Twenty years after UW-Madison scientist Jamie Thomson began work to isolate human embryonic stems, research has advanced so far that the field is now poised to boom and create Wisconsin companies that could rival Epic, the Verona-based electronic healthcare records company with more than 9,000 employees.
A powerful and inexpensive technique for rewriting snippets of DNA — known as CRISPR-Cas9 — has two research institutions locked in a bitter patent battle. On one side is UC Berkeley, where faculty first reported using the gene-editing technology in 2012, on the other, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where faculty won a special expedited patent for the technique in 2014.
A modern-day “Romeo and Juliet”- romance blossomed on the University of Wisconsin campus when an unsuspecting guy wearing a Vikings jersey caught the eye of a female student on the university’s Snapchat story.
Noted: He also co-founded Sharendipity, a programming environment for non-programmers that failed in the recession in 2009; UltraVisual Medical Systems, a radiology imaging system maker that merged with another start-up and had a $400 million public offering in 2005; and Geometrics, which commercialized radiation treatment planning software Gehring developed at UW-Madison and is now owned by Philips.
Noted: The company is among a growing number of start-ups bringing technological innovations to the grocery industry. Fetch was founded in 2013 by Wes Schroll, who was a University of Wisconsin-Madison student at the time.
It would be a mistake to believe higher education’s financial woes in Wisconsin began the day Gov. Scott Walker took office in 2011.
MADISON — Wisconsin scientists have launched an ambitious new plan to catalog wild animals using thousands of trail cameras, a project that could help answer just how many deer and other creatures roam the state.
Noted: At the level of state government alone, the nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau found that nearly 2,000 employees would be affected by the changes, increasing costs for state taxpayers by as much as $13.7 million per year. That estimate didn’t include potential costs for local governments or schools, the UW System, the Legislature or the state courts system.
In a letter to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, UW System President Ray Cross said the rules would affect more than 5,000 UW employees in jobs such as student life, development, administration and academic affairs.
Wisconsin is home to numerous species of wild animals, although getting a handle on just how many can often prove quite difficult. A joint effort between University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers and the state Department of Natural Resources could take some of the guesswork out of that process, with members of the public also lending a hand.
Noted: Silatronix was founded by two UW-Madison chemistry professors, Robert Hamers and Robert West, after a hallway conversation in which the “two Bobs” sought to literally change the world.
“The safety issues are very real,” Hamers said recently in an interview in the company’s laboratory on the city’s east side, near the Madison College campus. “Our goal is to make lithium ion batteries perform better and be safer, and the way we did that is by inventing a new liquid called an electrolyte. It’s one of the three major components of the lithium ion battery.”
Continuing to cut higher education funding will hurt Wisconsin’s economy by reducing research and innovation on college campuses, according to a new report from the state organization that advises lawmakers on science and technology.
Noted: Insulete was founded and is headed by Hans Solinger, a well-known transplant surgeon and University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who has helped bring pharmaceutical drugs to market. Sollinger and Tausif Alam, Insulete’s chief financial officer, discovered and patented a DNA sequence that is glucose responsive and promotes the activation of the human insulin gene.
Weber-Stephen Products LLC, the suburban Chicago-based grill manufacturer, said Tuesday it is introducing a line of customized Wisconsin Badger grills designed for the tailgating market.
Noted: SmartUQ was founded by Peter Qian, a statistics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, after he was contacted by several large companies looking for a tool to help them accelerate simulations.
Noted: Walker also is set to participate in the 2016 CIGAL Dairy Trade Show, which focuses on the dairy production sector and draws exhibitors from throughout Mexico and the United States, the governor’s office said. The Dairy Trade Show will be held in Guadalajara June 15-17, and Walker will be joined by a delegation that includes Wisconsin businesses, University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW-River Falls and DATCP.
The Small Business Development Center at the UW-Madison Wisconsin School of Business is accepting nominations for the 2016 Dane County Small Business Awards.
Erik Iverson, who takes the helm July 1 at the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, will make his first public appearance in the state at the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Conference in June.
The way you manage your money could be affected by your ability to find a partner.
The feat of correcting vision with a tiny, permeable, and tear-friendly contact lens is impressive enough, but soon that will be only the beginning. Scientists are thinking bigger about what can fit in a small lens — and contacts are about to get a whole lot smarter.
BELOIT, Wis. — Three sophomore students at Beloit Memorial High School will receive full-tuition scholarships to the UW Madison Business School upon graduation as part of the Business Emerging Leaders Program.
Noted: Soon after that, with support from fellow students and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Polynice created an initiative that still is helping families become self-sufficient in Haiti more than six years later.
Wollersheim Winery will be releasing a new wine Wednesday in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Madison fermentation sciences program, according to a release.
UW-Madison startup company Silatronix recently invented a safer electrolyte that will be used for phone, laptop and tablet batteries. Silatronix is planning on moving into pilot production with a major Japanese battery manufacturer, which still has not been identified.
The company, at 3571 Anderson St., has 37 employees. It was founded in 2002 based on UW-Madison research and has forged partnerships with several major companies including Cargill, Shell, Coca-Cola and Honda.
Drones may soon have the capability to save thousands of lives each year by detecting terrorists’ improvised explosive devices and active land mines from long-ago wars thanks to innovative technology developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The proven detection technology that also can detect chemical and nuclear weapons and drugs was successfully miniaturized and designed to fly on small unmanned aircraft by Fusion Technology Lab graduate students about five months ago, according to Jerry Kulcinski, an emeritus professor of nuclear engineering and the lab’s director.
Do you text while watching TV, or listen to music while reading? Media multitasking is known to distract people not only when they are doing it, but when they aren’t consuming media – which is detrimental to performance at school or work, for maintaining relationships and for general well-being. A new study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States shows that a short meditation exercise involving counting one’s breath – inhaling and exhaling nine times – can sharpen one’s focus, and especially so for heavy media multitaskers.
Noted: Recent work by Tessa Conroy and Steven Deller of the University of Wisconsin-Madison showed that start-ups here accounted for a smaller share of job creation than in all but three states.
Want to know how to do Twitter or Facebook right at your institution? You might want to study the practices used by the University of Wisconsin-Madison for the first and Baylor University for the second. Those two institutions have been deemed the “top users” of the those social media sites by Engagement Labs, which develops technology for measuring online social engagement.
Noted: Other workplace charging challenge partners in Wisconsin include University of Wisconsin campuses in Madison, Whitewater and Oshkosh, ABB Inc. in Wauwatosa, Evolution Marketing in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin Public Service Corp. of Green Bay, Xcel Energy Inc. of Minnesota (the parent company of Northern States Power), GE Healthcare and Organic Valley Cooperative in Lafarge.
Three items related to UW-Madison — Three UW-Madison spinoffs, using technology patented by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), participated in gener8tor’s gBETA spring class. Another was formed by a team of UW-Madison MBA students … One of the gBETA startups, Linectra, is already a contender in a prestigious statewide competition, the Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest … Fourteen UW-Madison research projects will each get about $300,000 over the next two years as part of the UW2020: WARF Discovery Initiative.
Noted: The gBETA program provides free coaching and connections to selected start-ups with ties to any Wisconsin college or university. It is run by gener8tor, which operates start-up accelerators in Madison and Milwaukee, and is supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and American Family Insurance
Noted: University of Wisconsin-Madison finance professor Jim Johannes, who testified in favor of the bill, said it standardizes courts’ interpretation of what is required in order to sue.
“It puts a fork in what you need as evidence when you approach the courts in the pleading stage of a case,” he said. “It provides clarity for the courts. Previously, before this the courts could interpret it any way they wanted to.”
Noted: In 1998, Burrill donated funds to start the UW School of Business’s G. Steven Burrill Business Plan Competition, a contest whose winners have included Madison biofuels company Virent Energy Systems and Madison online and mobile restaurant food ordering company EatStreet.
The Burrill contest held its final event in 2015.
Several colleges across the country are investigating after a rash of anti-Semitic fliers began printing from their network-connected printers or fax machines.
The Steven Burrill Business Plan Competition had an iconic aura on the University of Wisconsin campus. Some of Madison’s most prominent millennial entrepreneurs competed in the contest: Jon Hardin, Matt Howard, Chris Meyer, Nathan Lustig, Troy Vosseller, and Forrest Woolworth. From 2007 to 2013, Burrill Business Plan entrepreneurs raised at least 117M and create at least 290 jobs.
A team of students in the College of Engineering at University of Wisconsin took first place and won $2,000 at a regional competition to develop clean energy snowmobiles last week.
The challenge asked students to redesign the powertrain of a conventional snowmobile to be as clean and quiet as possible, while maintaining power and affordability.
Noted: Both University of Wisconsin-Madison students, Terry was a junior majoring in computer science; Cowdrey, a sophomore in business and marketing. Cowdrey’s father, for one, was taken aback, but came to understand why his son did it.
Noted: Cellectar was founded in Madison in 2003 by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Jamey Weichert. Following a 2011 merger with a public company, Novelos Therapeutics, the corporate headquarters was moved to Massachusetts. The company moved back to Madison in 2014.
Noted: A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison who learned the business through the Credit Unions Executives Society and gained experience in various credit union executive roles, Sponem is one of the industry’s most visible leaders in the state.
Noted: Let’s get philosophical for a minute: Is the best price always the best deal? A recent study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin School of Business suggests that shoppers consider a retailer’s reputation as well as its prices. Savvy shoppers will think twice before buying from a less reputable merchant.
Noted: In 1974, the consortium included Indiana University, the University of North Carolina, the University of Rochester, the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, and Washington University in St. Louis. That year, those six schools graduated 63 black MBA students—more than had graduated from all U.S. business schools combined eight years earlier. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the consortium, which now includes 18 universities that have graduated more than 8,000 MBA students from minority populations.
Noted: The Madison store will be managed by Taren Mansfield, a UW-Madison graduate who most recently worked as an executive with Target on Madison’s Far West Side.
Noted: EatStreet, which supplies restaurants with software for handling online orders, is one of the state’s fastest-growing start-ups. Howard and his partners started EatStreet in 2010 when they were students at the Unveristy of Wisconsin-Madison. EatStreet raised $15 million of outside funding in late 2015, saying it planned to add 30 employees to its staff of 110 people.
Noted: Eventually, Greg Bothwell, Cambridge’s young vineyard manager and a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s horticulture program, plans to help with winemaking too.
Noted: Sean, 32, and Stacey, 29, are both UW-Madison graduates. They met in 2011 and married in 2014, and have taken over a business with a dedicated customer base and a strong stable of employees, one of which has been with the company since 1979. They had been contemplating buying a business for years but when Sean, who works as a broker connecting business owners with potential buyers, began talking with Bauer about the future of the business, the talks ultimately led to the Scannells making an offer.
Noted: For more than 20 years, Cook was a research scientist at UW-Madison, specializing in allergic and infectious eye diseases. Cook, 59, retired in late 2013 and was awarded emeritus status in 2014, which allowed her to continue her affiliation with the university.
Retired UW-Madison plant pathologist Vaughan James probably did not realize he was planting seeds for a small business when he put in gardens at his home in 2000. The 1,100 perennials provide a profusion of inspiration and photography subjects for his silk screening and sublimation printing business, R.V. James Designs.
UW-Madison spin-off organization Stemina Biomarker Discovery is attempting to create a biological method to diagnose autism by screening blood samples.
CEO Elizabeth Donley and UW-Madison professor in the Department of Animal Sciences Gabriela Cezar founded the company in 2006, according to a university release.
Noted: The founder of the company, Gregory Piefer, studied at UW-Madison. The company performed a national search for places to locate their new facility, but Pitas said keeping the local company in Wisconsin brings the company full circle.
“The idea that work that goes on at the university should help people throughout the state. So, this is a great example of technology coming out of the university and helping people in Janesville with great-paying jobs,” she said.
Also quoted: Richard Steeves, professor emeritus of human oncology.
Noted: Piefer was in the UW-Madison’s nuclear engineering Ph.D program, and after getting his degree, he developed the technology, he said, and forged a partnership with the private, nonprofit Morgridge Institute for Research on the UW campus.
Op-ed by Jaime Luque, Assistant Professor, Real Estate & Urban Land Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is one of three schools working with non-profit research institute SRI International under a $5.3 million federal grant to develop technology to thwart particularly costly cyberattacks.
Next Thursday is decision day for SHINE Medical Technologies. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Rockville, Maryland, will decide if SHINE will get a permit to build a plant in Janesville that will manufacture a radioisotope crucial for the health care industry.
Noted: Kubicek has a graduate degree in atmospheric science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also has undergraduate degrees in electrical engineering from UW-Madison and in physics from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
Noted: According to a UW study, nearly 90% of Wisconsin’s immigrant dairy workers are from Mexico. Some of them have come here from other states, such as Arizona, that have passed laws cracking down on undocumented workers.
Low oil prices are restraining the ability of renewable energy technologies to compete, but work forges ahead on alternatives to petroleum-based fuels.
Quoted: “Medical education and nursing education is really grappling with: ‘How do we train the health professionals of the future to care for the patient and not for the electronic health records?’” says Katharyn May, a professor and the dean of the UW School of Nursing.
Noted: The University of Wisconsin School of Business student has collaborated with Askar Choudhury, James Jones and Raquiba Choudhury of Illinois State University, using an innovative statistical approach to analyze data by finding a trigger point that would initiate payment for crop loss through a simplified, index-based insurance policy. The approach is designed to be less costly than traditional agricultural insurance policies.
Seven executives met for a recent roundtable discussion at Wisconsin State Journal offices, one year after they gathered for a similar exchange, to see if conditions in the area’s tech industry have improved or slid backward.
