UW-Madison faculty, staff and students received 77 patents through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation in 2005, making UW-Madison the nationââ?¬â?¢s fifth-most ââ?¬Å?productiveââ?¬Â intellectual property university, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced April 6.
University of Wisconsin inventors and researchers celebrated a banner year in 2005, as UW climbed in the rankings of universities nationwide in number of patents awarded.
Gov. Jim Doyle led a group of Wisconsin scientists to Chicago Monday to attend the world�s largest biotechnology conference.
CHICAGO – Madison may not be the biggest biotech community in the nation, but the area is drawing plaudits on at least two fronts at the International BIO convention here.
A study touts the wide range of biotech jobs in the Madison area; meanwhile, a Middleton High School biotechnology teacher, Kathryn Eilert, has won a $10,000 national award.
This is an exciting time for science, especially biotechnology, in Wisconsin:
The state is launching the first phase of the $150-million Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery, a public-private center for biomedical research at UW- Madison.
Wisconsin investors stepped up to grow their own, putting at least $50 million into young companies in 2005, according to a report that will be released today at the biotechnology industry’s annual conference.
The state fell short, however, of a goal developed five years ago of having $200 million in annual venture capital funding. In fact, Wisconsin’s venture capital ranking dropped to 35th in 2005 from 26th in 2004, according to the study, called “Risk Capital in Wisconsin: A Progress Report.”
In other news, the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery will encourage collaboration with researchers from other centers in the state such as the Medical College of Wisconsin and Marshfield Clinic, said Elizabeth L.R. Donley, general counsel at the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
Gov. Jim Doyle is leading the largest Wisconsin delegation ever to BIO 2006 today, the world�s largest biotechnology symposium in Chicago.
Joining Doyle will be stem cell pioneers Dr. James Thomson and Dr. Gabriela Cesar. The three will speak about major biotechnology developments in Wisconsin.
It’s not one of the big players, but Wisconsin has big biotech dreams.
Armed with a budget that’s nearly three times bigger than last year’s and its largest delegation ever to the 14-year-old event, Wisconsin will begin marketing its growing biotech effort today to a global audience of more than 17,000 in Chicago at BIO 2006, the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s annual conference.
This year, 90 percent of a record 1.4 million graduating college students won’t have a job lined up upon graduation, according to a recent MonsterTrak survey.
Bob Klein, a UW-Madison graduate, is hoping to change that daunting statistic by teaching college students how to better market themselves. Klein is the founder of FirstJob, Inc. a company that teaches students to think of themselves as an exciting product being introduced to the world.
While most graduating seniors at UW-Madison are still scrambling to send out resumes and rushing to interviews between classes, for some lucky students, their biggest problem is deciding which job offer to accept.
For Rommie Zats and Ben Von Obstfelder, finding a job was easy.
UW-Madison�s avian-flu research may receive more lab space after a UW System Board of Regents committee approved a measure Thursday to lease space at the University Research Park. This space would serve the Department of Pathobiological Sciences and the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. The Physical Planning and Funding Committee also approved a reconstruction of Chadbourne Hall to commence in coming months.
UW-Madison reports that its MBA students are seeing the national trend of improved job opportunities.
The job market for MBA students this year features more job offers and bigger salaries, particularly from employers in the consulting, financial services and consumer product industries, according to a new survey from the MBA Career Services Council.
A growing number of states are creating programs to aid human embryonic stem cell research in the absence of congressional support for the promising but controversial work. Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich, a Republican, signed a bill Thursday to spend $15 million for stem cell research. Maryland is the fifth state since 2004 to approve spending taxpayer money on such research. California, Connecticut, Illinois and New Jersey also have approved state-funded research programs. At least four other states are debating bills or ballot initiatives to promote stem cell research, says Alissa Johnson of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
City officials approved plans for a private dormitory associated with the Madison Presbyterian Student Center, 731 State St., at the Urban Design Commission meeting Wednesday. The two-part plan that involves building a private residence hall and renovating parts of the church was finalized.
UW-Madison stem cell patents may restrict other universities from furthering their own research, due to restrictions and high fees enacted by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
The city�s Urban Design Commission gave unanimous final approval Wednesday to reconstructing the Presbyterian Student Center project. The committee also heard initial plans for a mixed-use project on West Washington Street during its meeting.
Donations in the amount of $150 million will fund a brand-new UW-Madison science research facility, Chancellor John Wiley announced Monday.
University of Wisconsin Chancellor John Wiley announced a total of $100 million in donations Monday toward the construction of an on-campus biomedical research complex.
Twin institutes of UW-Madison biomedical research and discovery – one public, one private – will rise in the 1300 block of University Avenue by 2009 with the help of a $50 million private gift from UW-Madison alumni John and Tashia Morgridge.
The Morgridges’ gift, announced Monday, is the single largest private donation in university history. It will be matched by another $50 million from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation for a total $100 million privateboost to the building project, now known as the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
Madison, Wis. ââ?¬â? Just in case anyone doubts that the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation has both the will and the resources to defend its stem cell patent, Andy Cohn would like to disabuse them of the notion. Cohn, government and public relations manager for WARF, said the foundation, armed with a $1.5 billion endowment, is prepared to take on any legal challenges to its controversial stem cell patent.
It’s the largest donation ever to the UW-Madison campus, and it had Governor Jim Doyle declaring, “On behalf of all the citizens of the state of Wisconsin, I thank you for what you have done.”
Doyle was directing his congratulations toward alumni John and Tashia Morgridge, who helped kick start a massive biotechnology center to be built on the UW campus.
The California stem cell institute’s plan to profit from the research it funds is going to cost it.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation said it is approaching licensing talks with the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine as if the organization were a commercial entity, since it plans to capture revenue from the commercialization of the research it funds. The institute, created by voters in 2004, will oversee $3 billion earmarked for stem cell research
Wisconsin’s reputation as an emerging biotechnology hot spot will be further enhanced next month when the state is well represented at one of the world’s premier biotechnology conferences, businesses and organizations here hope.
Wisconsin attendees will make up 1.5 percent of the total participation at the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s International Convention, which will be held April 9-12 at Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center. That’s more than many other states and some countries.
Wisconsin is gearing up for what a state development group calls ââ?¬Å?the largest gathering of biotechnology leaders in the world.ââ?¬Â Next month, Forward Wisconsin hopes to market the state as a place where stem cell and other emerging biotech research is strong. Others think studying cells taken from embryos is wrong, and both sides are showcasing prominent people to make their point. (Sixth item.)
James Thomson, the stem cell researcher featured on a 2001 cover of Time magazine, will help Governor Jim Doyle lead a state delegation at a conference next month in Chicago.
Nimroz Momin was worried about his job prospects.Born in India and raised in Houston, the senior finance major fired up his computer last fall, sending a flurry of 75 applications, mostly over the Internet, to companies around the Midwest and in Texas.
Wisconsin is one step closer to passing legislation with the potential to lure the lucrative film-production industry into the state following the bill�s approval in the Joint Committee on Finance Thursday.
Dear Editor: I find myself more often than not appreciating and agreeing with the editorial page of The Capital Times. I thought you really missed the mark, however, with your recent editorial criticizing Mark Bugher’s leadership as chairman at one meeting of the city’s Economic Development Commission.
If there is a person in this city who knows how to put politics aside, how to listen to all sides, how to seek consensus, and how to be the voice of reason in a heated debate, it’s Mark Bugher.
Global pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb has signed a licensing agreement for research conducted at UW-Milwaukee that may produce a new anti-anxiety drug. Terms were not disclosed.
Bristol-Myers Squibb signed the licensing agreement with WiSys, the patenting and licensing arm for all of the UW System except UW-Madison. The license involves the research of UW-Milwaukee chemistry professor James Cook, who is developing new classes of drug compounds to treat psychiatric disorders.
If this week�s ASM referendum passes and the current Union South comes down, a new green union is set to sprout from the rubble.
Quoted: Menzie Chinn, Professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the LaFollette School of Public Affairs.
For UW’s soon-to-be graduates, the real world looks rosy.
“The job market looks very strong for graduating seniors, the strongest that we’ve seen in about 6 years,” says Steve Schroeder with UW’s School of Business.
Mark Bugher is an active and valued contributor to the economic development debate in Madison, but he needs to respect the fact that not everyone is going to agree with him. Bugher…now serves as director of University Research Park and as chairman of the Madison Economic Development Commission.
It was in that latter role that he presided this week over a lengthy commission meeting that heard testimony regarding a proposed city ordinance that would require larger Madison employers to provide paid sick leave to workers. Bugher’s skepticism about the ordinance mirrors that of many in the business community, and he certainly has a right to his opinion. But as the chair of a city commission, he also has a responsibility to treat citizens and expert witnesses appropriately.
Quoted: William Whitford, professor emeritus of law.
Quoted: Don Nichols, director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs
University of Wisconsin Business School senior Joe Jennings is kicking back, enjoying his last few months of college life. And why shouldn’t he? Jennings received four job offers by the end of the fall semester and accepted a position at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Chicago in late November.
Jennings says he was surprised by how easy it was to land a job. “It was awesome,” he says. “I got offers from companies I’d never even heard of — extremely painless.” The 23-year-old, who will earn a starting salary of $53,500 with a $2,
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Just as American Family Mutual Insurance is gearing up to start selling auto and homeowners policies in Washington – including the high-income/high-growth Seattle area – the company gets hammered by a nearly $3 million punitive damages award.
The case, which was settled out of court last week, included damaging testimony that American Family employees in the Colorado office routinely joked about the company’s get-tough policy regarding paying claims.
Those revelations were enough to tilt a jury in Boulder, Colo., last November in favor of Dominic Peressini, who earned a Ph.D in education from UW-Madison in 1996 and had been a tenured professor at the University of Colorado.
Bob Sieger knows he’s fighting an uphill battle in getting approval for a six-story condominium and sports bar development at the busy corner of Monroe and Regent streets.
But the Madison architect thinks the $15 million project fits perfectly across from Camp Randall Stadium and the UW Fieldhouse.
“I know some people think it’s too tall but I’m pretty excited about it,” Sieger said (last week).
University of Wisconsin regents used their monthly meeting to rip a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit tax increases.
The Board of Regents heard from Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, and an aide to Rep. Jeff Wood, R-Chippewa Falls, on Friday. The authors of the Taxpayer Protection Amendment assured regents it would neither harm access to a higher education nor diminish the university’s role as an engine of the state’s economy.
Regents replied it would devastate the university’s ability to provide a quality education to the masses.
MADISON – The University of Wisconsin has a reputation for being a national leader in technology transfer.
Now a bill is making its way through the Legislature that proponents say would make it easier for faculty and researchers to turn their ideas into start-up companies.
MILWAUKEE – Producer and director Jerry Zucker would love to film a movie in his native Wisconsin, but it’s hard to persuade film production executives to do it when other states are offering tax incentives that help cut costs.
If a proposed law makes its way through the state Legislature, the Shorewood native won’t have to do as much to persuade them.
….A number of Hollywood heavyweights have written letters of support, including director David Koepp, who grew up in Pewaukee, and actors and Wisconsin natives Leslie Nielsen, Jane Kaczmarek and Brad Whitford.
Daniel Vilione was frantically at work.
Vilione runs coffeehouse.com, a Web site that sells specialty coffee. On a recent afternoon, he was sorting through thousands of brochures that needed to be mailed.
The company president had to hurry. He had class in two hours.
“The region comes first.”
That was the message – and the secret to success – relayed to us by the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., a non-profit affiliate of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce that includes about 60 communities in seven counties.
An opinion column by Julia Taylor, president of the Greater Milwaukee Committee, and Jennifer Alexander, president of the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce.
The Greater Madison Convention & Visitors Bureau is banking on Madison’s intellectual capital and reputation as a “top city” as part of a campaign to attract more tourists, meetings and convention business.
Both the bureau and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are capitalizing on the city’s national rankings, prominent industry leaders and renowned facilities and entertainment venues.
A UW-Madison graduate has started a company that aims to help would-be college graduates market themselves for a job.
Bob Klein’s First Job, which is based in the Chicago area, is holding a workshop on Sunday from noon-5 p.m. at the Pyle Center on campus. The cost is $75 for UW Ad Club members, $95 for other students.
Gov. Jim Doyle plans to lead a delegation of more than 150 Wisconsin industry leaders to Chicago for BIO 2006, the world’s largest biotechnology conference, on April 9-12.
Doyle will join leading Wisconsin stem cell researchers Dr. James Thomson and Dr. Gabriela Cezar, as well as Wisconsin life science executives, economic developers, state government officials, lawyers, venture capitalists, researchers, technology licensing representatives and higher education professionals to promote Wisconsin’s life science resources.
Klinger was one of the speakers at the Fusion 2006 conference at the Fluno Center on the UW-Madison campus. About 250 people attended the event, which focused on emerging information technology trends.
….The City Council Tuesday night is expected to approve the Wingra Creek Market Study, a comprehensive plan for a 64-acre triangular-shaped area on the city’s south side.
Over two years in the making, the plan aims at maintaining Park Street as a commercial and business area with Fish Hatchery Road remaining more of a residential corridor. It also calls for increasing housing densities on the south side to make light rail or other public transit a viable option. Park Street from the Beltline to the University of Wisconsin campus has been identified as a possible route for the city’s first trolley line.
UW-Madison senior Jamie Schneider will never again forget a friend’s birthday.
And with one click of the mouse, she can look up the cute guy in her communication arts class to see if he is “single,” “in a relationship” or if “it’s complicated.” She can reconnect with friends from high school, or even her childhood best friend who moved away.
She can do all this and more thanks to Facebook, an online social-networking phenomenon allowing college students everywhere to make new friends and keep the old ones.
Anti-sweatshop activists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say the administration is moving too slowly to improve working conditions for those who make UW logo clothing.
About 65 activists briefly occupied Chancellor John Wiley’s office Wednesday.
Rural Dane County residents might feel that the heavily developed Beltline is an ideal corridor for a proposed transmission line that would be the largest in the county. But others say the Beltline is no place for the 345-kilovolt line planned by the American Transmission Co.
“We are taking a very firm stand against a transmission line running along the Beltline in front of the Arboretum,” said Kevin McSweeny, executive director of the University of Wisconsin Arboretum. “If it is in fact chosen as a route, we will insist that the line be buried such that our viewscape is not contaminated.”
The American Transmission Co. will give a presentation Wednesday night to explain how the University of Wisconsin Arboretum could become part of a corridor for a high-voltage transmission line.
It was a time in her life when the right side of her brain needed to come into play.
Muriel Simms, a longtime educator in Madison, was working on her doctorate in 2000 — 25 years after receiving her master’s in curriculum and instruction at the UW — when she decided to stir creative juices.
“My mother had just died, too, and I was very close to her, so this was a real intense, emotional period in my life,” Simms recalls.
To relieve stress, she took some art classes and eventually created a line of greeting cards with an African-American focus.
March Madness isn’t just for basketball fans anymore.
Turns out it might be good for damage control for colleges, too.
During next month’s NCAA tournament, a series of ads touting the benefits of higher education for individuals and society will be aired by a national alliance of colleges. It will be a first-of-its-kind campaign aimed at turning around negative feelings about the high cost of college and other problems identified in a recent national public survey.
The “Moovada” has everything that most sport utility vehicles owners would want – good gas mileage, low pollution and decent performance.
You won’t find the vehicle on car lots yet. Rather, it’s the name given to a souped-up Chevrolet Equinox by a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering students – their entry in a nationwide contest to build a more fuel- efficient car.
On Thursday, the students received a boost when automotive parts supplier Johnson Controls Inc. presented them with a turbocharged hybrid battery system to use in the crossover SUV.
Wisconsin residents think the University of Wisconsin System is overpriced, overstaffed and out of step with ordinary people, according to a survey by a Madison firm that is the first of its kind in nearly a decade.
More than 70% of those polled said they thought “UW campuses spend too much money on things they don’t need instead of… educating students.”
Wood Communications Group conducted the survey quietly last fall as a first step toward building support for the UW System in the business community. The firm has used the results to rally university and business leaders ever since, saying that more needs to be done to improve the system’s public image. But in recent weeks, the survey might have backfired. Word of it has spread to critics of the UW System, who view it as justification for attacks.
With 500 new stores planned in the next five years, Kohl’s Corp. needs that many new managers, and twice as many assistants.
Those are just a few of the jobs that the fast-growing department store chain will create in the coming years, President Kevin Mansell told students in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s retail program, part of the School of Human Ecology.
The University of Wisconsin campus will see some significant changes over the next couple of decades, assuming their new master plan is as successful as the last one.
When you walk into one of Madison’s many young biotechnology companies, sometimes what you don’t see is as significant as what you do see.
NimbleGen Systems may be an example of that.
There is no fancy new building. NimbleGen, at 1 Science Court, is on the older side of University Research Park (east of Whitney Way). The do-it-yourself “front lobby” – more like an office-sized dent in the wall – consists of a few chairs and a small table with a phone on it, from which visitors ring up the employees they’re seeking.
Although University of Wisconsin-Madison alum Tom Rosenberg set his upcoming film “The Last Kiss” in Madison, only a few exterior scenes were shot around town.
Most of the movie was filmed in Montreal, where the economics are much more favorable, said Rosenberg, chief executive officer and producer for Lakeshore Entertainment, the company behind last year’s best picture Oscar winner, “Million Dollar Baby.”
The University of Wisconsin is competitive in pretty much everything. Our academics, athletic teams and even our party habits are ranked nationally. It�s about time our campus begins to compete with other universities nationwide in yet another category: campus development.
We lack adequate dorm space for incoming students, apartment space for older students, retail stores that make life more convenient for students, parking, reliable transportation and a centrally located health center. With class sizes growing each year, UW has no choice but to develop the campus and the surrounding areas to not only cater to the studentsââ?¬â?¢ wishes but also make UW a more aesthetically pleasing place ââ?¬â? or simply one that looks like it has finally left the 1970s behind.
