UW In The News

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.

UW professor appointed Joint Chiefs of Staff historian

When an opening for a historian for the Joint Chiefs of Staff opened a few months ago, applicants needed a unique set of qualifications.

Coming full circle at UW-Madison

Jo Handelsman had numerous options when she changed jobs this past January. Part of that was because of the position she was leaving: advising former President Barack Obama on science. Not many jobs take you into the Oval Office.

World War II veteran from Madison recognized for weather satellite research

Noted: A few years after retiring as an Air Force colonel in 1968, Haig came to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to become executive director of the Space Science and Engineering Center, where he was instrumental in the development of the first global meteorological system.

UW-Madison researchers: Types of smiles send different messages in social situations

A smile, like a picture, is worth a thousand words. Although most commonly associated with happiness, smiles can indicate nervousness, embarrassment and even misery. To add to their mystique and versatility, smiles can express sophisticated messages that influence the behavior of others in social situations.

UW cornerback Derrick Tindal plays role of superhero in mentoring kids at risk

Derrick Tindal loves comic book superheroes.

The original TV chef

Ever since I can remember, food has fascinated me. When I was a young child, my parents frequently took me out to eat—to the kinds of places you didn’t take kids. I collected menus and received a subscription to Gourmet magazine on my 10th birthday. It was inevitable that I would want to learn how to cook. My father instigated it when he gave me a meat thermometer and a dollar and told me to take out the Sunday roast before my mother overcooked it. But what would become a lifelong passion began with Carson Gulley and his TV show.

UW Campus Food Shed Gives Produce To Community For Free

College students notoriously rely on cheap, easy food like ramen noodles. But a new program on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus is trying change that by making fresh produce an easy option for students, too. It’s called the UW Campus Food Shed.

Alumni Park opens this fall

University of Wisconsin–Madison graduates will have a space devoted to them on campus when Alumni Park officially opens on Oct. 6. The 1.3-acre green space, located between Memorial Union and the Red Gym, will contain more than 50 museum-like exhibits throughout the gardens.

Selig, Kohl, Marcus and others at UW fraternity went on to big things

When Bud Selig steps to the podium next Sunday in Cooperstown, N.Y., to deliver his acceptance speech during induction ceremonies for the Baseball Hall of Fame, there will be many familiar faces in what is expected to be an enormous crowd.

Big Ideas at UW-Madison

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a big-idea powerhouse.

Energy jolt: UW-Madison to get funding for bioenergy center

The U.S. Department of Energy announced Monday the University of Wisconsin-Madison will receive a new, five-year round of funding for its energy research center that has produced 160 patents and spawned five start-up companies in its 10-year history.

UW-Madison Scientist Explains Antarctica’s Massive New Iceberg

A chunk of ice the size of Delaware broke off from the Antarctic Peninsula this week. We’ll learn about why this happened and what it means for climate change around the world and close to home in Wisconsin.