Where someone lives can shape their health, just as much as the care they receive. That’s why Dr. Amy Kind of her team at UW-Madison have developed the Area Deprivation Index (ADI).
The tool maps health disparities using the impacts of income, housing, education and employment on health.
Bringing a new power station online means Wisconsin would need more nuclear engineers to design and operate the plant.
Department Chair Paul Wilson and Assistant Professor Ben Lindley believe there is a ready pipeline of qualified workers in the state to keep up with that added demand. UW-Madison “pumps out” nuclear engineers, but Wisconsin has only one nuclear plant located in Two Rivers, Lindley said. This leaves some graduates to look for employment in other states.
“A lot of them want to stay in the state, and so having more job opportunities would certainly help,” Lindley said.
Written by Anthony Hernandez, a faculty member in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He received a research award from the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation for his study on leadership in higher education.
“Recent budget reductions to NOAA are reducing the observations needed to support these accurate weather prediction models. This budget impact results in fewer observations of the atmosphere and elimination of future satellite systems.”
Steve Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.
“I feel like closing loopholes is kind of like this idea of putting Band-Aids on big wounds … it doesn’t seem like it will solve a problem,” said Shelby Ellison.
Ellison, a hemp researcher and assistant professor in the Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences at UW–Madison, proposes that the state could implement age limits, require testing and labeling, and prevent packaging that appeals to children.
“There’s lots of things to do with packaging and marketing that there are no restrictions on in Wisconsin that many other states have … but just that you can’t make it look like Skittles, right?” Ellison said.
Thirteen winners have been announced in the UW-Madison 2025 Cool Science Image Contest.
Winning snapshots include photos from professors, students, and specialists.
While the current guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t recommend the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children and pregnant women, UW Health is recommending the vaccine for everyone 6 months old and older.
“We’ve always leaned into the professional societies’ recommendations,” said Dr. Jim Conway, the medical director of the UW Health immunization program and an infectious disease physician with UW Health Kids. “The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians [and] the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology have all endorsed, based on data, that every person over 6 months is eligible and should consider getting these vaccines.”
The EPA could take enforcement action against Wisconsin if the Legislature decides not to approve the rule or comply with federal standards, said Steph Tai, an environmental law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“They could initiate what’s called an administrative order to tell the state to comply, or they could do a civil action against the state,” Tai said.
Strifling added the EPA could offer water systems assistance with co
“When the peaks in Yosemite National Park are ice-free, we will be the first humans to lay eyes on that,” Andy Jones, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. candidate in geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an interview.
While heat pumps in the US have traditionally been associated with warmer locations, they are starting to become more feasible for colder climes. “You can pretty much buy a heat pump for most climates in the US and it can lower your energy bills,” Allison Mahvi, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells Popular Science. Some of Mahvi’s research focuses on how to make more efficient heat pump systems for cold climates.
Sam Frank, the head of the University of Wisconsin-Madison startup Realta Fusion’s theoretical physics team, Kai Shih, a Realta scientist, and Aaron Tran, a UW-Madison postdoctoral researcher, have spent years designing a model that shook up the order of the fusion world.
The draft legislation calls for the establishment of a registry at the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. The registry would include a website with annual reports on the incidence and prevalence of Parkinson’s Disease in Wisconsin.
For another Wildlife Wednesday, emeritus professor and UW Extension wildlife ecologist Scott Craven joins us to talk about fall hunting seasons, the cost of poaching, and the latest on wolves in Wisconsin.
Antibiotic drugs are polluting waterways and exacerbating the spread of an infectious fungal disease in frogs and salamanders. We talk to Jessica Hua, an associate professor in UW-Madison’s Forest and Wildlife Ecology Department, about new research on the subject.
Barret Elward is an engineer at UW-Madison, and co-president of United Faculty and Academic Staff (UFAS) Local 223, the union that represents faculty and staff at UW-Madison.
Elward and his team study fusion energy. Their work is mainly funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, which is directly affected by the government shutdown.
“We’ve already been operating under don’t buy the expensive things, or be really cautious about your expenses,” Elward said.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin highlighted the arrival of a record 8,500 freshman, even as she warned of looming challenges tied to federal and state funding and free speech scrutiny in a student media roundtable Tuesday.
According to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, much of the university’s research will continue for the time being, even projects that receive federal funding. But international students and staff may be affected as agencies that oversee passports and visas operate with reduced staffs. Similarly, small business loans and federal research grants will be paused or delayed during a shutdown.
For nearly a century, Trout Lake Station in Boulder Junction has been at the center of environmental research in Wisconsin. Now, a new documentary aims to show how the year-round field station’s work extends far beyond lake shorelines.
Operated by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology, Trout Lake Station has been supporting research since 1925.
It may ultimately be impossible to replace what’s been lost, at least in the short term, said Chris Vagasky, research program manager for Wisconet, a statewide network of weather and soil monitoring stations based at the University of Wisconsin.
Professor Savin, with researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison and Binghamton University, interviewed lawyers and social workers in 31 offices that help Americans enroll in disability and Supplemental Social Security Income, a needs-based program.
A University of Wisconsin study brought to light the personal challenges Black men face in engineering graduate programs. The study was conducted by educational leadership and policy analysis professor Brian A. Burt.
Fewer graduate and international students are attending UW-Madison this fall, according to data the university released Thursday — a glimpse into how the deep cuts to federal research and visa crackdowns over the last year are rippling through the university.
The data show a 7% decline in total international student enrollment this fall, a decrease of 490 students, and 9% fewer new graduate and professional students.
“What we study is thinking about new technology that would be a way to start up future fusion devices. And it’s really looking at, how do you reduce the cost and complexity,” said Steffi Diem, an assistant professor at UW-Madison and principal investigator of the Pegasus Three experiment. “And our technology looks at building. It looks kind of like a small lightsaber that injects, you know, the fuel in it, and then we capture it by a magnetic field.”
The rate of children with profound autism has remained virtually unchanged since the CDC started tracking it, said Maureen Durkin, a professor of population health science and pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Indeed, the highest rate of new diagnoses has been among children with mild limitations, she said.
A proclamation President Donald Trump signed last week slapping a lofty price tag on new H-1B visa applications is shaking up a system Wisconsin’s universities and hundreds of companies use each year to hire thousands of highly skilled workers, researchers and educators from abroad.
Flash droughts came to prominence in the 2010s, with Prof Jason Otkin of the University of Wisconsin proposing a formal definition in 2018: a period of less than three weeks in which the moisture level in the top 40 centimetres of soil drops severely enough to affect vegetation.
Ruth, a beloved elephant at the Milwaukee County Zoo, died over the weekend. After her second fall this month, zookeepers made the difficult decision to euthanize her. Now, The University of Madison School of Veterinary Medicine is performing a necropsy.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison opened the new Computer, Data and Information Sciences (CDIS) building at the start of the fall semester, bringing together three of the campus’s fastest-growing majors under one roof and establishing a hub for research, education and outreach in technology.
University of Wisconsin-Madison’s first research lab in the African American Studies department is collecting data on spaces where Black people thrive throughout the city.
The UW-Madison research lab, Soulfolk Collective, partnered with the Center of Black Excellence and Culture to determine how to amplify Black voices, stories and lived experiences.
Adrian Treves, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of environmental studies and director of the Carnivore Coexistence Lab, founded in 2007, studies many types of carnivores, including bears. In honor of Fat Bear Week, Treves answered The Daily Cardinal’s most pressing ursidae-related questions, from Alaska to Wisconsin.
The Freshwater Collaborative has awarded Universities of Wisconsin schools $4.2 million to support water education and research programs across the state.
The funding will target already successful programs at universities including undergraduate student freshwater research. It addresses some of Wisconsin’s most pressing water issues — freshwater contamination, data centers and lead pipe replacement.
Inland floodwater mosquitoes are poised the thrive in the wake of heavy rainfall or flooding, according to P.J. Liesch, director of the UW-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab.
“Then the larvae have to feed and grow and develop, which takes a bit of time,” Liesch said, “so that’s why when we have a heavy rainfall event, it’s often 10 to 14-ish days later, and boom, the mosquitoes are out in full force.”
UW-Madison is getting an extra $13.5 million to add two floors to the lab it’s constructing for a new cyclotron particle accelerator, which can be used to help detect cancer.
The UW Board of Regents approved the revision to the project Thursday, which will create more space to treat patients for cancer and other diseases at the facility, amid a booming biotech industry.
A University of Wisconsin Board of Regents committee has signed off on a $13.5 million expansion of a planned cyclotron particle accelerator research facility that will create radioactive isotopes used in cancer research, detection and treatment.
Hundreds of community members poured into the sun-soaked cartography library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Science Hall in the last 10 days of July, gingerly perusing through decades of fantasy maps, all created by one woman.
The exhibit, curated by UW-Madison alum and University of Oregon professor Mark Fonstad, showcased the maps, annotated books and meticulous research notes behind Karen Wynn Fonstad’s, his mother, atlases of worlds including “The Lord of the Rings” and “Dungeons & Dragons.”
Potentially fatal, Chagas disease is spread by kissing bugs, a subspecies of assassin bug. But entomologist PJ Liesch returns to explain that Wisconsin’s assassin bugs are not vectors for disease. He also says the recent mosquito outbreak in Milwaukee did not result in the spread of West Nile Virus.
Patients with cancer could be diagnosed and treated in one building if UW-Madison gets approval for its expanded multimillion-dollar cyclotron lab.
Construction for a $48.5 million cyclotron lab between two research buildings next to UW Hospital was expected to start this year, but the university now is seeking the green light from the UW Board of Regents to add more space for patient treatment and research.
Karen Oberhauser is the former director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Arboretum and cofounder of the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project. She has four decades of experience researching monarch butterflies.
Oberhauser said that at this point in the monarch season, the butterflies are still living and breeding in northern ranges as far north as Canada, but she added that the earliest generation of migrators to Mexico are now about halfway to their destination.
“I just looked at those maps and I see some monarchs are showing up now in roosting sites way down in Kansas and even a little bit further south right now,” she said.
Lauren Fields was less than four months into a research project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) when she got an email message from her program officer at the federal agency.
A doctoral candidate in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fields has been studying the biochemistry involved in the feeding process of a common crab species. She and her faculty supervisor believe the project can shed new light on problems such as diabetes and obesity in human beings.
A 2021 study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Financial Security found 77% of Social Security recipients have reduced odds of owning a home.
Data from AADAPt and other studies offer some clues. In a study published in May, researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison analyzed the links between adverse social experiences and vascular injuries in brain tissue.
The team studied 740 brain samples donated to Alzheimer’s research centers. Regardless of race, the brains of people who had lived in disadvantaged neighborhoods or experienced other discrimination over their lifetime were more likely to bear signs of vascular damage, ranging from blocked vessels to hemorrhages.
An associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is leading a clinical trial on whether over-the-counter hearing aids are actually beneficial to listeners with changings to their memory skills and thinking.
Dr. Kimberly Mueller, an associate professor in Communication Sciences and Disorders at UW, referenced a study conducted in 2024 that focused on modifiable risk factors for developing dementia in older adults.
Anew UW-Madison study suggests Wisconsin school districts — including some in Dane County — have moved away from compensation systems that at least partly paid teachers for performance.
Scientists at UW-Madison are leading national studies on psilocybin, to determine whether the psychedelic compound could offer lasting relief for mental health and substance use disorders.
The one scenario where you should pick up the leaves in your yard is if your trees have had serious foliar fungal diseases, according to UW-Madison.
“While most leaf spots on leaves are cosmetic and harmless to the overall health of the tree, fallen diseased leaves do serve as a source for spores that can infect next year’s emerging leaves,” the horticulture department said.
University of Wisconsin researchers Sushmita Roy and Erika Da-Inn Lee have developed a new computational tool that maps changes in the genome, ultimately helping researchers see DNA’s 3D organization and link it to phenetic disturbances in disease and normal processes, according to Roy and Lee’s study.
A new study from UW-Madison gives us some hints as to why the country is so polarized.
The August study from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication examines how using partisan news media affects an individual’s willingness to support lawmakers who reach across the aisle.
Within weeks of arriving in Madison, Tomas Dodds has already launched an exciting lab on campus: the Public Tech Media Lab. Dodds, a native of Buenos Aires, was happily working at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he was a research fellow at the AI, Media & Democracy Lab and the Institute for Advanced Study, when he saw a job opening at UW-Madison’s J-school.
According to Dodds, a main goal of the Public Tech Media Lab, which already counts faculty associates from around the globe, will be to teach journalists how to use open source technologies to create their own AI systems that align with their values and needs. The idea is to make newsrooms less dependent on big tech companies that have their own private interests.
UW-Madison professor Jimena Laporta Sanchis wants to help dairy cows beat the heat.
While a 70-degree day is welcome news to most Wisconsinites, it’s approaching a heat danger zone for dairy cattle. Due to cows’ much larger bodies and the immense work they must do to process food through four stomachs and produce gallons of milk daily, they’re more prone to overheating and increasingly vulnerable to climate change.
Parents struggle to help teens deal with online racism. Online racism is different from in-person racism because the people behaving that way usually hide behind fake names, making it hard to stop them. Studies found that teens of color see more untargeted racism – memes, jokes, comments – and racism targeting others online than racism targeted directly at them. But vicarious racism hurts, too.
Just because surveillance might cause an animal harm doesn’t mean that its privacy has been invaded. But disturbing its tranquility might qualify, according to Martin Kaehrle, a Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has written about this subject.
Seasonal citizen involvement in bird and other wildlife counts provide critical data for state conservation efforts. UW-Extension wildlife specialists David Drake and Jamie Nack return to encourage more public involvement.
University of Wisconsin-Madison psychologist Markus Brauer studies how social groups interact, and he told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that the state’s political divisiveness helps explain some of the trust issues.
“If there are people who belong to other political parties, then there is the possibility that they may not share the same common values, which then undermines trust,” Brauer said. “So generally, partisan strength and perceived political polarization actually undermine social trust in others.”
More than 62,000 Hmong Americans lived in Wisconsin in 2020, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison analysis of the latest U.S. Census data. Appleton is the municipality with the fourth highest population of Hmong people in the state according to the report, tallying more than 3,400 people in 2020.
Allison Daminger was in graduate school when she learned that men and women use their time differently: On average, men spend more time on paid work, and women spend more time on unpaid work.
“I remember wondering whether the time-use numbers were telling the full story,” says Daminger, who is now an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “What about differences in how men and women use their mind on their family’s behalf?”
Average wages in Wisconsin reached a record high in 2024, according to a new jobs report. But job growth in the state fell behind the overall national average. We talk with Laura Dresser, the report’s co-author.
Written by rofessor of human development & family studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Honeybees are like livestock,” Hannah Gaines Day, a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who studies how pollinators interact with the environment and agricultural operations, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “They’re like little, tiny livestock that the beekeeper is taking care of, and so they have someone looking out for them and feeding them and giving them medicine if they need it if they’re sick. But the wild pollinators don’t have that.”
Labor Day offers a critical juncture at which to access the condition of workers in Wisconsin. For two decades, the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has produced comprehensive “State of Working Wisconsin” reports, which have set the standard for assessing where we are at.
The 2025 assessment features some concerning news.
Laura Dresser, a co-author of the report and High Road Strategy Center associate director, said in a statement that the 2025 data shows “some real strengths for working Wisconsin owing to the strong recovery from pandemic shutdowns.”
“Long-standing inequalities are still with us, and federal policy puts substantial clouds on the horizon,” Dresser said. “I’m especially concerned about the administration’s attacks on the integrity of federal economic data.”
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health professor and dean Jon Audhya considers how deep cuts to federal research funding are affecting scientific work and training of students.
