Category: Business/Technology

Long known for its state-of-the art research facilities, the University of Wisconsin has historically made a place for itself in addressing worldwide issues. Continuing in that tradition, three top UW researchers addressed alumni who have since become CEOs around the nation Saturday at the Fluno Center.

ââ?¬Å?We heard from people today that are attacking some of the biggest problems we have, in industry and society,ââ?¬Â Chairman and CEO of Rockwell Automation Keith D. Nosbusch said at Saturdayââ?¬â?¢s summit. ââ?¬Å?What theyââ?¬â?¢re working on here at Wisconsin has a direct connection to the future.ââ?¬Â

Patents are big business and big philanthropy at the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which helps keep UW-Madison in the top tier of research universities.

Since its founding in 1925, WARF, which manages all intellectual property for the university, has donated approximately $800 million to UW-Madison from income on licensing university-based patents, said Jill Ladwig, senior writer for WARF.

A broad-based initiative to spur commercialization in Toronto, whether Wisconsin can compete with alternative fuels and China’s market for biotechnology products are just three of the topics to be covered this week at a conference in Waukesha.

Former Wisconsin Public Service Commission chairman Ave Bie and representatives from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin Agri-Service Association and BEST Energies Inc. will discuss whether Wisconsin has the tools to lead in the new economy being created from transforming substances like corn and soybeans into fuel.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s patenting and licensing arm is creating a new position to help create more start-up companies from the school’s technological innovations.

Outlining some of the remaining challenges for stem cell researchers, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor James Thomson took the opportunity to inject some realism into the stem cell expectations game before UW-educated executives at a CEO Summit convened by John Morgridge, chairman and former CEO of Cisco Systems.

Issues of supply, security and ecology demand the production of alternative sources of fuel, said the British ambassador to the U.S. in an address at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Sir David Manning was in town to hear from a panel of UW-Madison scientists at a private luncheon Friday before giving a public address on “energy security and climate security.”

“If we can find alternative sources of energy that are clean sources of energy, we reduce our dependence on unstable parts of the world,” Manning said. If companies do this, “they will be in the forefront of the new energy technology. They will make a lot of money for it.”

The U.S. Army is giving Madison biotech ConjuGon a $730,000 grant to keep working on a treatment for bacterial infections that haven’t been cured by antibiotics up to now.
Established in 2002 and based on UW-Madison research, ConjuGon has developed genetically engineered, harmless bacteria that have been proven successful in animal tests, said Sal Braico, chief operating officer.

The Legislature’s failure to require most gasoline in Wisconsin to contain 10 percent ethanol remains a glaring void in an otherwise flourishing effort to develop a homegrown biofuels industry.

Patents are big business and big philanthropy at the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which helps keep UW-Madison in the top tier of research universities.

Gov. Jim Doyle promised once again this week to propose the state spend $2.5 million for biomedical research in southeastern Wisconsin. Now, what about the Legislature?

Whoever is elected governor this fall should push to fund this key initiative for southeastern Wisconsin in the next state budget, and the Legislature should set aside stem cell politics and approve it without the strings that some legislators will undoubtedly want to attach.

The Milken Institute, an economic think tank, has issued a series of
new rankings of universities on biotechnology publications, patents and technology transfer. In biotechnology research, Harvard University leads the way, followed by the University of Tokyo and the University of London. California universities hold 5 of the top 25 slots, and British and Japanese univeristies hold 3 each.

Read the report here: http://www.milkeninstitute.org/publications/m2m.html

The University of Wisconsin System ranks among the top 10 universities worldwide in biotechnology patents but falls behind several other Big Ten universities in transferring that technology to commercial uses, according to a study released today by the Milken Institute of Santa Monica, Calif.

Ana Garic-Stankovic is far from the stereotype of an unskilled worker who sneaks illegally across the border into the United States.
A researcher at UW-Madison’s department of nutritional sciences, she came here legally from Macedonia, and she and her husband overcame several hurdles to stay and become U.S. citizens.

Two announcements this week bode well for the Dane County and Wisconsin biotech communities.

One is the news that an Illinois life sciences company will be moving to Madison. The other is that a fledgling venture capital fund ââ?¬â?? backed by
Boston financiers – will be investing in startup life sciences and information technology companies in Wisconsin and other Midwestern states.

Is Dane County really becoming nationally known as a hotbed for biotechnology, with the potential to generate jobs and income for Wisconsin as well as medical advancements for mankind?
Are the millions of dollars of state investment in biological sciences at UW-Madison really paying off?

Is there really economic development potential in a Madison-to-Milwaukee-to-Chicago triangle of regional cooperation?

Wisconsin policymakers should take note: This week produced more evidence that the answers to those three questions are yes, yes and yes.

Thirty years ago, Nick Seay moved here – to a city he had never seen – and joined a handful of patent lawyers working in this relatively small university town.

Today, Seay is one of more than 80 registered patent lawyers in Madison and is a key player in the commercialization of embryonic stem cells, one of the most cutting-edge scientific technologies on the globe.

It was Seay who wrote the potentially lucrative patents that were filed after University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist James Thomson in 1998 became the first person to isolate human embryonic stem cells.

When you think about economic development, a medical school is probably not the first thing that crosses the mind. But consider the lucrative economic spinoff in Dane County from the cutting-edge research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s medical school.

A Dane County Judge will likely decide in late October whether a Regent Street bicycle shop owner illegally backed out of an agreement to sell a building for a primate cruelty exhibition center.