Education Group faculty member Wendy Crone, a professor of engineering physics and interim associate dean of physical sciences in the UW-Madison Graduate School, has been named the school's associate dean for graduate education.

Crone is a long-time member of the UW-Madison community, joining the College of Engineering faculty in 1998. An expert in the area of engineering mechanics, Crone is the author or co-author of more than 50 refereed journal articles and dozens of conference proceedings and contributed presentations. She was named Graduate School interim associate dean of physical sciences in 2011.  [MORE]

MRSEC faculty members Bob Hamers and James Dumesic were among four University of Wisconsin–Madison professors to have won awards from the American Chemical Society (ACS) in recognition of research excellence. They will be honored at a ceremony next March at the society’s 243rd national meeting in San Diego.  [MORE]

MRSEC faculty member Douglass Henderson has been selected as a winner of the 2011 Champion Award, presented by the Women's Philanthropy Council (WPC) of the University of Wisconsin Foundation at the council's biennial forum on Nov. 2.

Henderson was selected for his role with the GERS, where through his recruitment efforts and ongoing mentorship, UW-Madison has grown to graduate the highest percentage of women-of-color PhDs among the nation's top 20 engineering programs. Harrigan was honored for her work on behalf of women faculty and staff, particularly her role as the key analytical mind behind UW-Madison's gender pay-equity studies.  [MORE]

The NIH Director's New Innovator Award addresses two important goals: stimulating highly innovative research and supporting promising new investigators. Dr. Weibel's project title: Revisiting The Bacterial Cell Wall As A Target For New Antibiotics.

Congratulations, Doug!  [MORE]

With $18 million over six years, the National Science Foundation is expanding the mission of one of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's most prolific and prestigious interdisciplinary research centers.

The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) on Nanostructured Interfaces includes more than 40 faculty and 50 students from across the UW-Madison campus. It now will serve as a network of regional, national and international collaborations that will tackle several grand challenges of materials research and engineering.

During the last six years, MRSEC researchers have published more than 800 papers in scientific journals, delivered more than 600 invited talks and keynote lectures around the world and have interacted through diverse forums with more than 50,000 children, adults and teachers. In the last five years, MRSEC provided facilities and support to 1,400 users across campus and more than 65 Wisconsin companies. Its researchers have filed 34 patent applications and spawned multiple successful spin-off companies including Platypus Technologies, nPoint, Inc., and SonoPlot, among others.  [MORE]

Ever since scientists first began growing human cells in lab dishes in 1952, they have focused on improving the chemical soup that feeds the cells and helps regulate their growth. But surfaces also matter, says Laura Kiessling, a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who observes that living cells are normally in contact with each other and with a structure called the extracellular matrix, not just with the dissolved chemicals in their surroundings.

"Soluble factors are important, but cells normally interact with the extracellular matrix and with neighboring cells, and these have not been considered in most efforts to refine growth conditions," says Kiessling. "We wanted to know, can we replace the neighboring cells and extracellular matrix with synthetics?"  [MORE]

The 2011 Charles M.A. Stine Award is presented to Professor Juan de Pablo of the University of Wisconsin-Madison for pioneering contributions to the development of powerful computational tools and their integration with experiment to achieve fundamental and technological breakthroughs in materials research and and engineering. Professor de Pablo will be giving the keynote talk at the MESD Plenary Session at the Fall 2011 meeting in Minneapolis.  [MORE]

In the computer displays of medical equipment in hospitals and clinics, liquid crystal technologies have already found a major role. But a discovery reported by Professor Nicholas Abbott , from the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that micrometer-sized droplets of liquid crystal, which have been found to change their ordering and optical appearance in response to the presence of very low concentrations of a particular bacterial lipid, might find new uses in a range of biological contexts.

In a paper published Friday, May 20, in Science, Abbott and colleagues showed that concentrations of endotoxin in the picogram/milliliter range were enough to trigger a change in the appearance of liquid crystalline droplets visible in a light microscope. "When we investigated the behavior of endotoxin with the liquid crystalline droplets, we were surprised to find that we could decrease the concentration of endotoxin to extremely low levels and still see that change in the ordering of the liquid crystals."
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TEDx-Madtown presents collaborator Troy Dassler, a first grade teacher at Leopold Elementary School in Madison, Wisconsin, who brings nanoscale science to elementary-aged students to engage and inspire them in the sciences (with some unexpectedly grand results). Check out the video at: http://youtu.be/SilmuuG63Ps  [MORE]