The first dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence says the institution will be a vital non-industry leader shaping the future of AI.
Leaders in science, business, and government gathered in Madison on Tuesday to discuss the future of fusion energy.
The Fusion Summit at the Discovery Center brought together researchers, lawmakers, and more than one hundred companies exploring how Wisconsin could become a national hub for this emerging technology.
What are the true limits of life, will we even recognize it when we see it? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice explore the beginnings of life on Earth and what they might tell us about life everywhere else with astrobiologist and bacteriologist, Betül Kaçar.
The Madison school district unveiled its proposal for a new cell phone policy at a School Board meeting Monday, recommending an all-day ban for students in grades K-8 while allowing more leniency for high school students to use their phones during passing time and lunch periods.
At the meeting, some School Board members expressed trepidations about a full-day ban for K-8 students, while others questioned different aspects of the proposed policy.
A new nuclear fusion research site could be coming to the Madison area.
Kieran Furlong, co-founder and CEO or Madison-based Realta Fusion, said Wisconsin is among the “final two states” for a new research and development facility, which would entail “hundreds of millions” of dollars in capital investment and 200 or more jobs.
President Donald Trump’s dismissal on Friday of the independent board that advises the National Science Foundation included UW-Madison’s top research leader.
Vice Chancellor for Research Dorota Grejner-Brzezińska was one of the 22 current members on the board that advises Congress and the president on the National Science Foundation’s operations. President Joe Biden appointed her in 2023 when she was working at Ohio State University.
If University of Wisconsin-Madison administrators don’t get more clarity on new federal funding rules soon, the university’s Division of Extension may lay off up to 160 employees.
Vice Chancellor Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska, who oversees UW-Madison’s $1.93 billion research operation, recently outlined that concern in a court declaration filed as part of a broader lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison has received $100 million in private gift commitments for its new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence, which is set to launch on July 1, 2026.
The donations come from what’s referred to as the Catalyst Collective — a group of alumni, business leaders and corporate partners who have pledged major investments in the college. The alumni donors include Andy Konwinski, cofounder of Laude, Databricks and Perplexity AI; John Morgridge, former chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems, and Tashia Morgridge, a retired special education teacher; Signe Ostby, a former marketing executive; and Jeff Tangney, cofounder and CEO of Doximity. The contributors also include Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit; and Epic, a software company based in Verona, Wisconsin.
PJ Liesch, director of the UW-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, said around 20% of juvenile ticks carry Lyme disease, and 40% of adult ticks can transmit the infection. Ticks are also more commonly being found in residential areas, he said.
The University of Wisconsin Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research announced April 21 that it is planning to change its organizational structure, according to UW News.
“The efforts include a proposed reorganization intended to better support the research and scholarly mission of UW–Madison and grow the research enterprise and creative expression across arts and humanities, biological sciences, physical sciences and social sciences,” according to UW News.
UW-Madison researchers are celebrating a new executive order from President Donald Trump that expedites FDA approval for psychedelic treatments for conditions like depression and PTSD.
Paul Hutson from UW-Madison School of Pharmacy, who has studied psychedelics for mental health for years, says the new executive order will not only expedite FDA approvals but may help secure state funding for their research.
Anjon Audhya, PhD, will become the inaugural vice dean for research for the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health effective April 19. The role serves as the chief research officer for the school, charged with articulating the goals and vision of the school’s research enterprise to major stakeholder groups and planning for the long-term success and global impact of research activities.
After months of listening, learning and analysis, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research is undergoing strategic planning efforts focused on a comprehensive set of updates to ensure the University of Wisconsin–Madison maintains a strong and resilient research enterprise amid significant changes to the research environment and to meet identified areas of opportunity.
the Trump Administration has slashed the number of grants from the National Institutes of Health, with far fewer focused on women, cancer and mental health
Americans hold varying opinions about the war in the Middle East, from support for ending 47 years of nettlesome threats by Iran’s theocracy to opposing U.S. intervention for reasons that include unclear mission goals.
Either way, it’s important to know much national defense research has little to do with building better missiles or bombs. It’s often about prevention, detection, reaction and recovery in times of emergency at home. That affects civilians as well as military personnel.
The University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center welcomed the public this weekend for its annual open house, giving visitors a closer look at cancer research and prevention efforts.
The event featured lab tours, interactive exhibits and family-friendly activities, including appearances by Bucky Badger.
“Researchers worked with the audiology lab on the UW Madison campus to help extend that squeak so that people all over the nation can enjoy them, which helps maintain that economic viability of Wisconsin dairy,” Hagenow said.
For most of his childhood, Shaawan Francis Keahna considered himself to be a fundamentally unattractive kid — “too giggly and too gangly and too smart,” as he put it to me recently, “with a face that was really, really adult, despite my youth. My biggest problem, of course, was that I was just plain weird.” Growing up in Hayward, a former logging town on the Namekagon River in northwestern Wisconsin, he was often teased by white classmates for his Native ancestry and for his love of poetry and art. “It became a self-fulfilling thing,” he said. “I internalized it and basically came to see myself exactly the way they saw me.”
The University of Iowa has a National Advanced Driving Simulator, one of the largest in the world, which will assist the team in building a lunar terrain vehicle.
“There is no prize for second place,” said Greg Keenan of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. “It is critical that the U.S. win the race for quantum technologies. Fortunately for us, UW-Madison is home to some of the world’s most significant breakthroughs in quantum science.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison students, alumni and professors who came to Washington to lobby for more research funding got schooled on just how important that funding is.
University researchers explained how federally funded work in quantum physics and mechanics led to the invention of GPS, lasers and MRI technology.
A recent report from a University of Wisconsin-Madison organization found that Exact Sciences contributed around $6 billion to $7 billion to the state’s economy.
The company grew from small beginnings, starting with 19 employees in 2009 to about 7,200 employees globally. Revenues grew from $4.8 million in 2009 to $3.2 billion by 2025. Researchers attribute this growth to Cologuard’s success.
UW-Madison is closing its astronomy outreach center, UW Space Place, this spring after nearly 36 years, citing budget cuts.
Over the last three decades, the astronomy department has run Space Place as a hub for guest lectures on space and astronomy research, as well as for programming for Madison-area schools and families that teaches about UW-Madison and Wisconsin’s impact in the field.
“Space Place was the primary way of satisfying that sort of demand for the community for decades,” said Jim Lattis, UW Space Place’s longtime former director, who retired last May after more than 30 years and who has continued to volunteer there post-retirement. “So that’s going to go away. The astronomy department is going to do their best, but there’s no longer anybody who is specifically dedicated to doing astronomy outreach in those forms.”
Written by Jonathan Patz, the Vilas Distinguished Professor & John P. Holton Chair of Health and the Environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute & Department of Population Health Sciences.
The new numbers are still way below the average from the first 10 years of monitoring (about 21 acres) and what scientists consider sustainable (about 15 acres). But they still amount to good news, said Karen Oberhauser, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and one of the nation’s leading monarch experts.
“We are in a period of relative stability where the population has stopped declining,” Oberhauser, who was not involved in the new WWF Mexico report, told me.
Researchers from several prominent universities examined the self-reported sleep habits of nearly 130,000 teens. They found that the number of teens getting insufficient sleep, defined as seven hours or less a night, rose from 69% in 2007 to 78% in 2023, the most recent year for which data was available.
“We know that sleep plays a really critical role in adolescent brain development,” said Tanner Bommersbach, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the authors of the study. “So when large numbers of teens aren’t getting enough sleep, it really raises concerns about the downstream effects that that could be having on their mental health, on their academic performance, on their engagement and risk behaviors.”
According to Betül Kaçar, an astrobiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, organisms developing the ability to “eat” radiation isn’t out of the realm of possibility—in fact, it has happened already on Earth.
“Life found a way to eat pretty much anything it can on this planet. It’s quite remarkable,” she says. “If you think about it, the fact that life can capture photons [or particles of light] is ‘eating radiation.’ … For many microbes, the photons are great resources of energy. So phototrophs are an example of radiation-eating organisms on this planet.” Plants are well-known phototrophs, but sea slugs are unexpected ones, making their ability to gain fuel from radiation just as remarkable as that of the Astrophage microbes.
The importance of relationships cannot be overstated, said Robert McGrath, a University of Wisconsin-Madison psychologist who gives public talks on how to live with vitality and resilience. He pointed to one of the longest-running studies on well-being, where Harvard University scientists followed the same group of men since 1938. The study revealed a simple yet profound conclusion: Good relationships lead to health and happiness.
Share experiences with others, even if it’s a solitary activity, McGrath recommended. He teaches a meditation class, for example, which is not exactly made for sparking conversation. But he sees strangers connect before and after class.
“Any form of connection is going to boost one’s mood,” he said. “Make that effort. Get out and connect.”
Madison-based biotech leader Exact Sciences has gifted UW-Madison’s foundation $2.5 million to improve early cancer detection discoveries through research.
The Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association’s new grant will establish the James Dahlberg Fund for Cancer Detection and Clinical Integration, named after UW-Madison professor emeritus James Dahlberg, to support university researchers and clinical trials at UW Health focused on detecting and preventing cancer.
They’re tiny organisms, invisible to the human eye, and they’re inside you right now. This isn’t a description of a sci-fi monster but it is one of bacteria — single-celled organisms that can cause illness and death but might also help us to sleep better or find the motivation to exercise.
In short, we depend on bacteria, said Timothy Paustian, a professor in the Department of Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“They’re really important for your health. You have a whole group of organisms that live inside you,” Paustian said.
Wisconsin currently has 370 active or pending concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO) permits, most of which are dairy farms with about 700 or more cattle. Wisconsin dairy farms produce roughly 12 billion pounds of manure annually, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension office.
Once the viruses adapted to microgravity by subtly shape-shifting, though, they became even more effective bacteria killers. “A simple microgravity experiment exposes these mutations that have much higher efficacy against pathogens,” says senior study author Srivatsan Raman, a chemical and biological engineer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
A roadside sign that welcomes drivers to Burlington notes that the Wisconsin city was the boyhood home of Tony Romo, a former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and current television commentator.
There is no mention of Frederic Edward Mohs, born there in 1910, the visionary physician who invented a skin-cancer procedure bearing his name that has benefited millions.
West Bend has been working with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Applied Population Lab, which found the district’s enrollment changes are primarily driven by demographic trends, particularly declining birth rates not made up for by new arrivals. The report also notes that kindergarten classes have not replaced the number of graduating seniors in recent years.
The Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin held a seminar March 11. It focused on the relationship between the effects of fires and habitat fragmentation on population dynamics of narrow-leaved purple coneflower, Echinacea angustifolia, on the ever fragmenting prairies of western Minnesota. The seminar was hosted by research ecologist at the UW Arboretum Jared Beck.
After taking community and tribal input, the Manoomin Team aimed to address mixed concerns regarding the state of the restored wild rice — some members of the community feared the rice because of the water it was living in, while others thought that if manoomin was present and growing, it must be healthy, according to Ojibway.
The Hua Lab at UW, led by associate professor within the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology Jessica Hua, has been a key partner in testing samples for heavy metals and PFAS.
“What we know so far … is that wild rice plants, the way that they grow, the way they make seed, is pretty protective of people’s health,” Erickson said. “I think we feel pretty good about people eating rice in the estuary and we can share that with people.”
Phonics—how letters represent sounds—is critical to reading. But once students have mastered its rules, the bulk of their time should be spent working with authentic texts, experts say.
“There are indications, circumstantial indications, that what’s happening is a lot of overteaching,” said Mark Seidenberg, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, at the March 2 annual symposium of the AIM Institute for Learning and Research, a literacy professional development group.
Entrepreneurs launching startups through UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation will soon have a larger presence on the West Coast.
The university and WARF, the campus’ nonprofit patent licensing arm, are partnering with seven other schools to open a two-year pilot workspace in San Francisco that university-founded startups and teams traveling to the Bay Area can use for work and to meet with investors.
Scientists at the Wisconsin Crop Innovation Center are pioneering the future of hemp farming. Researchers at UW-Madison have received deregulation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for 3 gene-edited hemp lines, allowing field cultivation without special permits.
Senior research scientist Mike Petersen explained they use a tool called CRISPR to gently edit the plant’s DNA, giving it traits like no THC or resistance to disease. Back in November 2025, the first line approved was Badger G, high in CBG, and known to reduce inflammation and other pharmaceutical benefits.
“When the neutrino interacts in the ice, it shatters an atom and the splinters from that direction are a lot of energetic subatomic particles,” UW-Madison professor of physics and astronomy — and frequent IceCube collaborator — Justin Vandenbroucke said. “A fraction of those have electric charge, and they make a flash of blue light.”
First, we learn about the impacts of rising gas prices in Wisconsin. Then, we talk to a researcher and an advocate about Wisconsin’s FoodShare program and new work requirements.
The Trump administration disrupted university research last year by canceling grants, delaying new awards and seeking other policy changes that put millions of dollars in jeopardy both in and beyond Wisconsin.
“There continues to be great volatility and uncertainty around federal funding, which is our largest single source of external revenue,” Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said at a campus meeting last month.
Outgoing Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin praised the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s artificial intelligence initiatives in her address to the Board of Regents last month, including one new tool researchers have been using to partner with industry partners and collaborators.
“It’s not labor digging if it’s mutually beneficial: He agrees to provide financial resources, and she agrees to make the home a haven,” said Allison Daminger, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the author of “What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life.”
“I’d probably label something like that ‘specialization,’ which has been around for a long time,” she said.
Jonathan Martin, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been tracking the size of this cold pool, tracing it back to when such reliable data began in the 1940s. Martin views the long-term cold pool data as a unique indicator of human-caused climate change.
“It’s one of the first free atmosphere, that is, away from the surface … measurements that conclusively show that the hemisphere is warming during the wintertime,” he said.
“The dice are loaded,” Martin said. As the world warms, it’s clear that cold pools are likely to keep shrinking and winters of the future are more likely to keep breaking warmth records.
Some young people are using chatbots “to test out being flirty or being romantic or being a little bit sexy and seeing how the chatbot responds to that,” Megan Moreno, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies technology and adolescent health, told me.
That kind of experimentation may be more common among boys, who generally engage in more risky behavior online than girls, Moreno said.
Bamboo is more absorbent and “can hold more moisture without feeling wet, compared to cotton,” Majid Sarmadi, textile expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said.
So are these sheets actually bamboo? Technically, yes. They’re made from the bamboo plant, but that’s not the full picture. Sarmadi compared the process of creating bamboo rayon to making spaghetti noodles. “When you make spaghetti, it is 100% wheat, but it’s in a different shape,” Sarmadi said. In short, you grind wheat into flour, then mix it with other ingredients to create dough. So, think of bamboo cellulose as wheat. There are different ways to extract and treat it, but the cellulose eventually becomes the yarn you weave into fabric. The result is far different from bamboo stock, but it’s still part of the origin.
The link to mental health also has a physiological basis that researchers like Dr. Charles Raison are trying to understand.
“High heat administered for a time-limited period is an antidepressant and a pretty good one,” says Raison, a professor of psychiatry and human ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
University of Wisconsin junior Noah Warren studies political science with a special interest in geopolitics. But, Warren said he became frustrated when he found no free platform displaying a picture of politics across the globe — so he built one.
In a 2025 working paper, researchers from UW-Madison and the University of Southern California studied two decades of records of Wisconsinites who received food aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the most common way an employee qualifies for the tax credit. Researchers compared SNAP recipients who were eligible for the credit with similar recipients who weren’t.
:The bigger and broader your network is, the earlier you’re going to get data and direct access to global outbreak intelligence and alerts,” said Janis Tupesis, a Madison public health official and a global health expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “That is super beneficial to the state.”
“The siting study includes looking at nuclear energy systems, anything from similar to today’s reactors that are operating to a variety of advanced reactor concepts, including microreactors and other smaller reactors, as well as fusion energy systems in the future,” said nuclear engineering professor and department Chair Paul Wilson.
Researchers can’t definitively say whether any of the men buried in the Kazakhstan mausoleums were related to Khan because they “still do not have a reference genome from Khan’s true relatives,” says lead author Ayken Askapuli, an integrative biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to the Badger Herald’s Allison Hayden.
“Colorectal cancer is the number two most common cancer in the United States,” Dr. Noelle LoConte, M.D., said. “It is decreasing, but not fast enough.”
“It’s hard to control the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, right, at the local level. But you can think about the things you can control,” says Zach Feiner, a fisheries biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Maybe that means you make different harvest decisions. You keep fewer walleye. Maybe you decide to go fish for something … more resilient to harvest like a largemouth bass or bluegill that are more of a warm-water fish.”
Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska, a board member and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s vice chancellor for research, expressed concern that fewer solicitations will lessen junior faculty’s ability to receive awards that jump-start their careers. She also said the agency’s practice of frontloading the funding of previously multiyear grants further reduces how many researchers receive grants in a year.
A study led by a University of Wisconsin researcher shows the first empirical documentation of digital voter suppression on social media and foreign election interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The study was published Jan. 26 in the official journal of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Historically, people valued the ice for other reasons. “There’s a long history of ice harvesting in this region,” says Hilary Dugan, a limnologist — someone who studies inland waters — at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “So [there was] just a lot of commercial activity on these lakes, cutting blocks of ice out of the lakes all winter.”
The 2026 report is an update to the group’s more comprehensive 2021 assessment of climate change impacts on Wisconsin. Formed in 2007, the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts is a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
The visit follows a partnership announcement between the Public Service Commission and UW’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics to study nuclear energy opportunities in the state.
Inside the University of Wisconsin Nuclear Reactor Tuesday morning, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers peered over the shoulders of student operator Nick Tierney, a senior majoring in nuclear engineering, to eye the array of instrumentation on the reactor control panel, then climbed the stairs to look down into the reactor’s cooling pool.
The Badger Challenge is launching a new event to raise funds for cancer research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The 2026 Badger Challenge Ball will bring together survivors, supporters, researchers, and community partners for a formal dinner, reception, and auction at The Edgewater. Set against the lakefront backdrop, the evening aims to celebrate hope while directly supporting life-changing cancer research.
