THE OFFICIAL WEB SITE OF THE MADISON TIMES WEEKLY NEWSPAPER

Compiled By Heidi M. Pascual

• Wisconsin to invest $750 million in research

MADISON — Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle announced Nov. 17 that over the next several years Wisconsin will invest up to $750 million, including more than $500 million in new facilities and direct research support, for biomedical scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Speaking at UW-Madison's Biotechnology Center, Doyle outlined a strategy aimed at bolstering Wisconsin biotechnology, health sciences, and stem-cell research.

"Wisconsin leads the world in groundbreaking biomedical research, but we need to continue to move forward," Doyle said. "The state, in partnership with the university and our other private partners, has an aggressive and comprehensive strategy to ensure that we remain at the forefront not only of scientific discoveries, but of creating thousands of new high-tech jobs."  Included in Doyle's plan are:

• A new $375 million public-private research institute, to be known as the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. The proposed institute would occupy the entire 1200 and 1300 blocks of University Avenue and would become a massive interdisciplinary research center, combining biology, bioinformatics, computer science, engineering, nanotechnology, and other fields in one setting. The first phase of the project would use $50 million, which already has been earmarked for the fourth phase of the BioStar initiative.

• A new $134 million interdisciplinary research complex near University Hospital and Clinics. The new center would help bring basic research discoveries to clinical fruition at a more rapid pace.

• $1.5 million annually to support research on Alzheimer's disease at UW-Madison.

• A new $132 million research facility at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital that will focus on infectious disease control, cardiovascular illnesses, and bioengineering.

Doyle also pledged to smooth the bureaucratic and legal hurdles that impede the ability of faculty to take their innovations to market and to provide more venture capital for startup research-based businesses through the state Department of Commerce.

The new strategy is designed to bolster the university's science-research infrastructure at a time when other states, notably California through a recently passed referendum, will begin to invest heavily in such things as stem-cell research.

Doyle and UW-Madison Chancellor John D. Wiley noted that over the past decade, Wisconsin has positioned itself to compete by investing more than $1 billion in new research infrastructure on the Madison campus. They also said the university's long-standing strengths in basic biology — e.g. biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology — and its tradition of interdisciplinary research will help recruit and retain talented faculty.

Stem-cell pioneer James Thomson, a UW-Madison professor of anatomy, explained that with access to the human genome, biology has entered a new age. Stem cells, he said, are one tool that will not only help biomedical science develop new treatments for conditions such as diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and heart disease, but will also help unravel the causes of those diseases, opening a door to their prevention.

"We are a world leader in embryonic stem-cell research at Wisconsin, but I'm actually fairly embarrassed at the amount of press that this one area of research gets, because Wisconsin is a world leader in most areas of biomedical research, and I don't think the average person in Wisconsin appreciates that," Thomson said. "We are a population of 5 million people, and we have a state university which is in the top 10 universities in the country — private or public — in biomedical research by any measure you look at; and that's something [to] be proud of. To maintain this leadership position, there has to be a continuing investment. There are states competing with us and private universities competing with us, and I think that the initiative the governor announced today goes a long way in maintaining this leadership position in what is really an age of discovery."

Both Wiley and Doyle placed emphasis on the importance of interdisciplinary research and of building an institute where scientists from many disciplines can work together and exchange ideas.

Biology and biotechnology have always been Wisconsin strengths, Wiley said, but new fields such as bioinformatics and nanotechnology have emerged in recent years. Creating opportunities for cross-fertilization between emerging and established disciplines will only strengthen Wisconsin's hand, he said.

"All of these things are converging,” he said. “That's the message for technology of the future."

"We need teams of technologists and biologists right next to each other," said Biotechnology Center Director Michael Sussman. "We ... need them in the office across the hall." The proposed Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, he said, will accomplish that.

—Office of the Governor

• WNPJ honors Nan Cheney

MADISON — The Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice (WNPJ) recently awarded Nan Cheney a Lifetime Achievement award for her decades of effort promoting social justice in Wisconsin. Cheney, the newly elected president of the Wisconsin Community Fund Board, has a long history of social justice work, including co-founding the Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua and the Social Justice Center. She has been active in the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, has worked to implement fair housing legislation in Madison and in the state, and has worked as a naturalist at Cherokee Marsh.

“I was especially pleased to receive the award from an organization for which I have the greatest respect. They have worked for peace in some extremely important ways,” said Cheney. “WNPJ has always focused on the issues of peace, which are at the core of who we are as Americans. We can’t just do it a little here or a little there. We must work for it always.”

— Wisconsin Community Fund

END OF LOCAL NEWS