Virent — the Madison company with a process to turn sugars from corn stalks into the makings for jet fuel, polyester t-shirts and recyclable plastic bottles — will become part of a consortium of high-level, international companies that will work together to bring Virent’s biofuels and chemicals to market.
Noted: Sandi Torkildson, who helped found A Room of One’s Own in 1975, has invited a representative from the UW-Madison Center for Cooperatives to give an informational presentation Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the bookstore, located at 315 W. Gorham St. Torkildson, who announced in June that she was putting the store up for sale, said she has had several customers inquire about the feasibility of a co-op, but there was no organized effort. The meeting is simply a way to bring those interested in a co-op model together and to learn about that type of business model.
It all seemed like a fairly straightforward process.The shipping giant Amazon sought out an agreement with UW-Madison to land one of its Pickup Points, which allows customers to pick up their orders on-site, inside the campus’ historic Red Gym.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison ranked 14th among all universities in the world in a count of how many venture capital-backed entrepreneurs it has spawned, according to a report by Pitchbook Data, a Seattle-based deal tracker.
StartingBlock Madison, a still-to-be-built entrepreneurial center just east of downtown in Wisconsin’s capital city, took another major step forward this week. The nonprofit organization says it has met its $3 million fundraising goal and, with that piece in place, can continue working toward a groundbreaking planned for later this year.
StartingBlock has hit its $3 million fundraising goal as it looks to become a startup hub on Madison’s East Washington Avenue.
Noted: The move comes as Virent has continued to develop technology originally developed in the chemistry labs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create fuels from the sugars found in plants such as beets.
The computing industry sees carbon nanotube transistors as something of a Holy Grail. They promise not just faster performance and lower power consumption than silicon, but a way to prevent the stagnation of processor technology and the death of Moore’s Law. However, their real-world speed has always lagged behind conventional technology… until now, that is. University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have created what they say are the first carbon nanotube transistors to outpace modern silicon.
The first Wisconsin Under Armour Brand House will open on Friday in Madison, the Baltimore-based retailer said Thursday.
Few professors can be devoted to research, inspired by teaching, committed to service, and driven to lead—but all have different talents to contribute to an institution’s mission. That’s why business schools are adopting more formal, flexible, and comprehensive frameworks that enhance and reward all of the strengths they bring to the table.
Ranked No. 10, UW-Madison: This university has pride like none other. While many fail at the art of bragging modestly, UW-Madison proves through retweets from current students and big name publications like TIME, that whether it be their gorgeous sunsets or their outsourcing of the top CEOs, they are proud of their accomplishments.
Noted: Months later, she enrolled in UpStart, a free 11-week entrepreneurial program for women and people of color developed by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and taught by instructors from the University of Wisconsin–Madison Small Business Development Center.
Local Madison business owners say they are disappointed in the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents’ approval of a plan to allow Amazon set up an online order pickup point in the historic Red Gym on the UW-Madison campus.
Is Wisconsin really in the cellar when it comes to new business creation?
UW-Madison just ranked seventh in the world for patents. That’s a lot of brainpower. But the state of Wisconsin just ranked last for startup business activity. That’s a lot of lost opportunity.
By any measure, Jon Hardin is the portrait of millennial entrepreneurial success. His name is on the door of one of Madison’s oldest and most successful tech companies. And he made the UW-Madison Alumni Association’s Forward Under 40 list when he was just 25 years old.
A UW-Madison alum who’s now a lawyer at Tesla Motors warned Madison startup leaders they’ll face a lot of resistance as they try to disrupt their more established competitors.
Noted: Ankit Agarwal, who founded Imbed in 2010 with five professors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the company’s chief executive officer. Imbed raised $683,000 of equity and debt funding in 2014 in a round that was led by WISC Partners LLC.
Noted: Joann Peck, associate professor of marketing at the Wisconsin School of Business, has conducted numerous studies on haptics, the science of tactile sensations, and how it influences shoppers. Peck has found that when customers handle an item “they’re going to value it more, so they’re going to be more likely to purchase it and often to pay more for it,” she says, because the action increases people’s sense of psychological ownership.
Noted: “There are many things we know we should be doing, but temptation gets in the way,” says study coauthor Evan Polman, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Curiosity is a very powerful force” that can help us overcome those short-term temptations, he says.
Classic rock songs played in the background of an iD Tech lab on the UW-Madison campus as rows of children and teenagers sporting navy T-shirts sat in front of laptop computers where they were designing their own video games.
Jihae Shin of the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin and Katherine Milkman of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania carried out a series of studies to investigate how forming a backup plan affected people. The research was inspired by a conversation the two had when Shin was a PhD student of Milkman’s at Wharton and was thinking about how to land a job in academia.
Imbed’s nanofilm technology was developed in a laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison managed by Nicholas Abbott, an engineering professor at the school. Abbott is one of six Imbed co-founders listed on the company website. Another is CEO Ankit Agarwal, who worked in Abbott’s lab as a postdoctoral fellow, according to UW-Madison.
Noted: Technology of all types is still the No. 1 theme, but this year, new events include a talk on “Earth Futures” by Paul Robbins, director of the UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies; Code Madison Forward, where student teams compete to create an interactive website; and Microbrews for Microfinance, a fundraiser hosted by Madison nonprofit Wisconsin Microfinance to raise awareness and funds for entrepreneurs in Haiti and the Philippines.
Quoted: That kind of ending is not uncommon, said Hart Posen, UW-Madison School of Business associate professor of management and human resources.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has negotiated a tentative agreement with Amazon for a brick-and-mortar shop in the historic Red Gym, where students, faculty and staff could pick up online purchases at a central, secure location — a deal that would earn the university at least $100,000 in commissions annually.
Landing your dream job is a daunting prospect for anyone. So you might be forgiven for thinking that the smartest thing to do when pursuing an ambitious career is also thinking up a Plan B, in case your Plan A goes wrong. Right?
Noted: With fortune cookies in hand, American researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Northwestern University approached 100 people and offered them the choice between the plain cookie and the chocolate-dipped one, at first without the promise of a revealing fortune. In this control group, the less-healthy cookie was far more tempting — with around 80 per cent of participants picking it.
Noted: The Wisconsin School of Business was ranked 27th.
Noted: “It used to be that innovations that spawn or destroy entire industries would happen very infrequently,” said Witek, who has an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Now major disruptions that can be life-threatening to industries or companies are emerging almost annually.”
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) ranks 7th among the world’s universities in U.S. patents issued in 2015, according to a report from the National Academy of Inventors and the Intellectual Property Owners Association.
UW-Madison is one of the top universities in the world when it comes to getting patents for the work done here, according to a report released Friday.
Noted: Stratatech was founded by University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Lynn Allen-Hoffmann in 2001. After watching a surgeon operate on a farmer who had suffered third-degree burns across 95% of his body, she transformed her research into a company that would focus on developing a skin replacement created with actual human cells.
Noted: Christopher Murphy, an ophthalmology professor at the University of California-Davis, is EyeKor’s chief executive officer and a co-founder. Ronald Danis, an ophthalmology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is EyeKor’s chief science officer and also a co-founder.
By the time Hans Sollinger helped launch a company for the first time, in 2004, he had performed hundreds of pancreas transplants. In the process, he had built a reputation as a prolific surgeon whose experience few of his peers could match. Sollinger, who practices at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, also known as UW Health, said that the high demand for his services over the years made his first foray into entrepreneurship somewhat jarring.
A team of University of Wisconsin researchers have received a major grant from the Department of Defense to further develop a sophisticated piece of optical technology: A camera that can see around corners.
The technology is based on research Agarwal got involved with as a post-doctoral research scientist at the UW-Madison in 2008.
Cellectar, a publicly-traded company, was founded in Madison in 2003 by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Jamey Weichert.
Education is going through radical changes. Chalkboards have evolved into SMART Boards, and massive open online courses (MOOCs) have replaced some classes. Teachers and professors can lecture from across town or around the world.While ostensibly a boon for educators, technology is also causing confusion and uncertainty. “Technology can be disruptive, and a lot of these new innovative, instructional technologies have created a disruption within our traditional system,” says Les Howles, director of UW-Madison’s Division of Continuing Studies’ Distance Education Professional Development. “It’s forcing us to think about teaching, learning and learners in new ways.”
A team of researchers has come up with high-performance, micro-scale solar cells that outshine comparable devices by making sideways swipes. University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers’ miniature solar panels could power myriad personal devices – wearable medical sensors, smartwatches, even autofocusing contact lenses.
The popular smartphone game “Pokemon Go!” has swept the country up in a craze to catch them all, but there are other branches of virtual reality from researchers and developers all over the world, and some of the best and brightest are right here in Madison.
You never know what’s around the corner, but you also know never to say never — because in four years or so, you just might know exactly what’s hiding there.
Quoted: Believe it or not, this game is not Pokemon Go. It’s actually Kkomamon — an augmented reality game developed as something of an experiment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison four years ago, well before Niantic’s smash hit was even in development.”We were working with this game to increase physical activity in kids,” said David Gagnon, the program director of the Field Day Lab, a team of educational researchers, developers and designers who work at the intersection of education and new technology.
London Business School has appointed François Ortalo-Magné as its dean. He joins from Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US, where he has been at the helm since 2011.
Iverson outlines vision as WARF hits ’inflection point’7/21/2016 Erik Iverson says he’s taking over the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation as the 91-year-old organization is hitting a major “inflection point.”
Quoted: “Before you consider buying, calculate the financial returns on buying vs. renting in your area under a variety of assumptions,” Andra Ghent, associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Business, told WalletHub.
UW alumnus Thomas Falk, CEO of Kimberly-Clark, helped UW earn this ranking. Falk said the Wisconsin School of Business gave him an important head start to his success, along with his own hard work and determination.
Noted: Insurance companies are passing these costs onto you, the consumer, in the form of higher auto insurance premiums, says Joan Schmit, distinguished chair of risk management and insurance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Depending on how old you are and how long you’ve lived in Wisconsin, you’ve likely heard the dismissive phrase “When in doubt, Stout!” It’s an outdated reference to UW-Stout being a college choice of last resort.
The classic Wisconsin soda ‘Jolly Good’ are making a comeback with products soon to be sold by retailers statewide. Interviewed: Page Moreau is the John R. Nevin Chair in Marketing at the Wisconsin School of Business and Assistant Professor of Marketing at Leeds School of Business at University of Colorado. She is also an Associate Editor at the Journal of Consumer Research.
Noted: Page Moreau, academic director of the Center for Brand and Product Management at the Wisconsin School of Business, is interviewed.
Xemex, a soon-to-be company that has developed an adhesive mixing nozzle with no moving parts, has attracted interest from four angel investing groups, a University of Wisconsin-Madison official said Tuesday.
A person walks into a brewpub with no idea of what they want to drink. What’s the quickest possible way for a bartender to figure out what beer they’ll like?
Noted: And there are plenty of schools where MBA debt is a mere fraction of the total load taken on by grads of elite business schools. At the University of Wisconsin’s Business School in Madison, the average debt burden for graduating MBAs was $15,481, $106,889 less than Wharton’s average, while the first-year median comp package was $114,694, just $31,609 below the median pay for a Wharton grad.
Noted: And there also are plenty of schools where MBA debt is a mere fraction of the totals at the elite business schools. At the University of Wisconsin’s Business School in Madison, the average debt burden for graduating MBAs was a mere $15,481–$106,889 less than Wharton’s average–while the first-year median comp package was $114,694–just $31,609 below the median pay for a Wharton grad.
Noted: The class that starts this fall at the Consortium’s 18 schools — expanded from the original three, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Washington University in St. Louis, and Indiana University-Bloomington — will be a record 490 students strong, up from those original 21, says Consortium Executive Director and CEO Peter Aranda. Thirteen members of that first class graduated with their MBA; this year the number was 411.
Noted: And the Hamels are serious UW-Madison boosters.Pamela and George Hamel Jr., (UW B.A. ’80) have made a gift of $15 million for the upcoming performing arts center, with groundbreaking expected this fall. The Hamel Music Center will be next to the Chazen Museum of Art.
Fred Lee is not afraid to put himself out there. Lee is a radiologist at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, where his primary area of interest is the ablation, or elimination, of cancerous tumors. He says that around the year 2000, he decided that the radio frequency ablation devices he and his colleagues were using “were just not good enough.” But since Lee’s background wasn’t in engineering, he had to reach out for help.
One of Madison’s leading couples is being honored at UW-Madison for their work in education and growing technology.
UW System President Ray Cross says he and other higher ed leaders need to do a better job partnering with industry to build support for the state’s colleges.
