Category: Business/Technology

Two East Coast money managers have been named winners of Distinguished Business Alumnus Awards by the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business. (In Business Briefs)

When Dick Cheney stepped down as CEO of Halliburton in 2000 to join the Bush ticket, he turned the company’s reins over to a Badger.

Dave Lesar grew up in a bucolic setting outside of Mount Horeb, graduated with an MBA from UW-Madison in 1978 and now heads one of the most politically charged firms in the world.

Virent Energy Systems Inc., which has already shown it can make electricity from sugar, wants to deploy the same chemical process to make a chemical commonly used to make detergents, paints and other products.

The Madison-based energy startup has won a $2 million federal grant to develop its technology in conjunction with FutureFuel Chemical Co., at a biodiesel plant in Batesville, Ark.

The grant, awarded by the federal agriculture and energy departments, comes several months after the company received $7.5 million in venture capital funding from investors including Cargill Inc. and Honda Motor Co. Virent is a spinoff from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, created to market a patented chemical conversion process developed by UW researchers.

The security firm hired to provide 100 guards to man the ticket booths and gates at the Freakfest Halloween celebration Saturday could only manage to come up with 47 people, forcing city employees to fill the gap.

Many people at the conference said there is abundant technology for use by young companies in the state, given the right conditions.

Take, for example, the hard candies imprinted with “UW-Madison” in red letters at the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s exhibit. The injection molding technology used to inscribe them was developed by University of Wisconsin-Madison students.

University of Wisconsin Chancellor John Wiley signed a Limited Term Employee policy into effect earlier this month, but some questions were raised recently about the details of the plan.

Winner of the 2006 Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest, MatriLab has developed a medicated biological material that is sprayed onto a wound and “cured” in place. The technology came from the lab of UW-Madison biomedical engineering assistant professor John Kao, and tests are under way in Milwaukee.

MADISON, Wis. – A look down on southern Wisconsin shows a landscape shifting from massive farms to rural homes, to neighborhoods, to a brightly lit city between two large lakes. That’s Madison, home to 222,000 people, about 150 miles of bike trails, more than 50 live music venues, at least two specialty cheese shops and the University of Wisconsin.

WASHINGTON – If Google is trying to take over the world – or at least the world’s published material – what role should the University of Wisconsin-Madison play?

The university and the Wisconsin Historical Society recently reached an agreement to have Google scan 500,000 non-copyright books and documents into its search engine, allowing Internet users to read these public domain holdings in their entirety.

The recently passed living wage referendum is still in dispute as of Friday. Those promoting the initiative feel that it is legally binding, while the administration said that the referendum is merely advisory.

A University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee foundation awarded a no-bid contract for a new dorm to a construction firm whose executives gave thousands of dollars to Gov. Jim Doyle’s campaign, but the governor’s office insists Doyle was not involved in the deal.

Milwaukee Magazine first reported in Tuesday’s edition that part of a $23 million contract for the 488-bed dorm went to KBS Construction. Campaign finance reports show KBS executives have given some $30,000 to Doyle’s campaign since late 2003.

The executive MBA program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business was named among the world’s top 50 executive MBA programs by the Financial Times of London. (In business briefs column.)

Led by Port Washington-based Aquarius Technologies Inc., Wisconsin companies have pulled in 70% more venture dollars so far this year than they did for the same period a year ago, according to figures released Monday.

The Greater Madison Convention & Visitors Bureau is asking local professionals who are members of statewide, national, or international groups to work to encourage their organization to conduct their next convention in Madison.

Under the “Bring Your Meeting Home” campaign, the GMCVB will work with the group’s planner or representatives to make the meeting in Madison happen and to ensure its success.

Business students looking to make a fast buck out of grad school should look at UW-Madison’s MBA program, according to BusinessWeek’s latest rankings of the best business schools.

Winslow Sargeant is living the American dream.
Growing up in Dorchester, a largely African-American neighborhood in Boston, Sargeant had a front-row seat to the riots that broke out when a judge ordered schools there to desegregate in 1974 – as a sixth-grader, riding the bus to an unwelcoming neighborhood.

One of the few children on his block to go on to college, Sargeant turned down basketball scholarship offers to concentrate on his engineering courses, earning a bachelor’s degree from Boston’s Northeastern University, a master’s from Iowa State University and a doctorate from UW-Madison.

Madison, Wis. – Pip Coburn offers a different framework for selling products to what he calls, in a tongue-in-cheek manner, “real humans.” And given his forecasting credibility, established largely for predicting the dotcom bust, he’s bound to have the ear of executives attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s ninth annual E-Business Institute Conference.

Madison, Wis. – A University of Wisconsin-Madison master’s degree in business administration gives students the fourth-fastest financial return in the nation, according to BusinessWeek’s latest “Best B-Schools” issue.

They make cutting-edge products, from the hottest video games to potentially life-saving drugs and cancer treatment machines.

They are the Madison area’s technology businesses. Tech hot spots have formed a virtual ring of innovation around Madison, as well as a pocket Downtown.

Samuel Prien, who holds joint appointments at Texas Tech University’s animal science department and medical school, has three patents through Tech, with another half-dozen pending. But he also sees the peril of commercialization.

For 20 years Jeffrey Annis has been inventing one-of-a-kind pieces of equipment, never thinking he could patent them.

At UW-Madison, leaders of some of those companies have been meeting with academics and policymakers for the past year to share expertise and suggestions about global security, in a project by the Division of International Studies.