Category: Business/Technology

Noted: UW-Madison students tend to be more predisposed to starting companies than their counterparts at other big universities, said Jeff Carter, co-founder of Hyde Park Angels, a Chicago angel investing group.

Noted: Baylor University and the University of Wisconsin at Madison have also created special housing options to help student entrepreneurs collaborate. Schools are ?marketing the housing inventory to attract and keep students. They?re doing it in a number of different ways, including adding academic space to the housing,? says Arthur Lidsky, president of the college campus planning firm Dober Lidsky Mathey.

Noted: But various researchers and tech companies?including Google?have been playing around with large asynchronous systems for years now, and inside Adam, Microsoft is taking advantage of this work using a technology developed at the University of Wisconsin called, of all things, ?HOGWILD!?

Noted: A former DRS Power executive, Alan Perlstein, is the executive director of the Mid-West Energy Research Consortium, a nonprofit group that includes energy, power and control companies and research institutions such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, the Milwaukee School of Engineering and Marquette University.

Noted: Meanwhile, start-up ventures have arisen to provide online-ordering software – among them EatStreet Inc., a rapidly growing Madison company. Launched by three UW-Madison students, EatStreet has raised $8.65 million from outside investors, and recently increased the number of restaurants using its system to 10,000.

Noted: Philosophos and Great Oaks managing partner Andrew Boszhardt are UW-Madison graduates.

When Atif Hashmi was planning a startup a few years ago, he sought out others who?d been down the same road.

When Atif Hashmi was planning a startup a few years ago, he sought out others who?d been down the same road. Hashmi, a native of Pakistan who earned his doctorate in in computer engineering from UW-Madison, ended up connecting with Merlin Mentors, a group of volunteer serial entrepreneurs who operate out of the university?s Office of Corporate Relations. 

This summer, Colorado State University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Washington and the University of Wisconsin-Madison will each receive four electric vehicles for a variety of sustainable research projects, including reducing the campus?s carbon footprint; using vehicle sensor data; and broadening the understanding of the Internet of Things. As part of a project debuted at the Internet2 Global Summit this past April, the participating universities were selected by Internet2 and electric vehicle manufacturer Innova UEV from a pool of 11 applicants.

University of Wisconsin-Madison alumna Becky Splitt joined StudyBlue as its CEO in 2009, when the online study service incorporated. Founded in 2007 by UW-Madison graduates Chris Klundt and Dave Sergeant, the service now has 5.5 million users.

Noted: While the mascot part of the business generates about 10% of revenue for Olympus, Adam has a special place in his heart for it. A University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate in marketing and accounting, Adam said he was a Bucky Badger mascot for four years of college.

Madworks at Campus, a summer accelerator program that is being launched at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Friday it has chosen 11 start-ups to participate from a field of nearly 70 companies.

Steve Krogull is on a mission. The director of system engineering and operations in the Division of Information Technology for the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his team are embarking on outreach to 97 different data centers on campus to persuade the people behind them to consider a new way of managing their data.

Students in an introductory environmental studies course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are playtesting a game on mobile devices to learn about sustainability on their campus.

Noted: Among her co-founders at Elucent are two University of Wisconsin-Madison professors who also have worked with NeuWave, which already has gone to market with a cancer-fighting treatment that uses microwave energy to destroy tumor cells.

Noted: It all began with Peter, who earned a degree in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and went on to the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore.

In many ways, Heather Johnston is an anomaly.

In many ways, Heather Johnston is an anomaly.A mechanical engineering graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Phoenix native took a different career path than most of her college friends: She stayed in Wisconsin.

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 Newton, Mass.

In the town of Verona on the rural fringes of Madison, Wisc., there?s a Google GOOGL +1.05%-like campus that houses one of the country?s most rapidly growing tech companies, and one of the least well known. Founded in 1979, the medical software maker Epic has grown to employ 6,800 people, most of whom work at its 5.5 million-square-foot headquarters complex, which sprawls over 800 acres of what was farmland until the early 1990s.

Maybe you?ve spotted it in your daily news feed in the last few weeks. Net neutrality — the idea that the Internet should remain an open, democratic, free-market medium for all people, regardless of how much they pay — is getting mainstream attention.

Campus Technology interviewed five CIOs about the perceptions of their changing role on campus, asking them to give examples of how they delegate, mentor, collaborate and strategize more than they used to. In part 4 of our series, the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Bruce Maas talks about the organizational changes that enable him to focus on a more strategic role. (Missed parts 1-3? See the Table of Contents on the top left of this article.)

Noted: CDI, which was co-founded by stem cell pioneer and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor James Thomson, said last week it had launched a new cell line, called iCell DopaNeurons, that could aid research into neurological disorders like Parkinson?s disease and schizophrenia.

A new partnership between Johnson Controls and the University of Wisconsin-Madison will explore how the next generation of car batteries will fit into the nation?s overall energy picture.

A student team that?s figured out how to inject color into plastic items made by 3-D printers took the top prize at the UW-Madison?s annual G. Steven Burrill Business Plan Competition.

MIGHTY MEALworm, a startup company led by UW-Madison graduate students Rachel Bergmans and Valerie Stull, was one of six winners of a nationwide contest to improve global food systems held in Madison last Friday and Saturday.

?When faced with a choice among colleges, go with the least expensive option,? Mark Cuban suggests. ?Most 18-year-olds don?t know what they want to do with their life, nor do most 22-year-olds. Saddling graduates with high debt makes no sense.?

The Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce joined a coalition of 44 cities Thursday that will advocate for greater federal spending in research, according to releases from the Madison and Boston Chambers of Commerce.