Noted: The University of Wisconsin–Madison professor and developmental biologist Jamie Thomson had recently made history by isolating the first human embryonic stem cell line. It was among the many notable achievements pushing UW–Madison to the forefront of what Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s former director Carl Gulbrandsen liked to call “the new economy.” Lauded on the cover of Time magazine in 2001 for his revolutionary science, Thomson founded Cellular Dynamics International to produce stem cells used in drug discovery and toxicity testing. That same year, the Wisconsin Technology Council was created by a bipartisan act of the governor and Legislature.
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