Category: BTP News

Biotechnology Training Program (BTP) trainee Lindsay Bodart first learned about patents and intellectual property in her Foundations of Biotechnology course at the start of graduate school. Little did she know that a few years later, she’d be filing a patent on a tool she created to help in her research. “I knew what a patent …

The 2019 Ride Scholars were announced at the 4th Annual Wisconsin Hockey Face-Off Against Cancer game on Saturday, January 18 at the Kohl Center which can be viewed here. Seven scholars — including two Biotechnology Training Program (BTP) trainers — and their labs will receive a total of $407,389 raised in 2019 from The Ride, the annual community cycling …

Two technical breakthroughs, from the realms of experimental physics and microscopic communities, have claimed top honors from WARF this year. The 2019 WARF Innovation Award winners are: Mark Saffman (physics) and Ophelia Venturelli, Philip Romero, Ryan Hsu and Jin Wen Tan (biochemistry). Saffman has developed simplified optical hardware for quantum computing. His technology, recently licensed to ColdQuanta Inc., …

Wearable, smart technologies are transforming the ability to monitor and improve health, but a decidedly low-tech commodity — the humble toilet — may have potential to outperform them all. That’s the conclusion of a team of metabolism scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Morgridge Institute for Research, who are working to put the tremendous …

If you were to come across a patch of thale cress poking through a crack in a parking lot, you might not think much of it. Its miniscule yellow flowers are little more impressive than its spindly stalk and rosette of leaves. You could eat those leaves in a salad, it just wouldn’t be much …

Scientists at the Morgridge Institute for Research have isolated a natural chemical that acts as a potent kryptonite against schistosomes, the parasitic worms that burrow through human skin and cause devastating health problems. A research team led by Morgridge investigator and Biotechnology Training Program (BTP) trainer Phillip Newmark reported in the Oct. 17, 2019 issue …

New tools for editing genetic code offer hope for new treatments for inherited diseases, some cancers, and even stubborn viral infections. But the typical method for delivering gene therapies to specific tissues in the body can be complicated and may cause troubling side effects. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have addressed many of those …

A report today (June 27) in PLOS Pathogens shows how inhaled fungal spores exit the lung and trigger a fatal infection in mice. The study solves a mystery of mycology: Why are spores of a certain fungal strain deadly while the yeast form of that same fungus is harmless? Study leader Christina Hull, professor of …

A survey of the world’s top universities placed the University of Wisconsin–Madison as the seventh-greatest source of U.S. patents. The ranking, by the National Academy of Inventors and Intellectual Property Owners Association, attests to UW–Madison’s continued success in the granting of “utility” patents for inventions in a broad range of fields, says Norman Drinkwater, interim …

Seventeen projects, ranging from topics such as electrical stimulation for advanced wound healing to establishing a Radio Astronomy Data Science Center at UW–Madison, and expanding the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) into the next decade, have been chosen for Round 5 of the UW2020: WARF Discovery Initiative. These projects, with an average award amount of $385,802, …