Category: Business/Technology

Wisconsin’s farm economy bucked a national downward trend and set key income and wealth records in 2014 with the help of dairy farmers who increased production as milk prices skyrocketed, according to a new report.

I did not attend the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas but via Twitter I met John Shutske, Associate Dean for Extension and Outreach Programs in the University of Wisconsin’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences who was attending. John agreed to share some of his observations of the events he attended during last week’s show so that’s what we’re talking about in this week’s program.

Noted: Ebullients technology, which uses liquid rather than air to cool computers, was developed by Timothy Shedd, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A lawsuit filed by the Authors Guild in the fall of 2011 against five HathiTrust Digital Library institutions, including the University, formally concluded Jan. 6.

Quoted: “A lot of these apps talk about anonymity, and there are some things that you can remain anonymous with,” says Marc Lovicott, a public information officer at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “But a lot of these apps, we’re able to track down individuals through different means.”

Noted: Emory’s mobile app strategy is similar to one that’s taken off at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The UW–Madison Mobile Learning Incubator team develops apps alongside faculty and students to blend mobile technology with classroom lessons.

Other universities are trying free online courses as a way to engage alumni. Harvard University began offering such courses to graduates last year. The University of Wisconsin at Madison plans to offer six courses with shared themes of human choices and the changing environment, said Lika Balenovich, a spokeswoman for educational innovation.

A laboratory designed to host classified cybersecurity research has been built at the University Research Park on the West Side.

Noted: 3Dprint.com reported another interesting tidbit of news from ROBO: It plans to integrate Spectrom‘s full-color 3D printing technology into its printers, starting with the R1. Spectrom is an adapter invented by two University of Wisconsin students that allows most printers to make multicolored prints. It doesn’t print with multiple spools of different colors of plastic; instead, it actually blends colors to achieve a full spectrum. That’s pretty much unheard of in 3D printing, especially for a desktop machine.

The amount of bonus pay workers receive usually depends on their rank. Salaried workers exempt from overtime pay notch merit bonuses amounting to an average of 4.1% of their salary, according to research from Barry Gerhart, a management professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Meiyu Fang, of National Central University, Taiwan. More than a quarter of officers’ and executives’ pay is tied to performance, according to the study, published in Human Resource Management Review.

Noted: ComScore Inc., of Reston, Va., said in August it had purchased MdotLabs, co-founded by Paul Barford, a University of Wisconsin-Madison computer science professor. Twitter last year bought Locomatix Inc., a company started by Jingnesh Patel, a UW-Madison computer science professor.

TNS — Imagine a football helmet with brain wave probes and a device that measures acceleration forces to detect concussions on the field and directly communicate the information to medical staff.

Noted: It’s a familiar path for Cusatis, 24. He founded the Badger Brewing Association when he was an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a way to bring together students, professors, brewmasters and other beer professionals for lectures, tastings and camaraderie.

Noted: The company — which was formed in June by Peter Qian, a statistics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison — will use the proceeds for research, development and general corporate purposes, according to the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Imagine a football helmet with brain wave probes and a device that measures acceleration forces to detect concussions on the field and directly communicate the information to medical staff.

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation launched a new $1.6 million dollar ad campaign last month to lure businesses to Wisconsin, but according to a University of Wisconsin economics professor, the campaign won’t likely result in an influx of new companies into the state.

Noted: Virent is a spinout from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The company is attempting to commercialize the processes that produce a plant-based substitute for transportation fuels and chemicals that are now derived from oil.

Noted: A growing number of law school clinics for entrepreneurs have formed during the last decade, said Anne Smith, co-founder and co-director of the Law & Entrepreneurship Clinic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Noted: StartingBlocks goal is to accelerate the expanding entrepreneurial activity that is happening as more University of Wisconsin-Madison graduates and former Epic Systems employees choose to stay in Madison, said George Austin, a former city of Madison planner who has been tapped to manage the StartingBlock project.

Johnson Controls Inc. will partner with the University of Wisconsin’s Madison and Milwaukee campuses in a first of its kind collaboration.

If you believe industry insiders—and a considerable amount of media hype—desktop 3D printers are about to become the proverbial next big thing, as companies like MakerBot, 3D Systems, and Solidoodle find ways to create more reliable, user-friendly printers that consumers and most professional designers can afford.

A team of UW-Madison students and recent graduates who devised a new way to add colors to 3-D printing won the $12,500 top prize in the Collegiate Inventors Competition.

Noted: The University of Wisconsin at Madison has run open textbook pilots since early 2012, and offers instructors $1,500 stipends to participate. Speaking as a slideshow presentation showed a picture of a hedge maze, James M. Jonas, academic librarian at the university, stressed the importance of building faculty support for open resources.

Milwaukee-based wealth management firm Robert W. Baird & Co. Inc. has partnered with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin School of Business to fill an expected talent gap in its industry.

Cellular Dynamics International, which has used the cell-reprogramming techniques of University of Wisconsin – Madison scientist James Thomson to manufacture large quantities of human cells, has taken a first step toward the ability to rebuild an actual organ.

Cellular Dynamics, founded by UW-Madison stem cell pioneer James Thomson, said costs were up due to increased research and development, and expanded sales and marketing of CDI’s stem cell products.

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 earlier this year.

Noted: Compared to the top schools, more modestly priced programs at public universities offer a larger payoff. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a two-year degree costs out-of-state students $56,000, and the average student earns back nearly 60 percent of what was spent on school within a year after leaving campus.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the technology transfer arm of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has granted a license to and taken a stake in Xylome Corp., a privately-held Madison biotech company.

Noted: The Wauwatosa office was chosen because it was already doing research into hot-melt adhesives and because of a strong talent pool, including the chemical engineering program at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“What do employers want?” If you’re combing the want ads, you’d probably answer “experience.” In many ways, that’s code for the ability to fit in and get things done.

Publicly traded CDI was founded by UW-Madison stem cell pioneer James Thomson in 2004 and manufactures large quantities of human stem cells for drug discovery, safety screening and for stem cell banks.

Noted: Thanks to exploding technological developments, retailing is continually more challenging and competitive. Those were among the topics discussed Wednesday at the third annual Future Perfect Retail Conference, sponsored by the Kohl?s Center for Retailing at UW-Madison within the School of Human Ecology.

Noted: A native of Madison, Lardy grew up in an academic family, went to a Madison high school and earned an undergraduate degree in economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His mom, sister and two brothers all live in or near Madison.

Major research universities such as UW-Madison have developed their research bases over the course of a century and research parks over a span of 30 years. Leaders at UWM figured they didn?t have that kind of time.

?Sector67? sounds like an ominous setting from a sci-fi story ? perhaps a secret government laboratory or an unexplored part of a recently discovered planet. But it?s a real place in Madison, Wis., and the things that eventually come out of it just might make some of the most outlandish technologies in science fiction seem downright prosaic.

Interview with Dean François Ortalo-Magné.

Bauer, a native of Durand, about 30 miles southwest of Eau Claire, was in Madison on Tuesday to speak to the UW-Madison E-Business Consortium?s annual conference and to receive the Distinguished Fellow Award from the E-Business Institute.

Noted: The company employs engineers from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW-Platteville and Northern Michigan University in the Upper Peninsula, Blada said.

Raising the minimum wage would help not only workers but the state?s economy, the UW-Madison?s Center on Wisconsin Strategy said Wednesday.