Like its cross-border rival, the University of Wisconsin-Madison also has a public\/private research center under construction in the heart of its campus. When it opens in December, the $205 million Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery will allow a diverse group of researchers from the UW-Madison campus and beyond to mix with each other and with industrial partners to tackle technical problems in new and unexpected ways, developers predict. The Institutes will be the first public\/private research center in the country attached to a major academic research institution, according to George Austin, project manager at the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). Having public-private research centers will help UW-Madison to attract top researchers and increase the number of ways their research can be funded, he adds.<\/p>\n
“It’s a competitive world in that space, and this investment — and the collaboration that can take place — is required for UW-Madison to stay competitive with the big institutions on the two coasts,” says Jay Bayne, executive director of the Milwaukee Institute and former chief technology officer at Johnson Controls, Inc., in Glendale, WI. “In that regard, it’s a strategic move and it’s a very impressive one.” The Institutes will serve as a collaborative hotbed for many of UW-Madison’s top researchers. Already university faculty have been selected to lead research in five areas: epigenetics, tissue engineering, functional nursing, systems biology, and optimization. Researchers from other institutions around the world also may be invited to hold five-year appointments with the Institutes, says Andy Cohn, a WARF spokesman. The research center was funded with $50 million each from the state and from John and Tashia Morgridge, plus $105 million from WARF.<\/p>\n