CEE graduate student receives prestigious fellowship
Andrea Bill, a PhD student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, received a 2007 Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

CoE SWE section recognized at national conference
The UW-Madison collegiate section of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) was recognized with several awards at the 2007 National Conference for Women Engineers in October. They earned a Certificate of Merit Award for Leadership and Diversity Programs, second place in the Boeing Tech Team Competition, and a Collegiate Member Upgrade Award.

Engineer featured in DoIT academic technology video
Civil and Environmental Engineering Assistant Professor Jessica Guo is among UW-Madison faculty and staff featured in a new video highlighting efforts to creatively apply technology for teaching and learning. Guo developed a simulation game for teaching transportation engineering that provides students a virtual environment and enables them to visualize the results of strategies they implement. View the video. In addition, Guo received a 2007 simulations and games phase III award from Engage for her Madison Transportation Simulator.

Ahna Skop wins white house science award
Ahna Skop, an assistant professor of genetics and medical genetics, has received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), a very prestigious award that recognizes top junior researchers who have demonstrated exceptional potential and leadership at the frontiers of science. Skop, who was nominated for the award by NSF, was selected for her innovative research into the molecular mechanisms involved in cell division and for identifying links between the ways in which animal and plant cells divide. She was also recognized for her teaching and education activities, including mentoring Native American students.

NIH MERIT award advances fetal alcohol research
Susan Smith, a professor of nutritional sciences at UW-Madison, has received a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health, providing her research funding for up to 10 years. Smith is an expert on fetal alcohol exposure, the leading known cause of mental retardation in the world.

Hagness earns most-cited paper and early career teaching awards
Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering Professor Susan Hagness is among co-authors of a paper that has received the IEEE Transactions in Biomedical Engineering 2007 Outstanding Paper Award. The journal published the paper, "Confocal microwave imaging for breast cancer detection: Localization of tumors in three dimension," in its August 2002 issue.

ECE student awarded fellowship
The American Association of University Women (AAUW) awarded its Engineering Dissertation Fellowship to Mariya Lazebnik, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering, and named her a Selected Professionals Fellow for 2007-2008. The AAUW provides fellowships to women in full-time academic programs where women's participation traditionally has been low. Lazebnik is an advisee of Professor Susan Hagness.

Building green for less green: Design team plans lower-cost, energy-efficient housing
Sue Thering, a UW-Madison assistant professor of landscape architecture and a community development specialist for UW-Extension, is collaborating with Native American communities in Wisconsin to create affordable, energy efficient housing on tribal lands throughout the state.

On the June 24th anniversary of the death of Denice D. Denton, the women in science & engineering community remembers and celebrates her achievements.

WISELI Documentary Part 3 premiering June 13 on ResearchChannel
The third film in a series of three documenting WISELI's efforts as a recipient of an NSF-funded Institutional Transformation award will be premiering soon on the ResearchChannel! In the film, "WISELI: FORWARD with Institutional Transformation," outcomes of several WISELI initiatives are presented, along with discussions of the changes seen at UW-Madison since the project began. The program concludes with WISELI's future plans, including efforts to disseminate initiatives from the project's first five years.
Airdates on the ResearchChannel - Central time: June 13 at 5:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., 5:00 p.m., and 11: 00 p.m. You can also view the film online at any time on the ResearchChannel website.

Campus leader on climate, diversity issues to retire

Bernice Durand, a professor of physics, a campus leader in the areas of climate and diversity, and a member of WISELI's leadership team, has announced her retirement from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, effective at the end of June.

Geography professor honored with lifetime achievement award
Longtime University of Wisconsin-Madison geographer Waltraud Brinkmann has been selected as the recipient of the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Climate Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers.

Berquam named UW-Madison dean of students
Chancellor John D. Wiley and Provost Patrick Farrell have selected Lori Berquam to serve as dean of students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Berquam was the interim dean since 2005, when Luoluo Hong left the office.

Researcher seeks 'missing piece' in climate change models
Teri Balser, assistant professor of soil science in CALS is investigating the role of soil microbes in climate change. She recently received a career award from the National Science Foundation to generate the data needed for her research.

Study looks at benefits of two cochlear implants in deaf children
Ruth Litovsky, an investigator in the UW-Madison Waisman Center, is leading a research team that is studying the impact of having two cochlear implants, instead of only one, in enhancing hearing in deaf children.

Study profiles rate of autism in Wisconsin
Maureen Durkin, an epidemiologist in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, is the leader of the Wisconsin Surveillance of Autism and Other Development Disabilites System. It is part of a national study overseen by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The purpose of the study is to determine the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders in the United States.

CALS Dean Molly Jahn: Biosciences can transform state economy

May 3

NSF CAREER award: Resident bacteria may help clean phosporus from eutrophied lakes
Assistant Professor Katherine McMahon, a recipient of a prestigious $400,000 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER), will use her expertise in wastewater engineering and in biological systems to study the bacterials community in dissimilar eutrophied lakes -- two in Madison and one in China -- to learn more about how those bacteria affect phosphorus cycling in the lakes.

May 1

Two faculty elected to National Academy of Sciences
Laura Kiessling, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, is one of two UW-Madison faculty members to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Kiessling has distinguished herself as a pioneer in research at the interface of chemistry and biology, and in 1999 was awarded a MacArthur Foundation's "genius" grant.

April

Crone touts nano outreach to materials meeting attendees
On April 11, during the morning and afternoon coffee breaks of the 2007 Materials Research Society (MRS) spring meeting, Engineering Physics Associate Professor Wendy Crone and University of Florida graduate student Diane Hickey taught attendees the basics of balloon bending, then showed them how to construct carbon nanotube models fromt he balloons. The exercise was an entry point into dialog about outreach opportunities associated with the Nanoscale Informal Science Education (NISE) Network, of which Crone is a member. At the meeting, a 25-foot-tall zigzag carbon nanotube model suspended from the ceiling drew attention to MRS outreach activities and creative ways in which to interest children and the public in science. View instructions for building these models.

Study finds microwaves are sensitive to different types of breast tissue
A recent study by a UW-Madison research team has documented that the dielectric properties of breast tissue at microwave frequencies are highly sensitive to the tissue composition: adipose, fibrous connective or glandular tissue. The National Cancer Institute-funded research team, led by Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Susan Hagness, included electrical and computer engineering graduate student Mariya Lazenbnik and Professor John Booske, Biostatistics and Medical Informatics Professor Mary Lindstrom, Assistant Professor Josephine Harter, Sarah Sewall of the Department of Pathology, and colleagues at the University of Calgary. The team will publish its findings, "A large-scale study of ultrawideband microwave dielectric properties of normal breast tissue obtained from reduction surgeries," in the May 21 issue of the journal Physics and Medicine in Biology. The paper was also chosen for IOP Select, a special collection of journal articles from Institute of Physics journals that the editors deem novel, significant and potentially important to future research. The paper also will be featured on MedicalPhysicsWeb.

Project to study nurses' role in medication management
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has awarded a two-year, $300,000 grant for a project measuring how nurses contribute to medication management quality in an age of health information technology, where technologies such as bar-coded medication administration and computerized provider order entry are a part of the medication management system. Industrial and Systems Engineering Professor Pascale Carayon and Associate Professor Bentzi Karsh, along with Mary Ellen Murray from the UW-Madison School of Nursing, will conduct the study "Nursing, technologies and medication management: New multidimensional measures of cost and quality" in the intensive care units of two hospitals in Madison and Milwaukee.

Bier and Okpara earn best paper award from Risk Analysis
A paper by Industrial and Systems Engineering Professor Vicki Bier and graduate student Uche Okpara has been deemed the best engineering paper submitted to the journal Risk Analysis in the last year. "Securing Passenger Aircraft from Man-Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS)," not yet published, explores protecting passenger aircraft from man-portable, shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles, which may be available to terrorists on the black market. The study explores how the probability of a missile hitting its target is affected by missile characteristics and possible countermeasures.

April 27

Arming the fight against resistant bacteria
Chemist Helen Blackwell and her research team at UW-Madison have identified four promising new compounds with preliminary antibacterial activity comparable to that of some of the most potent antibiotics currently available.

April 17

UW-Madison announces 2007 Distinguished Teaching Award winners
Sara E. Patterson, assistant professor of horticulture, has received the Emil H. Steiger Award for teaching. Patterson says, "My philosophy of teaching primarily revolves around the belief that I am sharing with others how to learn, to access data and retrieve it later in life."

April 13

Gene that governs toxin production in deadly mold found
Nancy P. Keller, a UW-Madison professor of plant pathology and medical microbiology, was a leader of a team that published findings in the journal Public Library of Science related to their work on Aspergillus fumigatus, a poisonous fungus that is particularly deadly to humans with suppressed immune systems.

March 30

Abrupt climate change more common than believed
Postdoctoral researcher Gemma Narisma of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies led a study on abrupt climate change, along with Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment director Jonathan Foley, and the results are published in the online edition of Geophysical Research Letters. They have studied diverse regions around the globe where rapid climate shifts have taken place, and how and why these changes happen.

March 26

Targeting tumors the natural way
UW-Madison chemistry professor Laura Kiessling led a study with postdoctoral researcher Coby Carlson that explored a tumor target strategy that can more effectively seek out and kill cancer cells while sparing healthy ones by mimicking processes that already exist in nature and also in our own bodies.

Older news articles can be found in the News Archive.