UW-Madison home to researchers who deserve our support
By Kay Plantes
The $21.5 billion federal R&D funding contained in the Economic Recovery legislation is welcome news for Wisconsin, thanks to UW-Madison’s talented faculty. If you’re not aligning your technology or manufacturing business with UW-Madison’s research and recent graduates or, as an entrepreneur, networking with UW-Madison talent to catch new ideas early enough, you’re missing out on a dynamite public good.
Once the domain of corporate research centers like Bell Labs, research that creates new industries is now performed in academic institutions, funded largely by the federal government. UW-Madison stands second to only one other university, Johns Hopkins, in winning federal grants, a competition as challenging as that in any for-profit market. In 2007, UW-Madison won $841 billion in federal grants, ranking No. 1 in non-science fields and No. 3 in science-related fields. This transformational research is Wisconsin’s best hope for creating thriving jobs in a 21st century economy.
There’s more good news. Thanks to the generosity of Cisco Chairman John Morgridge, UW-Madison has a new private-sector research partner: the Morgridge Institute for Research. It will work closely with the new, public Wisconsin Institute for Discovery to collaboratively connect UW-Madison’s academic talent to advance human health.
The strategic plan for the two new institutes demonstrates best-in-class strategic thinking. Increasingly, cutting edge research is done at the intersection of fields, not within the fields themselves. For example, solving chronic diseases will likely come at the intersection of nanotechnology, IT and biology.
The Institutes will be pioneers in fostering collaboration among multidisciplinary teams, leveraging UW-Madison’s compelling strength in multidisciplinary research. In 1998, former Chancellor David Ward and then Provost John Wiley catalyzed this competency by investing in “cluster hires”: hiring teams of faculty working in multiple departments to explore new areas of knowledge that cross traditional disciplines. According to Wiley (recently retired UW-Madison chancellor and currently acting Director of Wisconsin Institute for Discovery), UW-Madison is one of the few campuses nationally to succeed with cluster hiring.
The 12 finalist project names for the Institutes’ funding – Advanced Materials by Design, Nanotechnology for Energy Independence, and Food Pathogens – suggest how the Institutes’ research will transform our wellbeing and create new technology businesses. Planned outreach will increase PK-16 students’ interest in science and enhance teachers’ science curriculums.
More is needed, nevertheless. UW System President Kevin Reilly charged Carl Gulbrandsen, managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Fund, to lead a task force called “Research to Jobs.” Its aim is to identify strategies to move even more UW System campuses’ research into Wisconsin businesses and start-ups.
Thanks to the Institutes, UW-Madison stands ready to retain its record in the competition for federal research funding, bringing more new jobs and patentable discoveries to our region and state. But UW-Madison can’t do it alone.
Looming Wisconsin budget battles could further erode state support for UW-Madison, reducing the infrastructure and operating support UW researchers need to win federal dollars.
UW-Madison has been amazingly resilient in the face of declining state financial support. But with recent losses in WARF and university endowments, further UW-Madison budget cuts will hurt Wisconsin’s economic future.
In this daunting recession, Wisconsin’s lucky that UW-Madison is No. 2 among the 20 universities that perform close to half of federally funded research. Call state legislators to show your support for UW-Madison’s champion researchers.
