Category: Business/Technology

The Homeland Security grant provides $23.4 million over five years for the SWAMP program, which is a collaborative effort, based here in the Midwest: Morgridge is the lead institution and is responsible for building and operating the SWAMP; UW-Madison selects the software security tools and brings them into the SWAMP; Indiana University makes sure the SWAMP itself is secure; and, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign manages and stores the identities of those who use the SWAMP.

High-profile projects like the Madison Public Market could get some of the grant money, MadREP president Paul Jadin said, along with projects aimed at improving rail facilities for moving manufactured products, at developing traceable food supply chains as a competitive edge, and at expanding commercialization of new technologies at UW-Madison.

Biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, water technology and university research are all promising segments of the Wisconsin economy — and all need a special ingredient to stay in business:

Water that is so ultra-purified and sterile that it will never exist in nature and humans are not even advised to drink it. In 2003, it moved into a larger headquarters in Madison as it began to build water treatment reactors for the fast-growing companies related to biosciences, genomes, stem cells and drug manufacturing. It installed the ultrapure water infrastructure inside the city’s Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery, the massive University of Wisconsin-Madison research facility.

Noted: Neren figured out many of those things while running Munchie Delivery, an on-demand grocery delivery service that operates out of Capitol Centre Market in Madison, Vosseller said. Neren started Munchie Delivery in 2006, after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a history degree.

Noted: Shine, whose technology was developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is in the process of building a $100 million production facility in Janesville. The company raised $2.4 million in September in a funding round it called a stepping stone to raising more funds to get the plant up and running.

Noted: The WiSys Technology Foundation, which handles invention disclosures for all University of Wisconsin campuses outside Madison and Milwaukee, is reporting a record number of invention “disclosures” by faculty and students. There were 56 disclosures this fiscal year, the highest total in 10 years. Disclosures are ideas that can lead to new products, services and startups.

UW-Madison computer sciences professor Jignesh Patel is spending a lot more time on the West Coast lately, after selling his latest business to a California company.

It’s easy for recruitment and retention to get lost in the shuffle among sexier topics like flipped learning, MOOCs, and the ongoing debates over funding and the cost of education. But for most institutions, the two Rs of admissions are still top of mind.

When it comes to social media, UW-Madison can Twitter all about it.

Wisconsin’s flagship university is the top Twitter account in the United States for higher education, according to data from social media research firm Engagement Labs.

Other universities may have more followers than UW-Madison’s 99,000, but when content is factored in, it’s tops.

The University Book Store, a retailer selling University of Wisconsin-Madison apparel and gifts, plans to open its first permanent metro Milwaukee location at Brookfield Square this fall.

Noted: A representative of WARF — the university’s alumni research foundation — attended BIO and UW-Madison’s Office of Corporate Relations sent two people, including Kathy Collins, who describes herself as a business liaison for the university.

The business school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison no longer has a director for a program that admits academically accomplished high school students directly to the highly competitive Bachelor of Business Administration program.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is all over Twitter.

Wisconsin ranks last in the nation for startup activity and Milwaukee ranks second-to-last among large metropolitan areas, according a new report from the Kauffman Foundation. Interviewed: Jonathan Eckhardt of UW’s Weinert Center.

Nick Lindberg is young, highly educated and technically savvy — and he’s aiming to bring more people like him to southeastern Wisconsin. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a masters degree in computer engineering, Lindberg had internships with Cisco Systems and Lockheed Martin. Then he moved to Rochester, N.Y., where he designed next-generation processors for IBM.

Illumina, a San Diego-based company that moved into the Madison market in 2012, unveiled Thursday an $8 million, 13,000-square-foot addition to its University Research Park facility on the West Side.

Noted: It also would house offices for FaB Wisconsin, which has 135 companies among its members; support services, such as law and accounting firms; and possibly satellite offices for the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and other institutions, Jurewicz said.

Noted: At the School of Business at University of Wisconsin—Madison, MBA students choose a specialization, such as arts administration or real estate. They can immediately dive into classes that are of interest to them, says Blair Sanford, assistant dean for the full-time MBA program at the school.

NeuWave Medical, a company founded in 2008 based on UW-Madison research, has raised $25.3 million, according to papers filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. NeuWave has more than 75 employees, with nearly 50 of them in Madison.

Penn State University, which develops sensitive technology for the U.S. Navy, disclosed Friday that Chinese hackers have been sifting through the computers of its engineering school for more than two years.

Noted: Networking is another must, adds the University of Wisconsin’s Tosan Olle. For Olle, networking – and the company intelligence you gain from it – is like currency. “The more you know about how your assignments fit within the overall organization and how different parts of the organization work to make a whole, more likely you are to build networks, possibly enhance job prospects both inside and outside the division and have a more enriched experience overall.”