Vitamin D is poised to strike again for Madison.
Harry Steenbock’s groundbreaking discoveries at UW-Madison early last century laid a foundation that led to vitamin D becoming by far the biggest moneymaker for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
WAUSAU – After two decades of steadily declining numbers of dairy cows in America’s Dairyland, the trend is slowly reversing itself, providing new optimism that an embattled industry in Wisconsin is on the rebound, farm experts say.
UW-Madison dairy economist Robert Cropp is quoted.
As more Wisconsin companies do business around the world, they’re also finding themselves becoming global employers. Some businesses have begun to tap into the pool of Chinese students who come to train as engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A Santa Monica-based taxpayer rights group launched a formal challenge Tuesday to three patents that it contends have had a chilling effect on embryonic stem cell research.
The move came on the day the U.S. Senate approved a bill that would expand federal funding for such research, sending it to President Bush, who has promised a veto.
Two public interest advocacy groups Tuesday petitioned the federal government to revoke three University of Wisconsin patents they claim are driving scientists overseas and could hinder California’s $3 billion stem-cell research institute.
Three patents held by a Wisconsin alumni group may throw a bigger roadblock into stem cell research in the United States than federal funding restrictions, a leading stem cell scientist said Tuesday.
MADISON ââ?¬â?? One of the biggest challenges facing Wisconsinââ?¬â?¢s changing economy is turning out entrepreneurs and managers to run emerging companies.
One of Madison’s high-tech success stories continues to power ahead.
TomoTherapy Inc. today unveiled its new 66,000 square-foot operations center at 1209 Deming Way, across from the company’s headquarters in the Old Sauk Trails Office Park.
TomoTherapy is radiating into a larger part of the Far West Side.
The Madison company, which makes specialized radiation machines for treating cancer, moved its manufacturing operation Thursday into a new building at 1209 Deming Way, across the street from the company’s headquarters in the Old Sauk Trails Office Park.
Madison’s business community is fed up with the city’s “utopian” rules – some bitterly saying government is hurting, even killing them.
But despite all of the complaints, the city’s economy is crackling, among the nation’s best in some ways, Wisconsin State Journal research shows.
For generations, Madison has been a place where life is good.
Plenty of good jobs with government and UW-Madison as the solid, steady anchors. Good schools, chock-full of middle-class, college-bound students. Easy to find a nice, affordable place to live.
That was then.
This is now: State government shedding jobs. Madison businesses moving to the suburbs. Companies facing business competition from Austin, Texas, to Shanghai. More families short on cash and stuck in low-paying jobs. Growing numbers of trophy homes priced exclusively for the rich. And a feeling among business people that Madison’s city leaders are out to get them.
In 1967, Judy Haag took an entry-level state job and started living the Dane County dream of government service. Decades later, she helped the state automate and eliminate the very clerk’s job she was first hired to fill – and some 80 more just like it.
Haag’s nearly 40-year career shows both the opportunity that government jobs can offer and the way that those jobs – the core of this region’s economy – are no longer the force they once were.
The usual UW bashers in the state Legislature certainly provide some good copy for this newspaper and others.
The story line typically goes like this: Outraged lawmaker castigates state university again for (fill in the blank – insufficient patriotism, wasteful spending, mismanagement or wildly unconventional thought).
The raging lawmaker gets to grab headlines and score cheap political points. The University of Wisconsin System suffers an excessive spanking and tries to strike back.
All the while, the reputation of the entire state of Wisconsin is trashed.
The company also donates to various causes. Flesch officials were inspired by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to create the Gordon Flesch Foundation, which gave $100,000 to New York City police officers and firefighters. The foundation, which makes donations of about $100,000 a year, also helped Hurricane Katrina victims and contributes to local charities, including Habitat for Humanity and UW- Madison.
A Michigan company that is developing a psoriasis treatment based on licensed technology developed by UW-Madison Professor Hector DeLuca announced that it won’t be going public due to the current weak stock market conditions.
Users of a popular lakeside parking lot at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will see a significant price increase come this fall.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation has finalized a commercial licensing agreement with BD Biosciences to develop new research tools for embryonic stem cell researchers and life scientists.
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation last week announced its second Kauffman Campuses Initiative with a $35 million commitment to colleges and universities throughout the country to improve entrepreneurship education. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has been invited to submit a proposal.
Researchers from industry and academia have submitted more than 220 initial proposals for $3 million in seed grants offered by John and Tashia Morgridge.
The offering drew responses from 10 University of Wisconsin-Madison schools and colleges, 44 industry partners, and 42 colleges and universities around the world. Successful applicants will be invited to submit full proposals, which will be due by Oct. 1, and the seed grants will be awarded in December.
Even before they get their names on the ballot, legislative candidates – even those who don’t have a prayer of getting elected – are being thrust into the heated debate on one of the most emotionally charged issues: Embryonic stem cell research.
A trio of business groups is so eager to stay at the front of the issue that it’s firing off letters to every statehouse candidate urging support for the controversial research.
“At a time when Wisconsin is seeking to succeed in the new, knowledge-based economy, it is irresponsible for us to turn our backs on this life-saving research,” wrote Mark Bugher, director of the University Research Park, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce President James Haney, and Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council.
FITCHBURG – A land restoration and preservation alternative to a subdivision development in Fitchburg’s northeast corner is gaining momentum.
At a Tuesday meeting that drew about 70 people, the West Waubesa Preservation Coalition detailed its plan to turn the 800-acre “Northeast Neighborhood” area, bordered by U.S. 14, Larson Road and Nine Springs Creek, into an agricultural mini-community of residences, community gardens, wetlands research areas, and a charter school oriented to farming and food.
…the plan includes an indoor-outdoor farmer’s market near Highway MM, where UW-Madison marketing students would get practice coordinating sales.
(Professor Cal DeWitt is quoted in this story.)
WARF is a nonprofit foundation affiliated with UW-Madison that manages inventions made by the university’s professors. You cannot do anything with human embryonic stem cells in the United States unless the foundation gives approval. It controls three patents. One on all primate embryonic stem cells, which includes humans, was issued in 1998. A second, specifically on human cells, was granted in 2001. And a third on human cells was issued in April.
MADISON, Wis. — Spinning out new businesses is the goal of many a university in the 21st century.
University of Wisconsin-Madison has been doing that for more than 100 years, helping start roughly 250 companies that have gross revenues today of more than $1 billion.
ââ?¬Å?Itââ?¬â?¢s our responsibility as a major research institution to push ideas into the marketplace to create companies, good jobs and wealth,ââ?¬Â said Noel Radomski, an official in the universityââ?¬â?¢s Office of Corporate Relations (
….Preserving a rural character in Wisconsin depends in part on preserving a viable and sustainable agriculture farms and forestry and the associated rural communities that service such enterprises. But maintaining our agricultural base is not at all assured.
(Brent McCown is a professor of horticulture at UW-Madison and directs a research/outreach center for farming and food systems. He was co-chair of the first Future of Farming Forum.)
MILWAUKEE (AP) – A company executive said Sunday he thinks he and his partners got passed over for a state contract to develop new student housing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee because they didn’t have political connections to Gov. Jim Doyle.
Ken Nelson, president of a company that is a partner in two companies that tried for the contract awarded in 2004, said they filed a civil lawsuit a year ago against the state Department of Administration seeking damages, which he estimated at $5 million.
Responding to concerns from University of Wisconsin campuses and local businesses, the Department of Administration is changing course to allow state employees to make their own decisions about where to buy hardware items below $100.
The decision means employees at UW campuses and state agencies can buy many essential maintenance and repair items from local businesses instead of through a statewide contract that forced them to pay more in some cases.
A state purchasing specialist criticized for poor performance was given a nearly $5,000 raise and a larger pension and was allowed to take three months of vacation in exchange for retiring last year, according to records released this week.
The Department of Administration’s resignation agreement with Mary Ann Woodke is coming to light because the deal played a key role in the defense of her boss, Georgia Thompson, at a trial earlier this month on charges Thompson steered a state contract to a donor of Gov. Jim Doyle.
Steve Brown, whose opposition helped kill plans to include a dorm in the University Square redevelopment, has become a partner in the huge mixed-use project, the developers announced.
Steve Brown Apartments will oversee the marketing and management of the more than 300 apartments in the project, which also will include 250,000 square feet of university and student services space, 140,000 square feet of retail space and 420 underground and ramp parking stalls.
Steve Brown Apartment now is a partner in the project with the UW-Madison and Executive Management.
….Must-Carry Station? Must See TV?
We’ll see, because there is some question about whether or not people locally will be able to watch the Big Ten Channel — unless you’re a subscriber to DirecTV’s “Total Choice” package, which numbers roughly 15.4 million homes nationally.
DirecTV is already on board; representing a good start for the Big Ten, which has signed a 20-year contract with Fox Cable Networks to launch the Big Ten Channel, a bold 24/7 proposition and enterprise.
….For years, farmers have implicated poor power quality (dirty electricity) as a source of their problems, some of it carried by utility lines and some generated on-site. The supposed experts at the university and the Public Service Commission have refused to study it (preferring to study “stray voltage”), even though industry spends billions every year correcting the problem in industrial settings lest it damage equipment.
Levels of dirty electricity are often very high in urban environments. The utilities, government agencies and the university have adamantly refused to assess how these phenomena affect human health.
In her first three years as women’s basketball coach at UW-Madison, Lisa Stone’s teams were on national television three times.
That number should go up substantially in future years, following the announcement Wednesday of the creation of the Big Ten Conference’s own national television network, which will greatly increase the exposure for sports and athletes outside the mainstream of football and men’s basketball.
Former Administration Secretary Marc Marotta said today that he played no role in determining who would get a lucrative travel contract that ultimately went to one of Gov. Jim Doyle’s major campaign donors.
Speaking before the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee, Marotta acknowledged that he did recommend that travel services be included as a possible target for cost savings as part of a broader effort to balance the state’s budget when he and Doyle took office in 2003.
MILWAUKEE (AP) – Stephen Hurley, the defense lawyer for Georgia Thompson, has filed a motion seeking an outright acquittal or new trial for the former state employee, arguing her fraud conviction was tainted by many legal errors during the trial.
Talk to any economic development expert and they’ll tell you taxes are rarely the deciding factor in whether to start or move a business.
Business owners usually look for other things, such as a skilled workforce, a solid transportation system or a good quality of life. Generally speaking, low taxes are just icing on the cake after other issues are taken into account.
….Warning to Wisconsin: don’t put all your economic development eggs in the stem cell basket.
Dear Editor: In his June 13 guest column, Ron Kalil makes compelling arguments against the plans of developer Darren Kittleson to build new houses in the UW Arboretum. Developers, however, routinely hire attorneys specially trained to circumvent restrictions placed on land use by state statutes and county ordinances.
If there is a way to replace God’s good earth with steel, concrete and asphalt, developers will find it. Their only goal is to turn a profit.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and licensee Natural ASA have filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Arkopharma, a French maker of nutritional supplements, and its U.S. subsidiary, Health from the Sun.
The lawsuit alleges infringement upon patents related to the uses of conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, for purposes of creating “a sculpted, athletic looking body.”
Virent Energy Systems of Madison has raised $7.5 million in venture capital for continued development and commercialization of its system for turning biomass into hydrogen and gas that can be used to power engines and create electricity.
….Virent, a UW-Madison spin-off, has a pilot project going with Madison Gas and Electric Co. in which one of its fuel cell systems is turning soybean and corn byproducts into a mixture of hydrogen and components of natural gas that burns very cleanly with few emissions.
SAN JOSE, Calif. – John P. Morgridge, a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate who has given tens of millions of dollars to the UW, will retire on Nov. 15 as chairman of tech giant Cisco Systems Inc.
A fledgling biotech company based on UW-Madison research is the grand prize winner of the 2006 Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest.
MatriLab, which is developing a new method to reduce infection and improve healing in the treatment of wounds, will collect prizes of at least $50,000 for winning the contest, which drew about 200 entries.
MILWAUKEE – University of Wisconsin regents are upset that a contractor and the state failed to meet their goal for minority business participation in the Camp Randall Stadium renovation.
The state’s goal was for the contractor, Cullen-Smith LLC, to subcontract 10 percent of the subcontracting to firms owned by people of color.
But it only reached 5.1 percent on the original project, according to information supplied by the state Department of Administration. The project had four cost overruns.
When you think biotech in Wisconsin, you think Madison. But Thursday night, a Milwaukee-based biotech start-up emerged as the winner of the third annual Governor’s Business Plan contest.
MatriLab is a 2-year-old company that has no revenue and is trying to raise $250,000 from angel investors. MatriLab’s technology is based on research by John Kao, a pharmacy professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A company that’s developing a novel way to treat wounds is the winner of the 2006 Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest.
The technology came from the lab of John Kao, a UW- Madison assistant professor of biomedical engineering.
In a deal that relieves the university and a private developer of more than $2.15 million in local property tax liability, the UW-Madison has taken ownership of “air space” in a new high-rise building that hasn’t been constructed.
The UW Board of Regents last month approved amending its agreement with Executive Management Inc., the Madison-based real estate firm redeveloping University Square into a $190 million mixed use complex.
MILWAUKEE – A state purchasing official testified at her fraud trial today that she contacted as many companies as she possibly could to give them a chance to win contracts to book travel by state employees.Georgia Thompson, Department of Administration purchasing supervisor, was the first witness called to testify today as her defense began trying to rebut prosecutors’ contention that she favored Adelman Travel Group for a contract because of pressure from her bosses and the company’s ties to Gov. Jim Doyle.
New jobs are opening up all the time in the dairy industry, and Chrissy Wendorf wants one of them.
She’ll be a junior this fall in the dairy science department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she’s part of a growing trend that finds women outnumbering men in what’s been traditionally a male-dominated field of study.
MILWAUKEE – A University of Wisconsin official was the first to suggest an extra step to evaluate the top two companies vying for a major state travel contract, she testified today at the trial of a state employee charged with rigging the contract process.
Lisa Clemmons, purchasing agent for the UW athletics department and a member of a committee that evaluated proposals for state travel contracts, said she, not Department of Administration official Georgia Thompson, was the first to suggest the committee solicit a best and final offer from Adelman Travel Group and Omega World Travel.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=432640
Story discusses Salus Discovery LLC, a biotech tool company that uses a patented technology with the potential to make it faster and cheaper to find new drugs. Salus’ technology was developed by a team led by David Beebe, a University of Wisconsin-Madison biomedical engineering professor, and is based on two patents licensed exclusively to the company by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
MILWAUKEE – A travel consultant testified today he objected to a state purchasing official’s plan to add an additional step to the process used to award a major travel contract.
On the second day of Georgia Thompson’s trial on fraud charges, travel consultant Ian Thomas said he told Thompson in an e-mail he disagreed with the decision to pit Omega World Travel and Adelman Travel Group against each other in a tiebreaker after an initial evaluation showed Omega leading Adelman by 21 points on a 1,200-point scale.
A new pot of money is about to become available to promising young technology businesses in Madison and around the Midwest.
Venture Investors, a Madison venture capital firm, has closed on $69 million in commitments for its new fund, Venture Investors Early Stage Fund IV Limited Partnership.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=431170
Madison-based Venture Investors LLC will announce today that it has closed on $69 million in commitments for a new venture capital fund that will invest in very young companies in Wisconsin and the Midwest.
The fund – Venture Investors Early Stage Fund IV Limited Partnership – is the largest of its kind ever created in Wisconsin. It will help finance young companies formed around discoveries in the life sciences, engineering and information technology sectors.
The fund’s broad range of deep-pocketed investors includes the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and several big insurance companies and financial firms.
Howard Bremer, emeritus patent attorney with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, was honored Friday with the 2006 Jefferson Award by the New Jersey Intellectual Property Law Association. Bremer, a pioneer in university technology transfer and intellectual property law, was also founder of the Association of University Technology Managers and helped champion the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, giving universities and nonprofit groups the right to hold patents on their own inventions.
Adding green space to a downtown structure can be a challenge, but Executive Management Inc. found just the spot for it – on the roof.
A “green” roof that will provide a small park-like environment and catch rainwater is the newest design element of the company’s $190 million University Square project, which began construction today.
Madison, Wis. – Does the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s European stem cell patent application have a realistic chance for approval?
The foundation’s stem cell patent is controversial enough in the United States, where critics charge it is overly broad and is suppressing scientific research. While that is a contention WARF dismisses, pointing to the more than 300 academic licenses it has issued for stem cell research, the critics’ claims could influence Europe’s eventual decision.
When Joe Krupp left the family farm near Elkhart Lake in 1968 and headed to Madison for college, he never figured he’d one day be shaping the city.
Like many students at the University of Wisconsin at the time, Krupp had thoughts of somehow making the world a better place. He graduated in 1973 with a degree in social work.
But Krupp never pursued a career in that field. Instead, he took a summer construction job with friends and has called Madison home ever since.
The University Club certainly looks clubby and exclusive, with gables, gargoyles and ivy-choked brick walls on an imposing Tudor-style building.
But the University Club is hardly private. It’s open to all UW-Madison faculty and staff, giving them access to an affordable fine dining experience at lunch. Starting today, though, the door is thrown wide open. The public is welcome to enjoy this campus gem through the summer.
The lowest-paid workers in Wisconsin soon will have a little more change jingling in their pockets.
Today, the state’s minimum wage increased to $6.50 an hour, up from the $5.70 mark it reached a year ago. A state law signed by Gov. Jim Doyle on June 1, 2005, put the two-step increase in motion.
Hollywood, meet Milwaukee.
Starting in 2008, Wisconsin will have some of the nation’s most generous tax incentives for the film industry under a bill Gov. Jim Doyle signed on Tuesday. Supporters hope the array of tax credits for companies that produce films, television shows and video games in Wisconsin will jump-start an industry that is virtually nonexistent here.
As an assistant professor at UW-Madison, Denis Collins often railed against corporate abuses.
Quoted: Mark Schar, who serves on the board of the Center for Brand and Product Management at the University of Wisconsin School of Business.
Madison and Milwaukee’s Catholic bishops are challenging Gov. Jim Doyle’s support for embryonic stem cell research.
Archbishop Timothy Dolan of the Milwaukee Archdiocese and Bishop Robert Morlino of the Madison Diocese wrote to Doyle that they had “grave concerns” with his policy direction and asked him to rethink the matter.
