In a column published in the Wisconsin State Journal, Mnookin addressed the recent visa terminations of UW-Madison students and alumni. As of Tuesday, the university is aware of the termination of 27 total records, which includes 15 current students and 12 alumni.
UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin discussed the many issues facing the university, including concerns over federal investigations, funding cuts, and international student visa revocations, as well as the 2025 state budget cycle.
Anthony Gitter, a computational biologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, had a grant about using deep learning for protein modelling flagged by the Cruz report. It contained a single sentence about offering summer research opportunities to underrepresented minorities as part of the broader impact statement. The Cruz report “plays into the narrative that universities are these elitist places that harbour out-of-touch academics that are no longer doing science,” he says. “But it’s out of touch with the data.”
The report cards, compiled by Manuel Teodoro, a professor at UW-Madison’s La Follete School of Public Affairs, evaluated 572 water utilities using data from 2022 and 2023 provided by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Teodoro’s research team.
“January and February were just a disaster,” Ron Kean, a poultry specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension, said in an interview last month. “We’ve been pretty fortunate here in Wisconsin, knock on wood.”
“The more you look for it, the more you find,” said Dr. Maureen Durkin, a professor of population health sciences and pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has long studied autism. Dr. Durkin is one of the authors of the C.D.C. report.
In the Amazon, far more land is legally protected, and rules dictating how much farmers can clear their own land are much stricter. “Our published research shows that there is very little land that’s suitable for soy and that can be legally cleared in the Brazilian Amazon,” said Lisa Rausch, who studies Brazilian deforestation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“If there were no fungi in the soil, I don’t think there would be life on Earth. Plants likely colonized land alongside fungi and without them, the world as we know it might never have existed,” said Aishwarya Veerabahu, a scientist with the Department of Botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
University of Wisconsin-Madison public affairs professor Mariel Barnes, whose research focuses on backlash to gender equality and the manosphere, says the manosphere started to coalesce online around 2008 and grew with the rise of blogging websites.
“If you are constantly consuming this content and you are isolated and women are responsible for the bad things that are happening to you, it’s very dehumanizing, right?” said University of Wisconsin-Madison public affairs professor Mariel Barnes, whose research focuses on backlash to gender equality and the manosphere. “You don’t see women as humans anymore, or as peers or as friends, and that dehumanization gives you permission to treat them as less than human.”
Liz Haynes, an biologist in the Department of Cell and Regenerative Biology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, also got a tattoo to mark a pivotal moment in her scientific career. The image, of the plant she studied in her undergraduate laboratory, serves as a reminder of the positive experience and the lessons she learnt from her mentor at the time.
“One of the things that I took away was that I really wanted to be that for someone in the future, help show them the pathway on this career, help guide them into grad school, influence them positively and really give them a home in the lab,” she explains.
At Wisconsin Sea Grant, the program’s director Christy Remucal said NOAA funding is the largest source of revenue for the program that’s operated for 57 years on state and federal support. Federal funding makes up 32 percent of the program’s funding, or $2.4 million. Wisconsin Sea Grant and its 30 staff support conservation of Great Lakes resources and communities through research, education and outreach.
“We have staff that are working directly with communities and really making a difference on so many different things whether it’s flooding or clean marinas or invasive species,” Remucal said.
A group of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Realta Fusion, a Madison-based nuclear startup, have developed a fusion device in Stoughton that creates the same kind of reaction that fuels the sun and stars. The process is much different than fission, the nuclear reaction that powers current nuclear reactors and the atomic bomb.
Volker Radeloff, a forest and wildlife ecology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the interface of wild land and urban areas accounts for roughly 10 percent of the state that’s potentially at risk of wildfires.
President Donald Trump imposed and then last week rolled back tariffs he imposed on much of the world. But he increased tariffs on products made in China, which include most electronic devices. We talk to UW-Madison’s Beth D’Angelo about what this means for American consumers.
And then, able to solve problems exponentially faster than classical computing, quantum computing could potentially revolutionize entire industries. We learn the basics of quantum computing from Swamit Tannu, a UW-Madison assistant professor of computer sciences.
Dr. Megan Moreno, the principal investigator of the social media and adolescent health research team at the University of Wisconsin Department of Pediatrics, called the USF survey a “groundbreaking” addition to ongoing research, because too many studies do not include the possibility of there being positive outcomes to kids having phones. “It is just so rare for studies to consider both benefits and risks,” she said.
Co-authored by Cortland Dahl, Ph.D., a scientist at the Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the author of A Meditator’s Guide to Buddhism; Otto Simonsson, Ph.D., is with the Karolinska Institutet, and Simon Goldberg, Ph.D., is with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The survey was conducted by DCF and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty. They collected answers from over 3,600 providers who received CCC stabilization funds in November 2024.
Paul Robbins, dean of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a former board member for the ICF, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that counting cranes might seem like a simple task, but it’s the only way to get a snapshot of the population around the state.
“Conservation is really based on pretty small numbers of beings in the world, so you actually have to find them and see them,” he said. “And that really requires people to be on the ground.”
More than $12 million in research grants destined for the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been cut by President Donald Trump’s administration, according to a lawsuit filed by Wisconsin and 15 other states. Democratic state Attorney General Josh Kaul says the administration is “sabotaging medical and public health research.”
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health used artificial intelligence to screen the electronic health records of patients admitted to the UW Health University Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin, between March and October 2023, for any sign that they were at risk of or had an opioid use disorder.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health have shown a new AI tool was successful at flagging patients at risk of opioid addiction and at reducing hospital readmissions.
Members of the UW-Madison community gathered Wednesday morning in Washington, D.C. ahead of their lobbying day on Capitol Hill.
“The reality is we’re certainly facing some interesting, challenging times here at the federal level,” said Craig Thompson, vice chancellor of university relations at UW-Madison. “There’s obviously potential cuts to research and other programs, and there’s just a great deal of uncertainty on campus.”
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health have developed an artificial intelligence-driven tool to identify hospital patients at risk of opioid use disorder.
The study, led by researchers from Penn State’s College of Medicine and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, conducted a clinical trial to see if improved thinking can treat physical pain over time—and the benefits lasted up to a year.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has lost at least $12.6 million in anticipated research dollars after President Donald Trump’s administration recently canceled four of its research grants, part of a national crackdown on funding for transgender issues, COVID-19 and diversity.
April is Parkinson’s Disease Awareness Month. Dr. Laura Buyan-Dent, a UW Health neurologist, talks about this neurodegenerative disorder.
In his new biography “Saving Hearts and Killing Rats: Karl Paul Link and the Discovery of Warfarin” (HenschelHAUS Publishing), veteran Madison journalist and author Doug Moe recounts the steps from hay to medicine while also building up a portrait of Link, a University of Wisconsin-Madison biochemist with a propensity for battling authority.
Doctors and researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health have developed an artificial intelligence tool to ensure some of our most vulnerable patients, those battling opioid use disorder, don’t fall through the cracks.
“The medical chart is full of information and it’s overwhelming, and our human brains just can’t process everything,” Dr. Majid Afshar said.
Doctors theorized Treyson could have cerebral palsy or Angelman syndrome, a rare genetic syndrome that causes intellectual disabilities, difficulty walking and talking and seizures, many of the symptoms he possessed. Genetic testing was done. Nothing matched.
That changed in 2021 when the UW-Madison’s Center for Human Genomics and Precision Medicine began the Undiagnosed Disease Program, making it the second of its kind in the state. Part of the University’s School of Medicine and Public Health, it is often the last stop for patients who are looking for answers.
Steve Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, are guests on WHA radio (970 AM) at noon the last Monday of each month.
The next generations of potential doctors, researchers and scientists spent the weekend getting a close look at all that UW-Madison has to offer.
The event was part of UW’s campus-wide science open house called “Science Expeditions.” The hands-on experiences showcased dozens of science venues, including the UW Health Carbone Cancer Center.
At the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Carbone Cancer Center, dedicated researchers are expressing deep concerns over proposed federal funding cuts that they say could significantly impede advancements in breast cancer research.
A dangerous bird flu, in other words, was suddenly circulating in mammals — mammals with which people have ongoing, extensive contact. “Holy cow,” says Thomas Friedrich, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “This is how pandemics start.”
The award is well deserved, says Brian Rebel, a particle physicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Finding the Higgs [boson] in 2012 was a once-in-lifetime event, but it was only the first step,” Rebel says. Since then, LHC scientists have been pinning down the mass of the Higgs and its interactions, as well as discovering 72 new particles, investigating antimatter and probing the nature of the ‘quark–gluon plasma’ that existed soon after the Big Bang. “It takes a small army to create the tools to test and validate these results,” says Rebel.
“There are some articulated bones that are nearly absent in other metoposaurid bone beds in North America, and completely unknown for Buettnererpeton,” study co-authors Dave Lovelace and Aaron Kufner, who are both geoscientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tell Popular Science’s Andrew Paul.
“Like other metoposaurids, it probably spent most, if not all, of its life in the water eating fish, other amphibians, or anything unfortunate enough to venture too far into the water,” University of Wisconsin-Madison paleolontologists and study co-authors Dave Lovelace and Aaron Kufner told Popular Science.
“The optimal monetary response is to stimulate the economy, raising aggregate income and boosting demand for imported goods,” wrote Minneapolis Fed economist Javier Bianchi and University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor Louphou Coulibaly.
Study first author Aaron Kufner, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and colleagues uncovered fossils of Buettnererpeton bakeri in a Wyoming fossil bed called Nobby Knob.
“This assemblage is a snapshot of a single population rather than an accumulation over time,” Kufner said in a statement. The discovery “more than doubles the number of known Buettnererpeton bakeri individuals.” Alongside the B. bakeri fossils, the team also found fossilized plants, bivalves and fossilized poop, called coprolites.
The Trump administration cut funding for social security research programs across the country, including one at UW-Madison. We talk the director of the local program about how its research has helped shape public policy and what impact these cuts will have.
Learn to appreciate insects, with guidance from local artist Jennifer Angus, entomologist P.J. Liesch, bumblebee expert Judy Cardin and more.
“Parents and kids are very aware of the narrative and very worried,” says Megan Moreno, an adolescent-medicine physician at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. That sparks family battles over screens — and leaves parents unsure what to do.
Christine Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, shared data with me on trends in the educational profile of heterosexual married couples from 1940 to 2020. According to her calculations, in 2020, American husbands and wives shared the same broad level of education in 44.5 percent of heterosexual marriages, down from more than 47 percent in the early 2000s.
A few years ago, D’Orazio spoke with Madison family medicine physician, Dr. James Bigham, about a program to train doctors and medical students at University of Wisconsin-Madison about how to talk to patients about firearms.
D’Orazio’s first question to Bigham: How many of these doctors know anything about a gun? “How are they going to answer questions from their patients if they have never touched a gun, shot a gun, know what a bullet is?” he said. “That’s where I come in.”
Some researchers, including John Womersley, a former chief executive of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council, and Tulika Bose, an LHC physicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, want to see higher-energy machines developed as quickly as possible.
No dairy is pathogen-free, even with the best precautions, said John Lucey, a food science professor who has studied raw milk extensively. Harmful bacteria are in the soil, in the digestive tracts of cows and in the poop they deposit, Lucey said.
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently investigated the matter, NPR reports. For their 2024 study, they asked 1246 dog owners to examine their pet’s behaviors around screens. Eighty-six percent (1077) of participants stated that their dogs appeared to watch the content. Additionally, most animals exhibited behaviors associated with excitement.
Some researchers, including John Womersley, a former chief executive of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council, and Tulika Bose, an LHC physicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, want to see higher-energy machines developed as quickly as possible.
The Social Security Administration axed the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium (RDRC), a federally funded research program studying demographic trends and social security policy impact.
“I like to always say that we know less than what we don’t know,” said Gavin Dehnert from Wisconsin Sea Grant and University of Wisconsin-Madison. “That’s partially due to the fact that the PFAS have really hit the scientific radar in the last seven [or so] years.”
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison said they are struggling to advance study of a potential new epilepsy treatment after the Trump administration’s pause on grant review meetings by the National Institutes of Health.
“We thought this was a one-off: one bird to one cow, and we wouldn’t see that again,” says Peter Halfmann, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Influenza Research Institute.
Yet the more severe human cases are concurrent with the spread of a recently mutated, potentially more dangerous version of the virus called the D1.1 genotype. D1.1. is now circulating among wild birds and poultry, and it has spilled over into dairy cows at least twice in 2025, according milk testing data from the Agriculture Department. With D1.1, Halfmann explains that the threshold for cross-species transfer is “much lower than we previously thought.”
Travis Pickering, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who helped discover, identify, and describe the fossil, says he was “ecstatic” when he saw the bones.
“A find like this, in this context — that is, millions of years old and from a cave, which is extremely dynamic in terms of things like the build-up sediment, rockfall from the roof, the activities of prehistoric animals that dwelled in it, including eating and chewing bone — is as rare as finding hen’s teeth,” he says. “I couldn’t be happier.”
The vast majority of raw milk cheese should be safe after the 60-day aging window, according to Keith Poulsen, DVM, PhD, a clinical associate professor of medical sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine.
“We have a lot of history and data to back that up,” Poulsen told Verywell in an email. “Unfortunately, the data from Cornell suggests that if raw milk cheeses were made on an affected farm, they would not be recommended for consumption.”
Simon Gilroy is a professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who regularly designs spaceflight experiments with NASA. When asked if he thinks we are using astrobiological research enough to improve our sustainability on Earth, Professor Gilroy pointed to the discourse around urban farming, an approach which involves moving some elements of cultivation and productivity into cities instead of using agricultural fields.
Speaking to Interesting Engineering, Professor Gilroy observed that urban environments have many of the same problems as growing plants in space, including challenges around water delivery, maintaining environment within the desired parameters and dealing with pathogen outbreaks. “So there’s a lot of technology development going on in space, which has real applications when you come back to thinking about those kinds of applications on Earth,” he noted.
Anne Morgan Giroux is pretty sure the cure for epilepsy ‒ or at least a long-term solution for millions ‒ is sitting in a university lab in Madison, Wisconsin. She and a team of researchers need just $3.3 million to push it across the finish line.
The problem: That $3.3 million solution is on indefinite hold as President Donald Trump and his administration slashes government spending. The money would have been awarded as grants from the National Institutes of Health to launch human trials. Epilepsy affects about 1% of U.S. adults, or around 3 million people.
Already DOGE has canceled many contracts at Social Security, just as it has at many other federal agencies. A DOGE-run website late last week listed $50.3 million in cost savings from these canceled agreements. That included funding for a University of Wisconsin at Madison study project to understand how to prevent impostor scams. Government impostor scams — most commonly pretending to be from the Social Security office — resulted in estimated losses of at least $577 million last year, often by conning seniors into sharing personal data, according to the agency’s IG office.
“When you cut resources like this, there’s always room to make things more efficient. But you also could make things worse,” said Cliff Robb, a University of Wisconsin professor who has studied impostor scams. “You could end up making fraud worse.”
The bright evening colors come when small particles in the atmosphere cause light to scatter, explained Steven Ackerman, professor of meteorology at University of Wisconsin–Madison, in an online article.
“If the path is long enough, all of the blue and violet light scatters out of your line of sight,” Ackerman said. “The other colors continue on their way to your eyes.”
Days before his flight to Argentina, a UW-Madison researcher lost a Fulbright award from a federal funding freeze.Under President Trump’s administration, the U.S. State Department froze funds in February for international education programs. That includes the Fulbright Program, which allows scholars to conduct research overseas.
For one UW-Madison researcher, the freeze put more than a year’s worth of planning down the drain. “There’s a lot of anxiety in the scientific world now,” said UW-Madison professor emeritus, Richard Lindroth.
Women at the University of Wisconsin conduct groundbreaking research every day to advance their fields of study and contribute to a better understanding of the world.
UW ranks sixth in the nation for research universities among private and public universities, according to the National Science Foundation’s annual ranking. Women in research, specifically in STEM areas, are still underrepresented in research funding, according to a study by JAMA.
