China may be 7,000 miles away, but it?s one of UW-Madison?s closest research partners. There are hundreds of collaborations as university faculty regularly beat a path back and forth to China, working on such areas as blindness, the milk yield of dairy cows and the impact of climate change on deserts. As UW-Madison considers opening an office in Shanghai ? its first foreign outpost ? the potential for developing even more research partnerships is at the forefront of administrators? minds.
“Although we are there every six months, it’s not a continuing presence,” said Gilles Bousquet, dean of the Division of International Studies and vice provost of globalization. “If we had somebody on the ground, they could take advantage of those relationships.”