Vatsan Raman never expected he would send a research experiment to outer space.
“This is like a box that’s sitting on our lab bench one day, and the next day it’s on a rocket that’s going up to (the International Space Station). … It was really quite surreal,” said Raman, an associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The organization is set to provide $206.9 million in total support to UW-Madison and the Morgridge Institute for Research this school year, including $50 million toward research projects and nearly $36 million for faculty, graduate students and staff.
Now in its second century, the nonprofit faces challenges, though. The Trump administration’s widespread cuts to federal research funding could limit the number of discoveries coming to WARF.
To better understand how microbes may act differently in space, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studied bacteriophages — viruses that infect bacteria, also called phages — in identical settings both on the ISS and on Earth. Their results, published recently in the journal PLOS Biology, suggest that microgravity can delay infections, reshape evolution of both phages and bacteria and even reveal genetic combinations that may help the performance against disease-linked bacteria on Earth.
“Studying phage–bacteria systems in space isn’t just a curiosity for astrobiology; it’s a practical way to understand and anticipate how microbial ecosystems behave in spacecraft and to mine new solutions for phage therapy and microbiome engineering back home,” said Dr. Phil Huss, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the study’s lead authors.
According to the most recent data, a University of Wisconsin-Madison School for Workers survey found 70% of the labor on Wisconsin dairy farms is performed by people living in the country illegally.
Written by Maryellen MacDonald, a professor emerit of psychology and language sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “More Than Words: How Talking Sharpens the Mind and Shapes Our World.”
Quentin Riser pursued academia, earning a PhD and eventually joining the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s School of Human Ecology, where he studies child development and family outcomes. Quinlan went into the financial world, spending nearly a decade at Principal Financial Group before becoming a financial advisor and later leading an insurance business.
“It’s designed to be a two-generational book,” Quentin Riser said. “The kids are going to ask their parents, ‘Mom, Dad, what is estate planning?’ And if the parents don’t know, they’re going to have to go look that up.”
To prove whether its methods work, the demonstration school would be required to participate in longitudinal studies through the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The school must also share its practices with other schools.
A charter school would be eligible for the designation as a demonstration school only if it is authorized by the Universities of Wisconsin’s Office of Educational Opportunity, which would select the demonstration school. Wittke said lawmakers chose the Universities of Wisconsin as the sole authorizer because it already has the infrastructure to support new techniques and conduct studies through UW-Madison’s education department.
Chiara Cirelli, a neuroscientist who researches sleep at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved with the new work, tells Nature that she was impressed by the study. “Every time somebody adds to the list of species that sleep, it is a very important step for the field,” she says.
But, for comparison, she wishes the researchers had kept some of the creatures awake after inducing the DNA damage to their neurons. She wonders if similar DNA repairs might be taking place while the creatures are awake but not actively learning.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have unlocked a potential new treatment to target an incurable form of childhood cancer with the help of a fast-reproducing pest known for swarming kitchen produce.
Professors Melissa Harrison and Peter Lewis used fruit flies to to study how cellular pathways are misregulated by a cancer-causing mutant protein. The pesky bugs were perfect lab subjects for the project because two-thirds of the cancer-causing genes in humans are shared by fruit flies.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have unlocked a potential new treatment to target an incurable form of childhood cancer with the help of a fast-producing pest known for swarming kitchen produce.
Professors Melissa Harrison and Peter Lewis used fruit flies to to study how cellular pathways are misregulated by a cancer-causing mutant protein. The pesky bugs were perfect lab subjects for the project because two-thirds of the cancer-causing genes in humans are shared by fruit flies.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison class started the fall semester with a big question to tackle: Which families are opting not to enroll their children in the Madison school district, and why?
After a semester of conducting background research, analyzing data and reaching out directly to Madison families for interviews, one key finding was that nearly 1,600 middle and high school students open enrolled out of Madison schools into another public school district over the last three years — with white families being the most likely to leave.
Better bike lanes, electric buses and more charging stations for electric cars – these are all ways cities can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change.
But for those who think curbing the planet’s warming is a lofty goal, two Wisconsin researchers are trying to show how these actions can improve human health – and perhaps prevent Milwaukee residents from scoring worst in the nation in one key measure.
“Banking” DNA from endangered regional animals is under consideration by UW researchers. Then we talk to another researcher on campus, Sathya Chandra Sagar, about his work on a global study of bird calls.
Years living with an autoimmune disease meant it was a matter of when, not if, Adam Barnes would need a liver transplant.
That time was approaching after he was hospitalized for a blocked bile duct in 2024. The idea of seeking a living donor came up but there was something about it that turned him off.
As uncertainty around federal funding for researchers at the Universities of Wisconsin is expected to continue into the new year, their new discoveries will, too.
From a new eco-friendly way to create plastic to meeting the person behind the state’s insect research, the findings across the UW system didn’t slow down in 2025.
Using fruit flies, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are uncovering a new way to think about treating an aggressive and deadly form of childhood brain cancer.
By understanding how different proteins affect genetic mutations in the flies’ wings and eyes, the researchers say it could lead to new ways to silence genes behind the disease
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has reclaimed its status among the top five institutions nationally for research spending – the highest ranking the state flagship has earned since 2014.
UW-Madison’s national research ranking has been a sore spot on campus for a decade after the university fell out of the top five for the first time in nearly 45 years. It dropped to No. 8 in 2018. UW-Madison officials at the time attributed the slide in rankings to state budget cuts and the loss of senior faculty members.
Written by Steve Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.
Nedergaard and her colleague Prof Gary Lupyan at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the US, decided to explore the potential effects of lacking inner speech, recruiting people who scored low on a questionnaire with statements such as “I think about problems in my mind in the form of a conversation with myself.”
By coining the term ‘anendophasia’ – from the Greek an (lack), endo (inner) and phasia (speech) – Nedergaard and Lupyan hope to create a similar keyword that will help to catalyse research into those lacking inner speech.
UW-Madison’s Geology Museum
Glowing rocks, dinosaurs and meteorites await visitors to this free museum, offering visitors an up-close look at the minerals and stones that comprise the natural world around them. Dinosaurs and fossils guide guests through physical history, beckoning those who want to know more about extinct species. The museum is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
UW-Madison is among the top five universities in the country for research spending — the highest ranking the institution has earned since 2014.
A National Science Foundation survey released Tuesday ranked UW-Madison No. 5 out of 925 universities for the $1.93 billion it spent for research in fiscal year 2024, which ran from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024.
A common quip about nuclear fusion is that the technology is perpetually 30 years from deployment. Fusion research has not been funded to the same levels as other, already-realized clean technologies like solar, wind and fission, but new billion-dollar investments signify interest is picking up.
University of Wisconsin-Madison fusion spinoff company Type One Energy aims to bring nuclear fusion to the grid within a decade, backed by funding and a physics-based model.
Established in 1960, the center says it provides “state-of-the-art resources, including supercomputers, research aircraft, sophisticated computer models and extensive data sets” to the atmospheric and related Earth system science community. It’s funded through the National Science Foundation.
Among other things, the center has helped improve early warnings in weather forecasts and air safety, the American Meteorological Society said in a statement.
University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists are sounding the alarm over a Trump administration plan to dismantle a prominent weather and climate research center, saying it could jeopardize the future of weather forecasting.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research is based in Boulder, Colorado, but is overseen by a consortium of universities, including UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee. The center allows researchers to work together on large projects that no one scientist or university could do alone.
As the Journal Sentinel reported, one UW-Madison study found 40 percent of species changes in northern Wisconsin and Michigan forests were tied to over-eating of plant life by deer, from stunting native tree regeneration to wiping out some plants altogether.
Starting in the fall 2026 semester, the University of Wisconsin’s Filipino language program will no longer be offered, according to Filipinx American Student Organization Communications Chair Ethan Ham.
The program’s elimination follows federal funding cuts by the Trump administration and the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education’s International and Foreign Language Education program that administers Title VI funding.
Title VI funding was established as part of the Higher Education Act and is used to support foreign language programs.
he Madison School District will partner with the UW-Madison School of Public Affairs to come up with a policy for implementing the state’s new ban on cellphone use during instructional time.
The ban, signed into law by Gov. Tony Evers in October, requires school districts to come up with such policies by July 1. The law includes exceptions from the ban for emergency situations, a student’s ability to manage their health and educational purposes authorized by teachers.
Academic research has found that incarcerated immigrants face tougher punishment on average, with sentences that are longer by months or years than nonimmigrants. Michael Light, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, looked at the role of citizenship in both federal and state courts in California and Texas, which, unlike Alabama, keep detailed information about defendants’ citizenship status.
He found the starkest differences in Texas, where noncitizens received sentences 62% longer than citizens, even with the same charges and criminal backgrounds. The disparities exceed those between white and nonwhite citizens. Another researcher, University of California, Los Angeles law professor Ingrid Eagly, found similar results in her study of Harris County cases in Houston.
When Brayan Riascos looks at the Wisconsin cattle herds, he sees untapped potential.
A third-year Ph.D. civil and environmental engineering student from Colombia, Riascos’ research looks at what most consider the least attractive part of dairy and beef cattle — the piles of manure — and he sees what could someday be the building block of a more sustainable plastic than traditional petroleum-based production.
Any plastic made from manure undergoes several chemical makeovers before it’s a finished product, and certainly looks — and thankfully, smells — nothing like its source material.
Across the country, many school districts are experiencing high vacancy rates and turnover in cafeterias — largely because of low wages, according to Jennifer Gaddis, a University of Wisconsin Madison associate professor who studies food labor and policy. A 2024 study found that school food service workers make an average of $3.16 less than custodial staff.
“It is much harder to not only improve meal quality, but also to provide a really caring, constructive environment for young people in schools when you’re dealing with that much turnover,” Gaddis said.
According to data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, organic farming in the state supports more than 2,000 jobs and results in about $424 million in revenue. Wisconsin is home to 1,455 certified organic farms, covering 245,333 acres, second only to California, according to the Wisconsin State Farmer.
“You want a healthy amount of skepticism in a democracy…You don’t want 100 percent believers,” said Dietram Scheufele, a social scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies public perspectives on science and technology. But he warned that skepticism in the US is “on steroids,” pushing people from the middle into polarized political camps and toward conspiratorial thinking.
Philip Mulder, an associate professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Business, co-wrote the study. He joined WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” to talk about trends in home and condo insurance in Wisconsin — and possible solutions.
“Our collective expectations of fathers have shifted. We expect dads to be more involved with their kids,” says Allison Daminger, author of “What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life” and a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
“At the same time, the expectations on breadwinning and dads hasn’t changed. We’ve added to their job description. I think younger dads are starting to feel that strain.”
UW-Madison political science professor and Elections Research Center Director Barry Burden considers implications of multiple states seeking to redraw congressional district maps by the 2026 election.
“I really saw a turning point during the pandemic when parents were really struggling, and moms in particular were really struggling,” said Allison Daminger, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies the division of labor in adult romantic relationships.
Daminger’s book, “What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life,” examines how gender shapes household duties and why women are more likely to carry the mental load.
Anne Pringle, a professor of mycology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said there is a litany of poisoning cases in which people misidentify something because their experience is not relevant to a new region: “That’s a story that comes up over and over again.”
Insurers “think that risk is at a higher new normal than they thought maybe 10 years ago,” said Philip Mulder, a professor of insurance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who co-authored the paper. “And they’re going to be setting prices accordingly.”
Rudolph Johnson, a toxicologist with experience working for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, started in the top role at the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene in November, the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health announced Monday.
Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, who leads the University of Wisconsin-Madison, sees opening a new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence as the right move to support in-demand majors and says funding the school won’t come at the expense of other areas of the university.
The technology is ready to treat at least some of these diseases, though. “There’s a whole toolbox now that can target arguably any part of the genome pretty precisely,” said Krishanu Saha, a gene-editing researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Researchers with a few more years of experience are more protected, but still facing setbacks. Fátima Sancheznieto is an associate researcher at the University of Wisconsin who studied biomedical sciences for her Ph.D., but now focuses on education and social science research. Before the Trump administration began cutting federal research funding, she was looking for faculty positions as an assistant professor — now she’s put that search on hold.
“You always have the — I don’t want to call it imposter syndrome, but — imposter phenomenon of, ‘Do I really belong here?’” Sancheznieto said. “When you start to notice maybe that you’re not getting as many job offers or career advancement opportunities and things like that — is it because I’m out and transgender?”
Leonard Polzin, dairy markets and policy outreach specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension, said whole milk has benefited from the diet craze around protein, driven in large part by health and fitness influencers online.
“The more protein, the better. Consumers are all about that,” he said. “The other portion is kind of a shift towards healthy fats too. So for example, cottage cheese is having a real moment right now.”
I had the privilege of visiting Nina Leopold-Bradley in late 2010 at her home in the Wisconsin River valley near Baraboo.
It was no ordinary interview.
Rather than meet at the nearby Aldo Leopold Foundation office, she insisted I come to her private residence and join her friends and family assembled for the holidays. As Nina, then 93 years old, described it, there were just “20 humans at the table, five dogs and four guitars.”
For the first time in more than 40 years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is launching a new college.
Approved by the UW Board of Regents on Thursday, the “College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence” is set to open in July.
“We see the new college as kind of the next step,” UW-Madison Interim Provost John Zumbrunnen said. “We envision it as a hub around computing, data and AI on our campus, but really beyond our campus too.”
Surrounded by tools and wires in his lab at UW-Madison, Luis Izet Escaño holds up a tiny object, 3D-printed with metal powder in a device he created. It’s a little product that could lead to something much bigger, and he’s crafted it through his startup company.
That effort is getting some help from a new program at UW-Madison, through which he gets some seed money from the university and one year of training, with the help of campus experts, to get his company out of the door and pitch it to real-world investors.
Conner and researchers Saverio Roscigno, of the University of California, Irvine, and Matthew Hannah, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, write in the forthcoming “QAnon: Capitalism and the Crisis of Meaning” that participating in QAnon means interacting with what they call gamified systems that are “strategically engineered to increase the likelihood that users will engage with them.”
This means the internet offers spaces to share ideas and encourage participation, but also “capitalizes on psychological mechanisms to hook and hold its followers,” they write.
UW-Madison has the go-ahead to start a new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence.
The UW Board of Regents on Thursday gave UW-Madison permission to move the School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences (CDIS) out of the College of Letters and Science and transform it into the new college.
The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents approved the reorganization of the School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences to create a new, standalone College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence during its December meeting on Thursday.
UW Board of Regents approved UW-Madison’s proposal to create a College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence (CAI), school officials announced on Thursday
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences (CDIS) will be reorganized into the College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence under a proposal approved by the UW Board of Regents Thursday.
he University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health has used improv classes to help medical students develop their interpersonal skills, combining performing arts and health-related fields into a six-week course.
Amy Zelenski, a professor of medicine at the school, teaches an elective class in improvisational theater. She is no stranger to the performing arts scene, as she has a background in theater.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison received approval to separate the school’s largest and fastest-growing majors into a new college focused on Artificial Intelligence and computing ahead of next fall.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents voted unanimously Thursday to authorize creation of a new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence (CAI) at UW-Madison, the first new academic division since 1983, when UW-Madison created the School of Veterinary Medicine.
For the first time in 42 years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison will launch a new college.
In 1983, the college opened the School of Veterinary Medicine so students could learn how animals and humans relate.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is set to create a new college for the first time in more than 40 years.
The Board of Regents — which oversees UW-Madison and Wisconsin’s 12 other public universities — approved a proposal Thursday to establish the College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence.
A study led by Andrea Hicks, the director of sustainability education and research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, yielded similar results, concluding that single-serve coffee pods have a similar environmental impact to drip-filter and French press coffee.
“I was surprised when we first found this, after reading all of the popular press saying that single serve coffee pods were terrible for the planet,” Dr. Hicks said. “It seems the public has a hard time believing this, as well.”
A research paper from the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin finds that immigration does increase housing demand and can raise shelter prices, but its overall contribution to U.S. price growth is small, around 2 percent.
Written by rofessor of information at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Early results of a new study show landfill runoff contained the highest levels of PFAS among liquid wastes sampled statewide in Wisconsin.
Since 2023, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been collecting and analyzing samples from four waste materials that could be potential sources of PFAS in groundwater, which provides drinking water to two-thirds of state residents. It’s also a source of drinking water for around 800,000 private wells.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison wants to separate the school’s largest and fastest growing majors into a new college focused on Artificial Intelligence and computing.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents will vote Thursday on the creation of a new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence at UW-Madison, meeting materials show.
