Doctoral Studies Funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
On a beautiful September Sunday, hundreds of bicyclists pedaled the roads of eastern Dane County on The Ride to raise money for cancer research. This weekend, their fundraising came home to support cancer research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison as scholarships totaling $365,488 were awarded at Friday’s Badger hockey game. Three Biotechnology Training Program (BTP) mentors …
After filming a movie, scenes are cut and rearranged to tell the director’s story. A similar editorial process occurs in our cells in a process called RNA splicing. Before the DNA code is translated into a protein, it must first be converted into RNA, its single-stranded mirror image. The resulting strand of RNA is spliced …
Over the decades, as University of Wisconsin–Madison Biotechnology Training Program (BTP) trainees finish their doctoral degrees and enter the field of biotechnology, a sort of family tree begins to emerge. BTP alumni look for others with similar skill sets and turn to the current pool of BTP trainees and young alumni. At the startup company …
Biotechnology Training Program (BTP) trainee Edna Chiang is using her education and BTP traineeship to bring science to others. Recently, her outreach efforts culminated in a talk about her research for Science on Tap-Minocqua, a science outreach program in rural Wisconsin. The event is the result of a partnership between UW–Madison, the Wisconsin Alumni Association, …
For Danielle Lohman, her passion for science policy began when she heard a Ph.D. chemist speak at a career conference about the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellowship at the State Department in Washington, D.C. Lohman, recently a postdoctoral fellow in Dave Pagliarini’s lab at the Morgridge Institute for Research, was in her second year of …
As an undergraduate student majoring in physics at Illinois Wesleyan University, William Murphy took exactly one biology course: Biology 101. Two decades later, he’s built a career around creating what he calls “bio-inspired” materials such as tissues for drug modeling and bone regeneration. Murphy, a Biotechnology Training Program (BTP) mentor and the Harvey D. Spangler Professor of biomedical …
A series of projects aimed at advancing the human-health and economic impact of biomanufacturing is already benefiting from a new University of Wisconsin–Madison institute aimed at making the state a Midwestern hub of the ongoing merger of pharmaceuticals, medical devices and cutting-edge tissue engineering. The Forward BIO Institute, announced last month, intends to accelerate UW–Madison’s existing …
When Kaivalya Molugu was considering graduate schools, she knew she was interested in stem cell research, but she had to decide where to apply. The answer soon became clear: the place where it all began. One of the main reasons she chose UW–Madison “is the strong stem cell research center here,” says Molugu, a biophysics …
A compound that has scientists seeing red may hold the key to engineering yeasts that produce better biofuels. A red pigment called pulcherrimin, naturally produced by several strains of wild yeasts, is synthesized in part through the same biochemical pathway that researchers hope to use to improve production of isobutanol, a promising biofuel alternative to …
Biotechnology pervades almost every scientific discipline, including plant sciences. Mary Burrows received her Ph.D. in 2003 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in plant pathology and says being a Biotechnology Training Program (BTP) trainee was useful for her graduate education. She is now a professor at Montana State University and leads their Schutter Diagnostic Lab at …