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Category: Business/Technology

Chicago O’Hare, Atlanta Hartsfield and Los Angeles International Named Three Busiest Airports for Thanksgiving and Christmas, According to Orbitz.com

Yahoo Finance

Noted: From the September 2016 Orbitz University of Wisconsin US Traveler Compass study. Orbitz and the University of Wisconsin Business School’s US Traveler Compass Study surveyed 711 adults 18-64 who are leisure travelers about their future travel intent. This study is done using Google Consumer Surveys.

Former MillerCoors chief goes craft

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Ryder will help host dinners that pair foods with beer at the brewery. He continues his work as adjunct professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he hopes to elevate fermentation sciences by making students consider careers in that area.

Wisconsin puts inventive art on display

Big Ten Network

Since 1925, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation has racked up quite a roster of patents. That’s kind of the point. A nonprofit institution, WARF exists to support scientific investigations and research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison by stewarding a “cycle of research, discovery, commercialization and investment.”

Builder of the Week Homes by Towne, Jim Doering

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: I’m a UW grad, so I’m a contributor to the UW-Madison Foundation. We also contribute to Community Memorial Hospital in Menomonee Falls, where my father received outstanding care. As a company, we are involved with United Way and United Performing Arts Fund along with many other organizations through our Zilber Family Foundation.

Not only sunlight, even your footsteps can be converted into usable electricity

Gizmodo

Since a long time, the world has been going gaga over the benefits of generating electricity from sunlight and water. But if we tell you that even your footsteps can be converted into usable electricity, wouldn’t that surprise you? Thanks to a green flooring invented by University of Wisconsin-Madison materials engineers. It is with the help of this flooring that footsteps can be converted into usable electricity.

EatStreet, Titan Spine raise millions

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: EatStreet’s funding round follows the company raising $15 million in December and brings to more than $40 million the total amount of outside capital Madison-based EatStreet has raised since it was founded in a dorm room at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009. The company will use the money for general corporate purposes, according to the filing.

PerBlue game acquired for $35 million

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: PerBlue, which has about 40 employees, was founded by Beck and Andrew Hanson in June 2008. They funded it themselves, then raised $72,000 from family and friends in July 2009. Both graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with computer engineering degrees in 2009.

Investing in change: Diversifying the world of funding startups is a work in progress

Capital Times

Quoted: Would increased diversity among investors result in more parity for women and people of color? In terms of peer reviewed research, there’s not enough robust literature on the subject to really say, said Sarada, a professor with the University of Wisconsin-Madison who goes by one name. In fact, there isn’t even a clear understanding of why certain groups are so underrepresented in the realm of entrepreneurship, let alone private equity.

gener8tor forges Minnesota partnership

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: The partnership is the first gener8tor has forged with a university outside of Wisconsin. About a year ago, gener8tor partnered with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which provided an undisclosed amount of funding for gener8tor to provide coaching and other services to startups.

Getting down to business with a business consultant

Madison Magazine

“You’re making the face,” said a client to Michelle Somes-Booher, business consultant and director of the Wisconsin Small Business Development Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. According to Somes-Booher, it’s the tough love face, the one she puts on when she says something that a client doesn’t want to hear.

Tech and Biotech: Virent tabs high-level consortium to get its biofuels to market; Cellectar to hold study with UW-Madison

Wisconsin State Journal

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.

On Retail: Some suggest co-op model for Room of One’s Own bookstore

Wisconsin State Journal

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.

StartingBlock Reaches Funding Goal, Moves Closer to Groundbreaking

Xconomy

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.

Carbon nanotube transistors promise faster, leaner processors

Engadget

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.

All Facets of Faculty

BizEd Magazine

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.

The 10 Best Universities on Twitter

Universities.com

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.

Behind every startup, there’s a story

Isthmus

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.

Style Psych 101: How to explain your fashion-centric behaviour

Globe and Mail (Canada)

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.

A backup plan may set your job search up to fail

Los Angeles Times

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.