UW In The News

Madison’s own star gazer

Eric Wilcots wanted to be an astronomer since he was a kid growing up in Philadelphia and watched the Voyager space probe images of Jupiter on television.

Connected by cancer: How 2 Komen BigWigs became family

MADISON, Wis. – Robin Douthitt has reserved the renovated attic of her garage for women. In the space she calls the “She Shed”, she spends most of her time painting.

Slave Poet’s Lost Essay On ‘Individual Influence’ Resonates Through Centuries

George Moses Horton published a book of poetry in 1829, when he was still a slave in North Carolina. He went on to write several volumes, which never earned enough money to buy his freedom — though he became a frequent presence on campus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he wrote love poetry on commission for students. Horton was finally set free by the Union Army in 1865, moved to Philadelphia and continued to write until he died.

A Child’s Death Brings ‘Trauma That Doesn’t Go Away’

Noted: “This is a trauma that doesn’t go away,” said Marsha Mailick, a social scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied bereavement.

Everything you need to know about the Supreme Court’s big gerrymandering case

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a major new case about partisan gerrymandering. The case began just days after the Nov. 8 election, when a federal court struck down a Republican-drawn legislative map in Wisconsin for being too partisan. Because of special rules for some voting rights cases, the Supreme Court is required to hear the case.

A Child’s Death Brings ‘Trauma That Doesn’t Go Away’

Noted: “This is a trauma that doesn’t go away,” said Marsha Mailick, a social scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied bereavement.

UW–Madison’s new welcome mat

The University of Wisconsin–Madison has never really had a front door, an obvious entry spot with a “Welcome” mat and a bowl of hard candy on a little table when you walk in. I suspect a great many folks start their visit to the ever-more-sprawling campus at the Memorial Union. But that’s really more like a rec room leading out to the patio and the backyard. Bascom Hall is a kind of elegant grand entry, but the building is primarily offices.

UW-Madison launching free tuition program for first-generation transfer students

A new program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison aims to increase access to the state’s flagship university by promising to cover tuition and fees for first-generation college students from Wisconsin who transfer from partner two-year state colleges.

Houston: UW-Madison students aiding post-Harvey mosquito control

MADISON – As the floodwaters recede in Houston following Hurricane Harvey, millions of mosquitoes have emerged to blanket southeastern Texas, hampering recovery efforts and raising public health concerns about mosquito-borne diseases.

UW Madison gives away free ice cream at Wisconsin Ginseng Festival

The giveaway is part of the university’s inititative to give back to the citizens of Wisconsin’s 72 counties that support UW Madison year-round.

Justice Elena Kagan says court had to reach more consensus after Antonin Scalia’s death

The 2016 death of Antonin Scalia forced the other members of the U.S. Supreme Court to compromise more often, Justice Elena Kagan told an audience Friday at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wisconsin researchers first to spot Irma

Irma was spotted before it was a hurricane by satellites tracking it for UW-Madison’s Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies.

UW-Madison chancellor announces new faculty recruiting effort to drive critical research areas

After a 15-year hiatus, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is launching a hiring program to recruit clusters of faculty from different disciplines who will work together in emerging areas of research.

Far from actual storms, UW scientists provide indispensable data on developing hurricanes

While Hurricane Harvey washed through neighborhoods in and around Houston last week, a small group of University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists noticed something unusual off the coast of Africa.

The science behind the U.S.’s strange hurricane ‘drought’ — and its sudden end

Atlantic hurricane seasons over the years have been shaped by many complex factors, explained Jim Kossin, a hurricane scientist with NOAA and the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Those include large scale ocean currents, air pollution — which tends to cool the ocean down — and climate change, which does the opposite.

UW-Madison Scientist: Nothing In Historical Record Rivals Hurricane Harvey’s Flooding

Hurricane Harvey was a 1-in-1,000-year flood event, according to new calculations by the University of Wisconsin’s Space Science and Engineering Center at UW-Madison. The research scientist who mapped this calculation explains why Harvey’s record shattering rainfall over Southeast Texas and Louisiana was so devastating.

On the College Campus of the Future, Parking May Be a Relic

With just one parking space for every five people, on a campus of roughly 65,000, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has one of the lowest parking ratios of any major university in the country.

University of Wisconsin picked as a site to provide promising and expensive cancer drug

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s American Family Children’s Hospital will be one of 20 sites to offer one of the most promising and expensive new cancer drugs, one that will come with what amounts to a limited warranty.

1 Simple Trick that Will Make You Insanely Creative

Noted: Jihae Shin, Professor at the University of Wisconsin, designed an experiment to prove the most creative ideas come after procrastination. She asked people to come up with business ideas: one group shared ideas immediately, while another group was asked to play a simple computer game for 5 minutes before sharing their idea.

Gener8tor to help UW-Madison students launch startups

Startup accelerator gener8tor is launching a new program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to help students build products and start companies.

UW Professor Tapped To Write History Of Counter-Terrorism For Pentagon

John Hall, a military historian from UW-Madison has been tapped to write the on-going history of United States counter-terrorism efforts for the Pentagon.  We’ll talk with him about his new task and what it means to act as an official record of history.

Public Opinion On Gene Editing Varies Depending On Knowledge, Religion

People generally think that editing human genes might be OK, but most think that there’s a clear line that shouldn’t be crossed when it comes to changing traits that would be passed down to new generations, according to a survey reported Thursday.

Your Smile Can Convey Much More Than Happiness

A smile is often associated with happiness, but experience, and new research, will show you that it can actually say much more. In a world in which facial expressions can often convey what is unsaid, people will often use different smiles in different scenarios.

Madison woman among first Hmong-Americans to get Ph.D. in nursing

As an undergraduate nursing student at UW-Madison, Maichou Lor tried three ways of getting information about cancer screening from Hmong adults: using written surveys with true-false or check-box answers, and reading questions out loud.

UW-Madison summer program gives high school students a glimpse of pharmacy work

New Program Aims to Keep OB/GYNs in Rural America

One innovative program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health aims to reverse the trend by training obstetrician/gynecologists in rural areas with the goal of having them practice in the area.

An American Dialect Dictionary Is Dying Out. Here Are Some Of Its Best Words.

Bizmaroon, doodinkus and splo. For over 50 years, a group of intrepid lexicographers have been documenting words like these ? regional terms and phrases that were once popular in states like Wisconsin, Kansas and Tennessee. Collected together in the Dictionary of American Regional English, the words make up a fascinating repository for old-fashioned, funny-sounding and unmistakably local language quirks across the United States.

Science doesn’t explain tech’s diversity problem — history does

All of this adds up to a perfectly good explanation for the bizarre gender skew in Silicon Valley. It might be a personally discomfiting one to some, but that’s not a good reason to dismiss the long history of women contributing to tech and instead turn to bad science. “It’s almost strange to have to rationally refute it, because it is just so wrong,” says tech historian Marie Hicks, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the book Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing

Behind the lens

Filming my third short documentary, “Voices,”was a transformative experience. “Voices” is a 10-minute documentary chronicling the inception of the first Afro-American Cultural Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1973 and the opening of the newly minted Black Cultural Center in 2017. It tells the erased narratives of black students at UW–Madison.

UW to meet Notre Dame at Lambeau Field in 2020 and at Soldier Field in 2021

Although officials from Wisconsin and Notre Dame began talking more than a decade ago about seeing their football programs meet on the field, the final push toward a successful two-game agreement was UW’s 2016 opener against LSU at Lambeau Field.