advanced manufacturing network, the arrangement is being duplicated elsewhere in the state to serve manufacturers and train workers for an expected resurgence in Wisconsin factory jobs.
MADISON, Wis. ââ?¬â? Seven years ago, when James Thomson became the first scientist to isolate and culture human embryonic stem cells, he knew he was stepping into a whirlwind of controversy.
He just didn’t expect the whirlwind to last this long.
In fact, the moral, ethical and political controversy is still revving up ââ?¬â? in Washington, where federal lawmakers are considering a bill to provide more federal support for embryonic stem-cell research; and in Madison, Thomson’s base of operations, where Wisconsin legislators are considering new limits on stem-cell research.
Paul S. Peercy, dean of the UW-Madison College of Engineering for the past five years, likes to call technology transfer a ââ?¬Å?contact sport.ââ?¬Â
He doesn�t mean bruises and broken teeth, though, as in hockey or football. Peercy is talking about interdisciplinary research with scientists and engineers talking to each other at the earliest stages of product development.
Based on research initiated by UW-Madison orthopedics and rehabilitation medicine professor Paul Bach-y-Rita, the BrainPort balance device uses an electrode-laden strip placed on the tongue and attached to a control box worn around the neck. Messages from a tilt sensor on the strip travel to the control box and then back to electrodes on the tongue to tell the brain if the patient’s head is tilted or straight.
UW Credit Union announced plans to build a 3,800-square-foot branch office to replace its branch at 1433 Monroe St. The new building will be built on the southwest corner of the site of the existing branch in space used as overflow parking.
The credit union has reached a proposed agreement to sell the existing building, along with about half of the parcel, to the University of Wisconsin.
The head of Wisconsin’s biggest technology transfer organization has been in Washington, D.C., the last few weeks trying to temper enthusiasm in Congress for making big changes to U.S. patent law.
Carl E. Gulbrandsen, who testified at the invitation of House and Senate subcommittees, said the push to give courts more discretion about whether to grant injunctions in patent infringement cases could hurt organizations like his, which are trying to move technology out of university laboratories and into commercial use.
Gov. Jim Doyle has announced the members of the Consortium on Biobased Industry, which is charged with preparing a roadmap over the next year on how to best support the development of biobased products and energy in Wisconsin.
“In Wisconsin, we may not have oil fields,” Doyle said Friday. “But we can grow our own biobased resources. We will use these resources to produce renewable energy and value-added products, and reduce our dependence on oil.”
UW-Madison professors Charles Hill and Michael Sussman were among those appointed by the governor.
A new state advisory group hopes biological products will one day power not only lightbulbs and automobiles but Wisconsin’s economy as well.
On Friday, Gov. Jim Doyle named 19 representatives from business and academia to the Consortium on Biobased Industry, which next spring will recommend ways the state can support the development of renewable fuels, renewable energy, bio-based products and the companies involved in their manufacture.
Madison, Wis. – Stratatech Corp. was awarded a federal Phase II SBIR grant of $922,000 from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to further develop its engineered human skin products.
Established in 2000, Stratatech is based in Madison and employs 18 people, according to the 2005 edition of the Greater Madison Wisconsin Area Directory of High-Tech Companies. Its products are based on a source of pathogen-free human skin cells that are able to multiply indefinitely, a technology first identified at UW-Madison.
Madison-based Stratatech Corp. has received a federal grant of nearly $1 million it will use to work to enhance the ability of its engineered human skin products to promote the healing of chronic wounds.
….Stratatech’s products are based on a patented, unique source of pathogen-free human skin cells identified at the UW-Madison as being able to multiply indefinitely.
In a rare show of bipartisanship, two state lawmakers and a former top aide to Gov. Jim Doyle are proposing a $13.5 billion-a-year plan that would guarantee health insurance coverage for all Wisconsin residents.
The proposal was unveiled this morning during a hearing before the Assembly Medicaid Reform Committee.
The plan would require all employers – large and small – to pay into a statewide pool run by a new, private nonprofit corporation. The pool would be similar to the state’s unemployment compensation and workers’ compensation funds.
Tear it down.
That�s what Steven Skolaski, president of the Rennebohm Foundation, will tell the Madison Landmarks Commission when it meets June 20 to consider preserving an 80-year-old former pharmacy at University and Randall avenues.
ââ?¬Å?I donââ?¬â?¢t know how I can be more plain than that,ââ?¬Â said Skolaski.
Farmers’ routine application of chemical fertilizers and manure to the land poses a far greater environmental problem to freshwater lakes than previously thought, potentially polluting the water for hundreds of years, according to new research.
In a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a University of Wisconsin-Madison expert blames the buildup largely on industrial agriculture’s excessive use of fertilizer and manure since the 1940s.
The concentration could cause the eutrophication of lakes for centuries as the treated soil slowly washes into lakes and streams, writes Stephen Carpenter, a professor of zoology and a leading expert on freshwater lakes.
Even empty political rhetoric can have disastrous consequences. The increasingly phony political posturing over stem cell research has the potential to ruin real lives and to wreck the state’s real economic future.
In his intriguing book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” Thomas Frank advanced the idea that Republican politicians who pander to religious extremists on so-called cultural issues don’t really want to win.
According to Frank, Republican strategists are fully aware they can never hope to overcome the U.S. Constitution to outlaw abortion, force prayer in public schools or send people to prison for burning dry goods that happen to be red, white and blue.
WASHINGTON – Gay and transgender workers were more likely than ever to receive domestic-partner health benefits last year, and more companies are adopting nondiscrimination policies to protect them, a leading gay- activist group reported.
But gays’ workplace gains have slowed since the ’90s, according to figures that the group, the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign, compiled for its annual “State of the Workplace” report. That’s probably because of the rising costs of health benefits. Social conservatives said their resistance to such efforts was a factor.
That 1,423-foot communications tower near Highway M and Mineral Point Road eventually will be in the way again for an expansion of the University Research Park.
The tower, which has leased space on it for broadcasting, is owned by the University of Wisconsin System and managed by the research park.
Within the next month, the mayor’s office will give the Economic Development Commission a formal update on its progress on recommendations listed in the group’s 46-page report. Meanwhile, the EDC is working to ensure its opus doesn’t wind up gathering dust.
“We will not rest until some of these issues are addressed, and we’ll continue to bring them up,” said EDC Chairman and University Research Park Director Mark Bugher.
Quoted: Barry Gerhart, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and author of two books on CEO pay.
Did you know gasoline evaporating from that old can in your garage puts harmful pollutants into the air?
The Dane County Clean Air Coalition, in partnership with UW-Madison and the city of Madison, will try to put a dent into the old gas can supply Saturday during a gas can exchange at Goodman Park (formerly Franklin Field). The park is at 1402 Wingra Creek Parkway, off Olin Avenue.
A Madison property possibly worth a million dollars is being fought over by UW-Madison officials and animal rights activists.
Activists have an option to buy the property, which sits between the university’s two primate research facilities.
The North Charter Street property’s owner is Roger Charly, who operates Budget Bicycle.
Mithridion Inc., a Fitchburg-based company that is developing drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease, has won the second annual Governor’s Business Plan Contest.
Mithridion, the top-scoring plan in the Life Sciences category, will receive $20,000 in cash and a year’s free rent at 525 Science Drive in University Research Park – an $80,000 value.
The firm’s co-founders are Jeff Johnson, an associate professor in the UW-Madison Pharmaceutical Sciences Division, and Trevor Twose, company CEO.
