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.
“If the state legislative districts were so gerrymandered that they violated the Wisconsin State Constitution, then the same is true of the congressional districts… Legally, the case is straightforward,” said Howard Schweber, affiliate faculty at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
The secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has long argued — first as a cable news host and then in his current position — that “woke” policies undermine morale in the military. But some who have studied military history disagree with that assertion.
“Nothing in my nearly 25 years of experience in the military substantiates that argument,” said John W. Hall, a professor of military history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Hall, a 1994 West Point graduate, said that the military had been an early champion of diversity initiatives, “not out of any sense of innate progressivism or certainly not wokeness.” Rather, he said, “they were necessary for the effectiveness of the military.”
On Aug. 5, U.S.Health and Human Services Secretary and vaccine skeptic Robert Kennedy, Jr. announced the elimination of five hundred million dollars of federal funding for research on messenger RNA vaccines. Interview with Aaron Hoskins, the Wasson Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His lab focuses on understanding the role of messenger RNA in human cells.
Written by rofessor of cultural anthropology and international studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Menzie Chinn, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research, reviewed the claims and found them wanting.
“The conclusion that real GDP is lower as of 2024Q2 than it was in 2019Q1 is not backed up by any calculation using defensible deflators a sensible economist would use. Second, other non-deflator sensitive indicators of real economic activity do not exhibit a downward decline from 2022 onward,” Chinn said.
Jake Baggott, UW-Madison associate vice chancellor and executive director of University Health Services, said in a statement that UW-Madison as a campus has been actively preparing over the last year for a potential measles case.
University Health Services led and coordinated a walkthrough exercise with campus, local and state public health officials to simulate their preparedness during a measles outbreak, Baggott said
Kurt Paulsen, a UW-Madison professor who studies urban development and housing policy, says the region’s high rents and low vacancy rates spurred developers to build more housing: “We have had a lot of supply come online in the last year, and a lot in the pipeline in the last year. And you see that now in the fact that the vacancy rate has shot up.”
Still, Paulsen cautions that new construction will likely slow down as developers wait for these units to be absorbed into the market. High interest rates and tariffs on construction materials — the U.S. Department of Commerce recently announced it is tripling duties on Canadian lumber to 21% — pushed by the Trump administration are also likely to slow construction. And though rent growth has stagnated, Madison’s high prices are still pricing out many potential residents.
Here’s what guests on the Aug. 8, 2025 episode said about the direction of the economy, wildfire suppression in Canada, and the risk of measles outbreaks around Wisconsin.
This positive behavior can be taught. “It’s kind of like weight training,” says researcher Helen Weng from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We found that people can actually build up their compassion ‘muscle’ and respond to others’ suffering with care and a desire to help.”
Astrobiologist Betül Kaçar on why the simple act of asking questions (without needing a reason) is one of the most powerful things a human can do.
Wisconsin lost thousands of dairy farms in the ‘90s. At one point, farmers received inflation-adjusted milk prices that were 20% lower than in 1960 and about half of the peak price in 1979, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension.
When Bill Zhu started a computer science major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2021, he had no expectation the tech job market would dip, or would dip so soon. Over the previous decade, computer science became one of the most popular majors for new college students.
Fifteen years ago, the Population Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison launched the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps. The resource provides a “treasure trove” of public data and offers a snapshot on the health of nearly every county in the nation, said Sheri Johnson, the institute’s director.
While more than 700,000 people use the resource each year, Johnson said, County Health Rankings and Roadmaps will soon lose its primary funder. The New Jersey-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is set to end its support after 2026.
“Tariffs, either on our part or on the part of our export market destinations, are not helpful for farmers in Wisconsin,” Chuck Nicholson, an agricultural economist at UW-Madison, said. “The longer we keep them in place, the bigger the negative impacts will be.”
“The National Weather Service is a testament to just how important this knowledge is and significantly reducing the number of fatalities from lightning from hurricanes, from tornadoes, from any of these hazards that impact Wisconsin every year,” said Chris Vagasky, a UW-Madison meteorology expert.
“Invasive golden oyster mushrooms, a wood decay fungus, can threaten forests’ fungal biodiversity and harm the health of ecosystems that are already vulnerable to climate change and habitat destruction,” said Aishwarya Veerabahu, a mycologist and graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who recently co-authored a study on the species.
Menzie Chinn is professor of public affairs and economics at UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs. He told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that it’s normal for job figures to be revised several times after initial publication.
“The fact that the preceding months were revised down meant that you had a drastic change in the trajectory that you saw,” Chinn said. “… And that is what the markets reacted to.”
“You’ve got a convergence of people who are thinking that they can improve their children — whether it’s their children’s health, or their children’s appearance, or their children’s intelligence, along with people who are comfortable using the newest technologies and people who have the money and the chutzpah — the daring — to try and do this,” said R. Alta Charo, a University of Wisconsin professor emerita, lawyer and bioethicist, who’s now consulting with government agencies and private companies.
Dr. Jonathan Patz, a University of Wisconsin environmental public health researcher who was not involved with the research, said the studies add “a really important piece to the understanding of the true health risks from these extreme climatic events.”
UW Health Allergist Dr. Mark Moss suggests wearing an N95 mask when conditions are unhealthy.
“The best thing to do is limit your time outdoors,” Dr. Moss said. “Spend time indoors, preferably in air conditioning to give yourself a break to recover from some of the irritation that your airway is experiencing when you’re out in the poor air quality.”
“Precipitation for the most part has been maybe a little bit above normal, but not that much,” said Jerry Clark, the regional crops and soils educator at UW-Madison Extension in Chippewa County. “We’ve just had several high humidity, lot of moisture, precipitation days.”
What’s so special about being a college versus a school or even a department, which is how computing programs at UW-Madison were structured up until six years ago? It’s not about bragging rights or status, but being able to build business relationships, raise money and more quickly carry out a mission that’s in step with the times.
The world is a terrible mess right now. Climate change, government upheaval, warfare have many of us on edge and filled with anxiety about the future. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture asked its Design and Innovation graduate students to contemplate the question, “what if everything turns out OK?”
Beer is a big part of Wisconsin’s culture. So it’s no surprise that the University of Wisconsin-Madison has an entire class devoted to brewing. We learn more about the science behind brewing and hearing about fermenting yeast, SCOBY and lactose.
In a sunlight-dappled room in UW-Madison’s Science Hall, between historical maps from around the planet, rests a world unlike the others: the fantasy land of Middle-earth.
Curated by Mark Fonstad, the exhibit showcases the hand-drawn maps, writing tools and stories behind the atlas depicting the “Lord of the Rings” realm his mother Karen Wynn Fonstad created.
“For example, if you’ve been immunized for polio, and then you get a measles infection, the immunity you had to polio could be wiped out or reduced,” said Malia Jones, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology. “You wouldn’t even know that you’re susceptible to some of this stuff.”
Wisconsin Watch spoke with two University of Wisconsin-Madison experts: Dr. Jim Conway, a professor in the Divisions of Infectious Diseases and Global Pediatrics; and Malia Jones, an assistant professor in the Department of Community and Environmental Health.
Launched this spring, The SoulFolk Collective is the first research lab to be housed in UW-Madison’s Department of African American Studies. The group is made up of about a dozen undergraduate and graduate students and is led by Jessica Lee Stovall.
“As a Black studies professor,” Stovall said, “I’ve been really interested in the ways that we can create learning and research environments that are Black affirming, that center Black joy and Black liberation, Black organizing.”
Dr. Ahmed Elbayomy, a research fellow in neurological surgery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lead author on two of the studies said in a statement: “More research is certainly needed, but seeing the potential protection offered by these medications is a fascinating finding.”
Written by Greg Wiercioch, a member of the clinical faculty at the Frank J. Remington Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.
Michaela Hoffelmeyer, an assistant professor of public engagement in agriculture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recalled interviewing early-career queer farmers who worried that valuable internships and apprenticeships would place them in hostile work environments or unsafe communities.
Queer farmers may also be forgoing good farmland because they want to avoid harassment, Hoffelmeyer said.
Dr. Katie O’Brien, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been leveraging social media to bridge the gap between doctor and patient, fostering a more familiar and approachable relationship.
As one of only two specialty-trained pediatric adolescent gynecologists in Wisconsin, Dr. O’Brien dedicates her career to diagnosing and treating common female pelvic conditions. She practices at the Teenage and Young Adult Clinic in Middleton and the UW Health Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinic in Madison.
In an increasingly tough housing market, a University of Wisconsin program seeks to give renters a leg up in their search for safe, affordable housing by educating them about the process and improving their standing with landlords.
Rent Smart, a free, six-module course developed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, covers the essentials of renting — everything from what’s affordable, what to look for during an apartment inspection and what to ask a landlord while applying.
In pregnant women, the effects are particularly impactful, as such DNA changes not only play out in the mother, but in the developing fetus and also the germ cells within the fetus, the precursors to sperm and eggs.
“This means that malnutrition has the potential to influence three generations—the mother, her child, and her grandchild,” says Hasan Khatib, a professor of genetics and epigenetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Such effects have been seen in the descendants of both the Great Chinese Famine and the Dutch Hunger Winter during World War II, where the children of babies starved in the womb carry genetic alterations that have placed them at higher risk of diabetes, as well as addiction and even schizophrenia in adulthood.
The connection between mental health and extreme heat is relatively new, but it’s a big one, said Jonathan Patz, a professor at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Population Health Science at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
We don’t always see this level of direct confrontation when a group member is accused of being dangerous, according to Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin.
“Most will tend to continue the friendship,” Calarco said. “This is because when someone close to us – or even similar to us – engages in violent or toxic behavior, we’re less likely to blame them for their actions than we would be if we saw the same behavior from someone to whom we’re not close.”
In the 1980s, everything changed. President Ronald Reagan slashed funding for renewables and research and development into solar power. “It was really ideological,” said Greg Nemet, professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “They cut the solar budget by 85 percent within a couple of years.”
Mark Copelovitch, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote on Bluesky: “Signs you might be a far right authoritarian party (#3191): Casual normalization by a sitting Senator of a ‘third term'”
University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Eva Golos created a graph of the USGS data illustrating the moment the tremors reached the Midwest.
Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) announced plans in late June to cancel “University of the Air” along with three other legacy shows in part because of federal and state funding challenges.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of Public Affairs Manual Teodoro has issued report cards for nearly every water utility around the state as part of his Wisconsin Waterworks Excellence Project.
“The idea here with the report card is to signal to the public where utilities are doing well, and where they are doing poorly in a way that is easily accessible,” said Teodoro.
Like the Skobot, most new A.I. technologies developed by Native scientists are designed for a specific language community. Jacqueline Brixey, a computer scientist formerly at the University of Southern California and now joining the University of Wisconsin, created a chatbot called “Masheli” that can communicate in Choctaw. Drawing from a collection of animal stories, the chatbot can listen and respond to users in both English and the target language, helping conversational skills.
David Kreling, an emeritus professor at the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy, said he’s never seen this level of tariffs in his 40-year career.
“We in the U.S. are very dependent on international producers,” Kreling said.
A software program UW-Madison faculty and students use on a daily basis has added artificial intelligence tools to assist with grading and summarizing discussion posts.
But the university says some of the tools could run afoul of guidance it provides instructors against using AI to automate student feedback.
Greg Nemet, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, served as a lead author on a United Nations panel report on climate change. He called the move a political change that’s meant to prop up fossil fuels.
“The change seems to be to get rid of that ruling that greenhouse gases are a danger to humans, and there’s certainly no scientific basis for that,” Nemet said. “Over time, there’s just been more and more evidence about how damaging it will be to have a hotter climate.”
Wisconsin is coming out of a drought, which can mean more mosquitos, said PJ Liesch, an extension entomologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“We finally hit the point where no parts of Wisconsin are experiencing drought anymore. That’s a good thing for plants and crops, but … that can mean more mosquitoes out and about.” Liesch said. “So recent reports that I’ve had at the UW Insect Diagnostic Lab do suggest that there’s quite a bit of mosquito activity out there in Wisconsin, although it can vary from location to location.”
The program began in 2019 as part of a certificate partnership between the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education and Centro Hispano, funded through a five-year grant by the Wisconsin Partnership Program.
Advancements in x-ray lasers have potential for research in many fields. We talk to a UW-Madison physics professor about his work. Then, the Weather Guys are back to explain what we’ve been experiencing climatewise.
ales of previously owned homes in Wisconsin rose 8.1 percent in June compared to the same month last year.
That’s according to the Wisconsin Realtors Association’s latest housing report. Kurt Paulsen, professor of urban planning in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, called the sales jump a “mixed signal.”
The goal of AIS Snapshot Day is to help the public learn to identify, report and control harmful species in state waters, said Emily Heald, rivers educator with the University of Wisconsin Madison Division of Extension.
The events are free and hosted by local experts on or near lakes, ponds, rivers and wetlands.
“We inherit the memory of trauma on a molecular basis,” said Hasan Khatib, a professor of genetics and epigenetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
As a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student studying taxonomy and systematics, Marsh categorizes insects. Examining the insects with a microscope, she divides them into species, which is the smallest grouping of an insect. Those species could be classified simply by the number of hairs that are on their wings or the shape of their abdomens.
“I love to organize,” she said.
The study was a nationwide Phase 3 trial led by UW-Madison surgery professor Dixon Kaufman. The goal was to test a new stem cell infusion treatment for safety and efficacy.
“There are many benefits to them (immunosuppressive drugs),” said Kaufman, the medical director of the UW Health Transplant Center. “But of course, there are side effects and downsides.”
Michael Notaro, director of UW–Madison’s Center for Climatic Research launched STEM camps in Beloit, Wisconsin Dells and at Madison’s Henry Vilas Zoo with a simple mission: make science accessible to all children with neurodivergences – but the camps are at risk.
“The main goals of the camps is to support the kind of interest and pursuit of science, degrees and careers, to foster and support neurodiversity and to celebrate it,” Notaro said.
Political experts say this will reshape Wisconsin’s political landscape significantly. Howard Schweber, a professor with UW-Madison’s Department of Political Science, believes this decision could encourage several Republicans who previously stayed out of the race to now consider running.
“This opens the field on both sides,” Schweber said. “I think there were several potential Republican candidates who are likely not throwing their hat in the ring because they assumed Evers would be very hard to beat.”
The camp is organized in collaboration with Dr. Michael Notaro, director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. With prior funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Notaro and his team have led similar camps in Beloit, Madison, and Wisconsin Dells.
However, future programming is uncertain. Federal support for the camps ended earlier this year when NSF grants were discontinued. While funding remains in place for this summer’s sessions, organizers are seeking alternative sources to continue beyond 2025.
If you are not feeling well and need an urgent care appointment, UW Health has an app letting you know the wait times at each clinic.
FoodWIse, a statewide program providing nutrition education to low-income families and community organizations, announced on Friday that its federal funding is being eliminated.
Dr. Michael Notaro, director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, launched the program several years ago.
“I think that’s inspired by my son Hayden,” Notaro said. “He’s autistic and a wonderful boy. My wife is also autistic. And based on my desire to support and foster neurodiversity, we created three STEM camps.”
