uwm research report 2012
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UWM faculty, staff and students are following many paths to creating new knowledge in diverse fields.TRANSCRIPT
RESEARCH REPORT 2012
Research that energizes
On the cover: Junhong Chen, a professor of mechanical engineering at UWM, and Kavi Loganathan, a scientist at Johnson Controls Inc., are two members of a team of experts working together at labs sponsored by Johnson Controls on the UWM campus. The facilities will advance research on batteries and energy storage, and are part of a multimillion-dollar investment by Johnson Controls that aims to make Wisconsin a hub for energy-storage technology.
Chancellor’s Welcome
A great privilege of being chancellor is seeing the broad range
of interdisciplinary research taking place at UW-Milwaukee. In
our 2012 Research Report, you will see how our faculty, staff
and students are following many paths to creating new
knowledge in diverse fields. Their research partners are as
close as corporations across town or as distant as fellow
academics on the other side of the world. I invite you to spend
time with this report to better know the outstanding research
originating at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
See how our powerful ideas are producing proven results.
Sincerely,
Michael R. Lovell
Chancellor
INTERDISCIPLINARY
4 No waiting room
6 A source for new antivirals
7 Teaching 21st-century skills from console to classroom
8 What’s happening to women engineers?
NOTABLE SCIENCE
10 ‘Texting’ the brain with light
12 A scholarly tour of duty
13 Supercharged online learning
14 The (invisible) light fantastic
16 String theory’s ‘smoking gun’
PARTNERSHIPS
18 Community heals itself through university partnership
19 Supply chain management moves goods, grows jobs
20 R&D that energizes
22 Partnership focuses on combating abuse of prescription meds
23 Mutual inspiration
24 Works in progress: student actors, classical theatre
INTERNATIONAL
26 Thirsty for global water solutions
28 Building peace from big picture to leverage point
29 Spotlight, praise shine on filmmakers
30 Hometown global manufacturing
31 Metal heavy with meaning
32 Serving a growing need
COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL
34 Making antibiotics obsolete?
36 Sensing in a flash
37 Fish farming’s future
38 A ‘triple-duty’ fuel cell
39 The commercial ‘ripple effect’
40 How UWM makes ideas powerful
UW-MILWAUKEE RESEARCH REPORT 2012
As Wisconsin’s premier public urban institution, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee enjoys a growing national reputation for excellence in research, teaching and community engagement. On an operating budget of $680 million, it educates nearly 30,000 students from around the world. UWM also is an engine of innovation for Wisconsin. The 104-acre main campus and satellite sites are located in the economic and cultural heart of the state. The university’s recent expansion includes new academic and research facilities, and the creation of the only School of Freshwater Sciences in the United States and the Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health.
Interdisciplinary
“Research is the key to understanding diseases,
advancing treatments and finding cures for children.
Our involvement with organizations such as the
Clinical and Translational Science Institute, a
partnership among eight local universities and
hospitals, enables us to share resources, technology,
knowledge and expertise. This bond, which includes
UWM, translates discoveries into healthier children
and families right here in Milwaukee. Our continued
sharing of discoveries will have a larger impact and
benefit all the children of the world.”
—Peggy Troy
Peggy Troy is president and
CEO of Children’s Hospital and
Health System.
Interdisciplinary
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Nowaitingroom
In science, figures and tables are often used to give the highlights of research at a glance. If only medical professionals could easily find the right figures and tables when they need them.
“Such figures are at the heart of the ‘proof’ in medical literature, but they are more difficult to search for on the Internet than text alone,” says Hong Yu.
So the bioinformatics specialist created a first-of-its-kind program called BioFigure-Search, which finds medical graphics in seconds and augments results with smart features, such as short summaries.
Intelligent biomedical informatics programs allow health care providers to easily detect important correlations and contradictions that support decision-making. They also have the potential to reduce medical errors and stabilize health care costs through increased efficiency, says Yu, who has attracted $3.55 million from the National Institutes of Health to improve her prototype search engine.
Yu is not alone in this multidisciplinary research cluster at UWM.
More than 30 faculty members, spread across seven UWM schools and colleges, work in biomedical informatics—attracting $10 million in grant funding in less than three years.
Their range of research spans projects such as software tools that automate liver biopsy analysis, tools that mine the health information contained in the human genome, and technology that gives nurses quick access to best practices.
To better coordinate these efforts—and to pursue larger external grants—UWM formed the Biomedical and Health Informatics Research Institute last year.
The institute, initially headed by Yu and Peter Tonellato, a professor of public health, will strengthen ties with the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) and raise the profile of UWM’s research group internationally. The group already has written a grant with MCW for a joint translational biomedical informatics training program.
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Hong Yu, associate professor of computer science, creates intelligent biomedical search tools.
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You could have the blood-borne Hepatitis C virus for decades and never know it. It happened to chemist David Frick, who learned at age 26 he had been infected with the virus through a
blood transfusion just after his birth. Doctors told him he needed a liver transplant, and soon.
Frick was lucky to receive a new liver and even luckier that the double-drug combination available at the time cured him of the virus, safeguarding his new organ. The treatment isn’t always effective, it’s expensive, and its side effects made Frick very ill for the year he took the drugs.
After his recovery, he focused his research on finding better antivirals, especially for Hep C. His lab is looking for ways to shut off the enzyme helicase, which the virus needs to multiply inside human cells. Frick and his collaborators have discovered the most potent helicase inhibitors to date.
“His line of inquiry into drug discovery for Hep C is now a hot area,” says Doug Stafford, director of UWM’s new Milwaukee Institute for Drug Discovery (MIDD).
“It’s a billion-dollar opportunity. Two pharmaceutical companies have gotten FDA approval for drugs that work in similar ways.”
A drug that blocks helicase, combined with protease inhibitors also used in the treatment of HIV, could replace the old drugs for Hep C, making recovery much easier on patients.
With funding from the National Institutes of Health, Frick and researchers at Scripps Research Institute and the University of Kansas are investigating exactly how their helicase inhibitor works.
“We still have a long way to go,” he says, “but right now, we are the best-in-show for this drug target.”
Frick, who came to UWM’s Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry in 2010, is one of 14 researchers affiliated with the interdisciplinary MIDD.
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A source for NEW ANTIvIRALS
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Teaching 21st-century skills from
CONSOLE TO CLASSROOM
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As a high school history teacher, Terrance Newell didn’t need to read a research study to realize video games and simulations shaped the way his students learned.
Teens who were struggling in his class were working their way through elaborate video games at home: gathering information, navigating complex scenarios, learning through trial and error.
Now Newell, an assistant professor of information studies, is looking at how games and simulations can be harnessed to help students learn.
As part of his research, he has created an interactive simulation to help students learn how to locate, evaluate and select information using 21st-century technology and traditional resources.
Newell’s game, “21st Century Learning Labs,” tested with an applied computer studies class at a middle school, features a computer-generated community with libraries, museums and other information sources. Student “players” sought out information on virtual computers and in virtual books, guided by virtual “cybrarians.”
The results, published in School Library Media Research, an online journal, showed that, overall, students who used the computer simulation improved more in applied information problem-solving. However, students who worked with teachers face-to-face understood the content of information problem-solving better, while those who used the computer simulation understood the processes better.
A former teacher who is married to an assistant professor of education, Newell certainly isn’t looking to replace teachers or librarians with virtual counterparts. “Nothing can replace face-to-face teaching. These simu-lations are not designed to substitute for the teacher or the librarian. We see them using the simulation to supplement the learning process. My research is focused on finding and testing the best ways to do that.
“My ultimate goal is to develop a suite of simulations in content areas like history, mathematics and science that teachers can use in their classrooms.”
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What’s happening to women EnginEERS?
The good news: More women are obtain-ing engineering degrees. The bad news: Female retention in the engineering industry is a lingering problem. Now, a UWM study has determined why—and
it’s not what you might expect.
An uncomfortable work climate topped the reasons female engineers decided to leave the field—not child-rearing or other family issues—according to a new study by Nadya Fouad and Romila Singh. It’s the first systematic study of the engineering field’s retention of women.
In fact, of the women in the study who had left engineering, most were not staying at home. More than two-thirds said they were working in other fields—half of them in executive positions.
Women who stay in engineering do so for the same reasons men do, says Singh. “Women were most likely to stay in their jobs and in the engineering profession when their companies invested in their training and professional
development, when they recognized their contributions, and when they offered them opportunities and clear paths to advancement.”
The study allowed respondents to list more than one reason for leaving, and the data break down like this: Nearly half of the respondents said they left engineering because they were discouraged by working conditions, such as too much travel or lack of advancement, or low salary. One in three respondents disliked the inflexible and non- supportive climates, or their bosses. One in four left to spend more time with family.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, the study includes input from more than 3,700 women with degrees from 230 universities.
“A key implication of our study is that employers of engineers can take steps to keep women in these careers,” says Fouad.
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Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology nadya Fouad (left) and Romila Singh, associate professor of business
Notable ScienceNotable Science
“Science influences every aspect of modern life and
provides us with increasingly clear pictures of how to
solve our great challenges. But science is much
bigger than solving challenges. It helps us to
understand who we are as humans. Its true value
lies in exploring the unknown and adding knowledge
to the universe. One would imagine that each of the
UWM research projects highlighted here started with
one person’s passion to explore the unknown and
solve a great challenge, but ultimately each new
discovery helps to uncover the beauty in how the
natural world works.”
—Ellen Censky
Ellen Censky (UwM BS
Zoology, ’79) is senior vice
president and academic
dean of the Milwaukee
Public Museum.
‘tExting’ the brain with light
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Imagine a device that can restore functioning to injured parts of the body by reactivating malfunctioning brain cells through a kind of text- messaging system using light.
Engineer Ramin Pashaie already has. Equipment he created can communicate with brain cells, using light to control or manipulate their activities. His equipment may make it possible to translate the field of optogenetics into new treatments for Parkinson’s disease, autism and even depression.
Optogenetics combines fiber optics and designer viruses, offering a less invasive way to turn brain cells, or neurons, “on” and “off” —on command.
“This kind of equipment will make possible lots of interesting applications of optogenetics that have never been tried before,” he says.
“If we engineer instrumentation to efficiently communicate with the brain, then we may be able to restore vision to the blind, or perhaps restore memory,” Pashaie says.
“There’s a lot of room for engineers in this field.”
In optogenetics, viruses are genetically engineered to give specific neurons the ability to respond to certain wavelengths of light.
To optically target cells deep inside the brain, he implants optical fibers and tiny endoscopes in the brain through which he can deliver laser pulses to stimulate the cells in the area of interest.
The equipment exposes an entire region to the light, but only neurons with the virus react to it.
He “programs” each of the targeted neurons to react differently to various wavelengths or colors, allowing him to increase or decrease neural activity.
Pashaie also can monitor the process using equipment developed in his lab. Feedback is obtained by adding a gene that gives the light-sensitive cells the ability to fluoresce when stimulated. He can then trace the fluorescent signals with their highly sensi-tive endoscopes.
Ramin Pashaie, assistant professor of engineering, builds equipment that can translate the field of optogenetics into new treatments for ailments like stroke-related paralysis.
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She’s the first to admit she was an unlikely volunteer for military service and never imagined that one day she’d be a veteran of the U.S. Army.
Now back in her office in the College of Health Sciences at UWM, Carol Haertlein Sells is using experiences and expertise gleaned from her service to ease the military-to-college transition for the record number of veterans attending UWM.
The professor of occupational science and technology began her odyssey in December 2007, with a visit to Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston. Haertlein Sells had learned about a new doctoral program for Army occupational therapists that needed her skill set.
At 58, she took a two-year leave of absence and joined the Army through the Officer Accession Pilot Program. During the 10-week officer basic course (OBC), she learned “how to be a soldier” alongside 22-year-old ROTC grads and former enlisted medics who had deployed to the Middle East, earned nursing degrees and were now commissioned officers.
“Field training was hard for me, but they described OBC as ‘Camp Cupcake’!,” says Haertlein Sells. “It was all
part of building camaraderie, something the Army does really well.”
At Brooke, Haertlein Sells and her doctoral students worked with amputees and troops recovering from burns, traumatic brain injuries and mental health issues. Several graduates are now in Afghanistan working at traumatic brain injury and combat stress control centers.
“Many young service members and young veterans struggle with daily life skills,” she says. “Occupational therapists are the health care experts in restoring or establishing life skills for individuals with diseases and disabilities. They also are moving into wellness and health promotion as ‘lifestyle redesign’ experts.”
Haertlein Sells plans to develop life skills programs for young veterans, drawing on her master’s students in OT and UWM student veterans, then follow up with program evaluation.
“In addressing vets’ needs, it is vital to honor the values they bring to campus— loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage—as well as their service,” Haertlein Sells says.
Carol Haertlein Sells, professor of occupational science and technology
SUPERCHaRgED online learning
Diane Reddy knows all too well that undergrads who need help are not likely to ask questions in their required introductory classes. So they fall behind right from the start. Bummer.
That’s why Reddy and fellow psychology professor Ray Fleming developed a teaching method aimed at boosting the student success rate. And it has. At UWM, frosh using their online program, called U-Pace, made better grades and understood the material better than those taking the same course in a face-to-face format.
And it gets better: U-Pace also appears to close the achievement gap for at-risk students. Minority and low-income students in particular were more successful in U-Pace courses than majority and higher-income students in face-to-face courses.
“We believe the program works because it builds the students’ sense of control over learning,” says Reddy.
U-Pace organizes material for courses such as Psychology 101 into small segments, teaching students how to study in increments.
Using the same textbook covering the same material, U-Pace students must master each online quiz before moving on to the next section. Quizzes can be retaken as often as needed, and students receive immediate feedback. Coaching is given through email messages or a phone call, with the instructor offering help and motivation that is customized to each student.
“U-Pace capitalizes on the technology to tell the instructor when a student is struggling, and that’s when the personalized support kicks in,” says Reddy.
The U.S. Department of Education is conducting a scientific study of the program, while the method is being tested at the same time at 23 universities through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates and the William and Flora Hewlett foundations.
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The
(inviSiBlE) light fantastic
Think of it as a wonder tool that yields high-definition pictures using light that isn’t visible.Physicist Carol Hirschmugl has developed a device, called
IRENI, that not only reveals the kinds of molecules in a tissue sample and how they are changing, but also offers pictures with exceptional clarity.
Among the scores of potential uses for this futuristic microscope is capturing the moment cancer cells spread—in a fraction of the time and with greater accuracy than before. It may also be a promising way to monitor other cellular processes, improve biofuel production or advance materials research.
“Since IRENI reveals the molecular composition of a tissue sample, you can choose to look at the distribution of functional groups, such as proteins, carbohydrates and lipids,” says Hirschmugl.
Conventional infrared imaging can identify molecular structures, but the images are very blurry. Optical microscopes render sharp images, but tissue samples have to be stained in order for specific structures to be seen.
Hirschmugl had been using synchrotron radiation for a variety of experiments for 20 years before developing IRENI.
A kind of racetrack for electrons, a synchrotron accelerates electrons to the speed of light until they emit light at all wavelengths, both visible and not.
For IRENI, Hirschmugl employs just the mid-infrared range of the light from the synchrotron. But instead of using one beam, she uses 12 to illuminate a state-of-the-art camera. Light in the mid-infrared range is absorbed at thousands of locations on the sample, providing an equal number of graphic “fingerprints.” Taken together, they form a less-pixilated image.
Hirschmugl is now seeking support to create “mini-synchrotrons” for use in medical facilities.
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Physics Professor Carol Hirschmugl has developed a futuristic “microscope” that images specific molecules in tissue samples in a fraction of the time with better accuracy.
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To study some of the biggest questions in nature, such as how the universe began, physicist Luis Anchordoqui is focused on the incredibly small. His search for the most
basic units of matter involves a still-unproven theory that replaces the traditional view of subatomic particles as “points” with the notion that they are minuscule, vibrating “strings.”
To detect these small-scale vibrations, Anchordoqui uses the most powerful particle accelerator in the world. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland creates head-on collisions of two beams of protons moving at almost the speed of light. These high-energy crashes bring pieces of protons very close together. Only at such short distances can their structure be determined.
If strings exist, the collision would excite them, allowing Anchordoqui to test whether the variations in their oscillations indicate that the strings’ behaviors correspond to the behaviors of traditional particles.
It requires huge amounts of energy to probe this way. More, in fact, than the LHC currently can generate—unless the size of some strings were not quite as small as once thought.
“Nature may be helping us out,” Anchordoqui says, “because there is evidence that some strings could be as large as a millimeter.”
He says that possibility is worth investigating.
If string theory is correct, it would unify all the known forces in nature and the building blocks of matter into a cohesive model—a feat that eluded even Albert Einstein.
Anchordoqui recently won an Early CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support this work. He is the ninth member of UWM’s Physics Department to receive the NSF’s most prestigious grant for younger researchers. All previous winners are active faculty members.
String theory’s
‘SMOking gUn’
luis anchordoqui, associate professor of physics
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PartnershipsPartnerships
“There is no ‘I’ in the word ‘team,’ and there are no
lone wolves in true partnerships. That’s how I like to
run my organization, Growing Power, which values its
diverse partnerships with companies, schools and a
wide range of organizations, including UWM.
“Our links with UWM alone—from students involved
with our Community Food Center to joint aquaponics
research—have positively impacted thousands of
people in our community. Working together, we
can advance research, food security, community
development, education and sustainable business
practices more quickly and with greater success.
I salute UWM and the partners highlighted here
for their commitment to strengthening our city
through collaboration.”
—Will Allen
Will Allen is founder
and CEO of growing Power inc.
and a John D. and Catherine t.
Macarthur Foundation Fellow.
Community HEALS ITSELF through university partnership
Paulette Bangura’s interest in improving the environment in her neighborhood is personal. In 2006 she had a double lung
transplant after life-threatening complications from sarcoidosis, an immune disease possibly triggered by environmental toxins.
Today she’s part of a major environmental health collaboration involving UWM’s College of Nursing, the Environmental Protection Agency, 26 organizations in Milwaukee’s Westlawn neighborhood and her neighbors. The EPA’s Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) provides support.
Since 2008, the CARE collaboration has made progress on a number of factors impacting health in the area. It was one of only three programs in the nation this year to receive additional funding to continue the work.
Westlawn residents and neighbors, like Bangura, face numerous significant health challenges related to environmental issues, says project manager and principal investigator Anne Dressel of the College of Nursing.
Emergency room visits for asthma within Westlawn’s 53218 ZIP code are four times higher than average rates in other areas of the state, and the average rate of hospitalization is more than three times that of the rest of the state.
Westlawn residents are working with CARE to improve other health factors, too. They have told CARE they would like to increase indoor air quality, improve pest management, reduce mold problems, and have more access to fresh and healthy food.
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Supply chain management moves goods, gROwS JOBS
There are lots of misperceptions about “supply chain” and “supply chain management.”
“Essentially, supply chain is about satisfying the consumer—moving goods and services to precisely where the consumer wants them, and when they want them, and then supporting the consumer even after the sale has been made,” says Anthony Ross, the Rockwell Automation Endowed Chair in Supply Chain Management and a professor in UWM’s Lubar School of Business.
But supply chain management is much bigger than simply production and distribu-tion processes. Employment prospects are bright. One manufacturing job indirectly leads to three supply chain jobs.
“Supply chain spans many aspects of the economy beyond manufacturing to include where and how we purchase supplies and how we arrange for storage and eventual delivery of the finished products,” Ross explains.
And even small companies can compete, thanks to the emergence of the information age.
“Technology has reduced the distance between customer and supplier, and the time it takes to receive and fulfill an order. There are risks out there, but also amazing opportunities for new company business models to serve customers and collaborate with suppliers.”
Supply chain management comprises the strategies companies use to design and develop products faster, cheaper and better.
“At the Lubar School, we’re educating students to ‘think deeply’ about both customer data and operational data, then consider a firm’s next strategic move toward anticipating customers’ future needs today,” Ross says.
Students, faculty and members of the business community are connecting through the Lubar School’s new Supply Chain Management Institute, which seeks to become the destination for industry and policy leaders looking to discuss and decide on key issues impacting supply chain management. Industry executives engage with students from start to finish on projects. Faculty learn firsthand about the pressing issues on industry managers’ minds.
“Companies have a say in how tomorrow’s new talent is developed, and students meet prospective employers and experience ‘real world’ problem solving while pursuing their degree.”
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Research and development excellence in battery and energy storage is centered in Milwaukee, where Chancellor Michael R. Lovell has helped establish an unprecedented partnership between Johnson Controls Inc.,
the world’s leading supplier of automotive batteries, and Wisconsin’s two public research universities.
The multimillion-dollar investment by Johnson Controls already has produced two joint laboratories at UWM’s Col-lege of Engineering & Applied Science, where the com-pany’s scientists and UWM faculty and students work side
by side. One is a state-of-the-art “dry” lab that is so advanced only a handful of organizations in the world share its capabilities. The other is a chemical and materials test laboratory supporting the research.
The company also is funding the Johnson Controls Endowed Professorship in Energy Storage Research. The position will be responsible for maintaining the research labs and supervising graduate students at both UWM and UW-Madison. In addition, Johnson Controls is establishing a research laboratory at UW-Madison and funding graduate fellowships at both institutions.
UWM Chancellor Michael Lovell and Mary Ann Wright, vice president of global technology and innovation for Johnson Controls Power Solutions, meet in one of two labs on campus supported by and shared with Johnson Controls.
R&D that energizes R&D that energizes
The future of hybrid
and electric vehicles
depends on lithium-ion
and other advanced
electrochemical
automotive batteries,
the principal
alternative energy
sources of today’s
green fleets.
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PaRtnERSHiP focuses on combating abuse of prescription meds
Prescription medication abuse is a persistent problem in Wisconsin, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. It’s an issue that looms large not just for the abusers, but also
for pharmaceutical professionals.
A partnership between UWM’s Center for Addiction and Behavioral Health Research (CABHR) and the Concordia University Wisconsin (CUW) School of Pharmacy is tapping into a potential intervention point: the moment when prescriptions are filled.
“We know that many pharmacists establish relationships with their clients and have an understanding of how their clients are using medications,” says Michael Fendrich, director of CABHR and a professor of social work in UWM’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare. “So they may be in a position to detect possible abuse and advise patients and doctors when problems are suspected.”
Together, CUW and UWM are dramatically increasing the training of new doctors of pharmacy in the epidemiology, health consequences and economic impact of addiction and substance abuse in Wisconsin.
This spring, Fendrich and graduate student Jennifer Hernandez Meier teach “Social and Behavioral Pharmacy” at CUW.
The course is designed to give pharmacy Ph.D. students a better understanding of how social, psychological and sociocultural factors explain and relate to disease processes, the patient-pharmacist relationship and how each experiences the broader health care system. Topics include the relationship between the mind and the body, chronic illness, mental illness, substance use, patient counseling and communication, pharmacist-physician interac-tion, medication adherence and medication errors.
Fendrich is teaching as a UW System Wisconsin Distinguished Professor, funded by CUW—a key aspect of the partnership.
“These two universities represent how a public and a private institution can develop research, generate new grant funding and create innovative training strategies,” Fendrich says.
“CABHR and its team of UWM scientists are engaging a new cadre of people that will be serving our community in a critically important way.”
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Concordia University wisconsin pharmacy students Sarah Hoerner and Sirr grice (from left) with Dean and associate Professor of Pharmacy Dean l. arneson and UwM’s Michael Fendrich
Mutual inSPiRatiOn
Having a national leader in the use of a relatively new architectural software right here in Milwaukee presents an opportunity for UWM architecture students, one that the firm Eppstein
Uhen Architects (EUA) has embraced.
EUA is known for innovative uses of virtual 3-D modeling called Building Information Modeling (BIM), which allows all the different professions involved in a construction project to work together in real time. Skill with the software is essential for new architecture graduates because it helps contain project costs, but few have the opportunity to test the limits of it in a professional setting.
Until now. The firm sponsors a course “studio” at UWM’s School of Architecture & Urban Planning (SARUP) that focuses on the accomplished use of Revit software, a brand of BIM.
It appears to be working. Close and extended work among architects and students has formed a kind of incubator for creativity and has resulted in two national honors for SARUP.
“Students are experiencing a very real design process,” says EUA senior design architect TJ Morley, “where they are faced with maintaining the strength of an idea under the weight of real-world influences.”
EUA is only one of several commercially sponsored studios at SARUP that have been described in the trade press as “an amazing symbiosis between practice and education.” The National Architectural Accrediting Board specifically identified the studios as being models for other schools.
“By working directly with our colleagues in the professions, the school becomes relevant to the needs of the built environment and provides a unique educational experience for all the participants,” says SARUP Dean Robert Greenstreet.
In the last five years, SARUP has offered nine commercially supported studios, from its first sponsor, Spancrete Industries, to its most recent, Bradley Corp.
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tJ Morley of Eppstein Uhen architects (left) with student Sara Maas and associate Professor gil Snyder
Works in PROgRESS: student actors, classical theatre
“All the world’s a stage,” begins a renowned monologue from William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”
In December 2011, audiences were swept away by that thrilling scene as performed by UWM theatre students. The poignancy of those performances stems from a partnership between the Theatre Department in UWM’s Peck School of the Arts (PSOA) and Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass.
Shakespeare & Company is one of the primary Shakespeare theatres in the United States, founded to develop new approaches to the performance of Shakespeare and to train actors.
The partnership was launched two years ago, when PSOA brought the company’s principals to Milwaukee for a weekend of intensive training with student actors and a master class for professional actors working in the city’s vibrant fine arts scene.
Theatre faculty and students have traveled to Lenox for Shakespeare & Company’s four- and six-week training intensives, and company members have returned with them to campus. Several of the student actors in “As You Like It” trained and attended during Shakespeare & Company’s 2011 summer season.
Associate Professor Rebecca Holderness will direct “King Lear” at Shakespeare & Company in summer 2012, with several UWM students acting and understudying in the production. Holderness will remount “King Lear” at UWM’s Mainstage Theatre in November 2012, with student actors taking on the roles they understudied.
The performance is well timed for the university’s 2012-13 “Year of The Arts” celebration.
“We’re working toward establishing UWM’s theatre program as a regional center for the development of classical actors,” says Associate Professor Bill Watson, head of UWM’s BFA in acting program.
“This complements the strong contemporary nature of the program we’ve developed over the last five years.”
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the UwM theatre Department staged “as you like it” in December 2011.
InternationalInternational
“Today, more than in any other period in history, we
live and interact as one global society. For UWM that
means not only preparing students for international
experiences at work, but also forming linkages across
the globe to share students and new perspectives.
And the local university is fully engaged, as
illustrated on the following pages.
“Administrators have taken UWM’s areas of research
strength to other countries to collaborate in both the
laboratory and the classroom. Experts on global
issues, such as freshwater technologies and policy,
attract interested parties from everywhere. But
maybe UWM’s strongest contributions to our brave
new world are the achievements of alumni, which
have spread the university’s influence near and far.”
—Allan Klotsche
Allan Klotsche
(UwM BBa Marketing, ’87;
EMBa, ’94) is senior vice
president of human resources
for Brady Corporation. He was
president of Brady asia Pacific
from 2003 to 2010.
Access to freshwater will soon be the major impetus for change in cities and for industry across the globe, says scientist David
Garman. And he should know.
Garman, the founding dean of UWM’s graduate-level School of Freshwater Sciences, came to Milwaukee from a parched Australia, where residential water restrictions are a part of people’s everyday lives.
“The school should help position Milwaukee as a city of the future— one that is largely sustainable with its industries, water management, environmental footprint and energy,” he says. “It means a better lifestyle for all its inhabitants.”
Garman says his role is to usher Milwaukee toward that future and to amplify the city’s voice in the global discussion on freshwater. Through the school’s new Center for Water Policy, he will foster ties with Stockholm and Singapore, two recognized leaders in water policy.
Built on a half-century of Great Lakes research, the School of Freshwater Sciences is the only graduate school in the nation dedicated solely to the study of freshwater issues.
It offers an interdisciplinary approach, blending modern aquatic sciences with expertise from UWM’s College of Engineering & Applied Science, the Department of Economics and the School of Public Health.
Garman sees the school playing a role in economic development, from providing a specialized workforce to helping businesses tap into an exploding market for water solutions.
He spent the last nine years directing the Environmental Biotechnology Cooperative Research Centre in New South Wales, a public-private incubator connecting researchers, engineers and industry officials to stimulate new sustainable technologies. Trained as a chemist, his experience includes projects as diverse as improving safe water services in Bangladesh and remediating eutrophic lakes in China. He also was chairman of a publicly listed water com-pany and owned a water-tech business.
He is busy assembling an international review board for the school and has identified multiple research projects to expand, including those related to Great Lakes genomics, urban aquaculture and new sensors that work in water.
And in five years’ time, Garman projects the school will turn out between 50 and 100 master’s and Ph.D. graduates —including some from water hubs Stockholm and Singapore.
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David Garman, founding dean of the School of Freshwater Sciences, will help boost the school’s global influence.
BUilDing PEaCE from big picture to leverage point
It’s easier to win the war than the peace.
That’s a challenge Rob Ricigliano has made his life’s work. As the director of UWM’s Institute of World Affairs, he combines
experience in war-torn areas from Afghanistan to the Sudan with research, teaching and writing to build a more peaceful world.
A key strategy: “Make sure everyone is rowing in the same direction.” He goes on to use medical analogies as he discusses working in troubled areas—“get an MRI of the region,” make a diagnosis, find a leverage point where intervention can begin to make change, and develop a comprehensive plan customized for the culture and people.
Countries like the U.S., he explains, may have soldiers, aid workers, diplomats, economists, counter-terrorism experts and others separately trying to carry out their organizations’ goals. But because their efforts usually aren’t coordinated, they don’t succeed in building lasting peace.
“It’s a very different mode of thinking and planning than most government and nongovernmental organizations do,” admits Ricigliano.
But some leaders are starting to see the value of integrated approaches.
Ricigliano has done consulting work with the Defense Department, which is open to trying new planning options. Soldiers often become “armed social workers” after the immediate battle is won. That makes the military a strong advocate of integrated operations to stabilize war-torn areas at a lower human and financial cost.
Another key to developing sustainable peace is to admit failures and learn from them.
“We need to plan well but expect some failures. Feedback is essential in the learning process, so we have to be open and honest about setbacks.”
Every conflict-torn area has its ancient hatreds, bad actors and vested interests likely to disrupt the peace process, he says. “But we actually know a lot about building a sustainable peace. We can do it if we plan, think and work together.”
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Rob Ricigliano, director of UwM’s institute of world affairs
Reviews for the Department of Film in UWM’s Peck School of the Arts have been coming in from all over the world—and
they’re raves.
Among the kudos the department received in 2011 is spot No. 20 on The Hollywood Reporter’s list of the world’s 25 best film schools. Six shorts from faculty, students and alumni of the Peck School screened at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
How does a program described as “far from the coastal film capitals” become ranked alongside standout schools from New York to Los Angeles and elite international institutions?
“We’re not a traditional, industry-based program, and we’re not satisfied with repeating what has already been done,” says Rob Yeo, associate professor and department chair.
“From the beginning almost 40 years ago, we realized that the only thing to do was to outsmart the competition and teach innovation.
“Internet-based film distribution has greatly facilitated entry to the world of film festivals and international exhibitions,” he adds. “It also has put our filmmakers’ work as close as your laptop, tablet or smartphone—no matter where you are on the planet.”
The department’s enviable reputation has attracted MFA and BFA applicants from around the world. Current MFA students hail
from Cuba, Costa Rica and the Republic of Georgia, while former students attended UWM from India, Turkey, Japan and South Korea.
“Our goal,” says Yeo, “is to help these students establish film programs like UWM’s in their home countries.”
One MFA graduate was recently hired as an assistant professor at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou City, China. Among her first initiatives: Develop a study abroad program with UWM.
“Partnerships with institutions in Korea and South Africa are also under consideration,” Yeo says.
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Uniting education, engineering research and a Briggs & Stratton factory in Chongqing, China, several UWM alumni have brought Milwaukee—and UWM
students—much closer to Asia.
The alums, all engineering faculty members at Chongqing University, are engaged in joint research with UWM faculty. Chongqing is also the location of a small-engine manufacturing facility operated by Milwaukee-based Briggs that offers the opportunity for a unique student experience in global manufacturing.
The Briggs & Stratton International Co-op, just over a year old, is exactly that. Each year one UWM under-graduate is accepted to the program, which includes coursework, research and part-time employment at Briggs & Stratton—in Milwaukee and in China.
“We have to train our engineers to design, manufacture and sell products that ordinary Chinese people will buy,” says David Yu, interim dean of the UWM Graduate School.
“We also should learn how the engineers in China work in order to collaborate and compete with them. We propose to start this training while the engineers are still in college.”
Ramidu Mirissage (UWM BS Mechanical Engineering, ’11), the program’s first participant, says the co-op offered him a close look at how business is conducted in the most populous country in the world. But in China, he also had the chance to work on the factory floor. The co-op’s second student, mechanical engineering senior David Shea, is currently in Chongqing.
The college is building more links with industry, says Yu, who sees the Briggs partnership as a model for international co-op programs with other companies that have operations here and abroad.
Briggs has had a presence in China since the mid-1980s, and opened the Chongqing plant, a joint venture in which Briggs is the majority owner, in 2005.
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They could have been the “Harley-Davidson biker chicks” of the Iron Age—sans motorcycles. That’s the way archaeologist Bettina Arnold likes to think of the remains she and her team
unearthed in two 2,600-year-old Celtic burial mounds in southwest Germany.
“We found fabulous leather belts in some of the graves of the high-status women, with thousands of tiny bronze staples attached to the leather that would have taken hours to make,” she says of the project, originally funded by the National Geographic Society.
Five hundred years before the Roman Conquest, people in Central Europe had no writing system, so archaeologists must coax information about clothing and appearance from the metal jewelry, weapons and textiles found in burial sites. Because of the acidic soil, no bones remain, Arnold says. But where metal is present, textiles made of linen and wool may be preserved.
To safeguard the fragile hairpins, earrings and clothing fasteners, Arnold and her colleagues encased blocks of earth containing the metal objects in plaster, then put the sealed bundles through a computerized tomography, or CT, scanner.
Images show such fine detail, the archaeologists theorize that some of the items were not just for fashion. The pins that secured a veil to a woman’s head, for example, appear to also symbolize marital status and perhaps motherhood. Other adornment was gender-specific—bracelets worn on the left arm were found in men’s graves, but bracelets worn on both arms were found only in graves of women.
The Central European Celts were trading with people from around the Mediterranean during this time— something the researchers have been able to determine based on imported grave goods.
The highlight of all of this work for Arnold? “It’s being able to put clothes on these people and bring them back to life through costume reconstruction.”
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Bettina arnold, professor of anthropology
Many outsiders view Milwaukee as a Polish-German city, but a growing Latino population is adding a new element to the city’s diverse mix.
The subsequent increase in the number of Latino students fuels a need for new ways of teaching in public schools. To meet this need, UWM’s School of Education (SOE) is partnering with a community organization, the Council for the Spanish Speaking Inc., to recruit and educate teachers for bilingual and dual-language schools—where children learn in Spanish and English.
Wisconsin’s Latino population is 326,000. Tony Báez, president and CEO of the council, says approximately 34 percent of the students in Milwaukee Public Schools speak Spanish as their primary language.
“We need many more Latino teachers, particu-larly at the high school level,” says René Antrop-González, associate professor of curriculum and instruction/second language education at UWM.
The Council for the Spanish Speaking is spearhead-ing an effort to develop dual-language and bilingual school programs, starting on the near South Side.
With support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, a team of SOE faculty members is developing an initiative to recruit and prepare 180 Latino students to teach in dual-language and bilingual schools over the next 10 years. UWM was one of only six univer-sities the foundation selected for a planning grant.
“This project recognizes Milwaukee as an urban center with a rapidly growing Latino population, and UWM’s vital role in preparing teachers for urban schools,” says Antrop-González.
Having teachers better prepared to work in dual- language and bilingual schools would be a benefit not only for those who speak Spanish, says Báez, but for students who come to public schools speaking other languages, too. It can also become a point of pride for the public schools.
“Imagine graduating from a public high school being able to speak two languages. That would certainly open up job opportunities.”
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René antrop-gonzález, associate professor of education (left), and community partner tony Báez
Commercial PotentialCommercial Potential
“Like the rest of the U.S., Milwaukee is struggling
through a stubborn recession. But I am convinced
that the city and region could literally reinvent their
economies through startups—innovative new
companies. Consider this: All net new jobs in the
nation are coming from young companies.
In Milwaukee, entrepreneurship is in our DNA. We
just need to rekindle it. But we can’t do it divided and
we sure can’t do it without new ideas. That’s where
UWM comes in. A huge part of growing new
companies is finding the intellectual capital and
training the workforce. These pages illustrate how
UWM is doing just that.”
—John Torinus
John Torinus
is chairman of Serigraph inc.
He also is founder and
chairman of BizStarts
Milwaukee and was founding
chairman of the UwM
Research Foundation.
With antibiotic resistance outpacing the rate of new drug discovery, how will you recover from your next infection?
UWM microbiologist Ching-Hong Yang has come up with an alternative for fighting infection. Instead of killing the disease-causing bacteria, why not simply disarm them? Yang has developed a compound that turns off the “switch” on a pathogen’s infection machinery. And the compound isn’t just for human use—it’s designed to fight infection in plants, too, piquing the interest of those in agriculture. “I’ve never seen anything that is even close to a commercial application like this,” says John Frieden, a biologist and research and development manager with the Agribusiness Division of Wilbur-Ellis. The company is testing Yang’s compound in crops with an eye toward commercialization. Another company is testing it for human therapeutic uses.
Using the genome of certain plants as a roadmap, Yang’s lab members analyzed the defense pathways to identify all the precursors to infection. Then they used that information to develop a group of small molecules that interrupt one channel in that intricate pathway system.
“These bacteria are very smart,” says Yang. “They grow a narrow appendage that acts as a ‘needle,’ injecting the virulence factors, such as toxins, into the host cell, and suppressing its defense communication.”
Yang’s discovery keeps the pathogen’s “needle” from forming, shutting down infection before it can begin.
He and collaborator Xin Chen, a professor of chemistry at Changzhou University in China, have found the compound equally effective on two virulent bacteria that affect plants and one that attacks humans, causing many hospital-related infections.
But they have reason to believe the compound will work well against far more bacteria, because it targets a component found in the chromosome of many different kinds of disease-causing bacteria. Yang also believes the compound and its derivatives can both offer a broad spectrum of activity and be unique to a specific pathogen—just like antibiotics.
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Ching-Hong Yang, associate professor of biological sciences, has developed a way to treat infection without the worry of antibiotic resistance.
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Combine the fiberoptic, water-monitoring technology developed by chemist Peter Geissinger with a local business that helps industries treat their wastewater, and you
have a sought-after solution that delivers at the speed of light.
This patented work is the latest UWM research to be licensed by a company through the UWM Research Foundation. Milwaukee-based Advanced Chemical Systems Inc. (ACS) sells wastewater pretreatment systems and chemicals to industrial users, and also provides contaminant removal services. The company’s challenge is to obtain real-time, reliable information about the level of particular contaminants in wastewater.
Currently, accurate water analysis has to be completed in an off-site lab. The testing can take weeks. Geissinger developed a water-quality moni-toring system that immediately detects targeted contaminants using sensor information transported through light.
“If this system can be developed economically, everyone’s going to want this for their pretreatment systems,” says ACS President Tom Dougherty. “It could be a game-changer.”
The partners are determined to find out. Dougherty applied for a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant with three different federal agencies.
All three SBIR proposals were well-received, with the winning award backed by the National Science Foundation. “The SBIR grant is a very strong external validation of the work,” Dougherty says.
“Partnering with an established company has been very beneficial because it provided clear focus on specific sensing applications needed by potential customers,” says Geissinger.
He and his postdoctoral researcher, Paul Henning, have brought the system this far with funding from the UWM Research Foundation’s Bradley Catalyst Grant program.
The team hopes to make the equipment more cost-effective and portable so it can be used in the field. Dougherty estimates it will be ready for business use in two to three years.
Sensing in a FlaSH
Peter geissinger, professor of chemistry (left), researcher Paul Henning and tom Dougherty, president of aCS
FiSH farming’s FUtURE
When operators of Bell Aquaculture decided to add yellow perch, the Midwest’s fish-fry favorite, to the company’s product line, they
initially came up empty-handed.
“We went looking for the fingerlings on the market and we couldn’t find them,” says Bell President Norman McCowan. “So we knew early on we would have to partner with someone.”
They chose wisely. In Fred Binkowski, they found an aquaculture specialist who offers perch-raising techniques available nowhere else in the world. Today, Bell Aquaculture runs the nation’s largest yellow perch farm and is in the middle of an expansion of its perch enterprise.
Binkowski has patented a way to get yellow perch, a dwindling species in Lake Michigan, to spawn more often in captivity. His method results in tens of thousands more progeny than the fish would produce in the lake—in the same amount of time.
It means Bell, which also raises bluegill, can raise fingerlings all year.
“The great thing about it is, I can’t get enough of the product to sell,” McCowan says of yellow perch. “I believe the market’s growth will be exponential.”
With Binkowski’s help, collaborative supported research with the UWM Graduate School and a license agreement through the UWM Research Foundation, Bell has developed its own brood stocks, which produce eggs four times a year, rather than just once.
“The significance of Bell is that it’s a venture-backed, large-scale operation using these techniques, rather than a ‘ma-and-pa’ business,” says Binkowski.
The senior scientist in UWM’s School of Freshwater Sciences is becoming the authority on urban aquaculture, especially with yellow perch. He has helped MacArthur Foundation fellow Will Allen integrate the cool-water fish into his greenhouse farming and aquaponics operation, Growing Power.
Other goals of the school’s aquaculture research, supported in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, are to make freshwater fish production sustainable, affordable and healthier.
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The organic contaminants in wastewater that can make people sick and pollute the environment are often the same ones that feed bacteria. A device called a microbial fuel cell (MFC) takes advantage
of this, using bacteria to purify wastewater and harnessing their metabolic energy to generate electricity. An expert on the relatively new MFC technology, engineer Zhen “Jason” He is building on its “double play” capabilities.
He recognized that, while the MFC removes organic waste from water, it doesn’t address nutrients, like the nitrogen and phosphorus often present in urban stormwater runoff. So, He has created an MFC with a third function—nutrient removal.
In the same way that bacteria gorge on the organic matter in wastewater, algae gorge on the nutrients, eliminating them as the wastewater cycles through the MFC.
“Algae are the natural choice to drive this third process,” says He. “When you think of algae blooms in freshwater lakes, those are caused by overload of nutrients, such as fertilizers, in runoff.”
The device also forms the basis of UWM’s third startup company—HydroTech Innovations LLC.
He and business partner Mark Murphy have garnered an early vote of confidence from the National Science Foundation by inclusion in its brand-new program, Innovation Corps (I-Corps).
The program guides promising research into the commercial realm by testing its business-readiness.
The $50,000 funding covers intensive entrepreneurial training, including copious amounts of face-to-face contact with potential customers. He’s I-Corps grant team, which also includes UWM graduate student Kyle Jacobson, currently is building a 50-liter prototype reactor to demonstrate the concept.
Meanwhile, HydroTech Innovations will continue to explore more applications of He’s research that are not already corporately sponsored. The company’s next product will be a greener method of softening water, using enzymes rather than salt.
A ‘tRiPlE-DUty’ fuel cell
Zhen “Jason” He, assistant professor of engineering (right), and Mark Murphy of Hydrotech innovations
Take three small businesses, each developing different high-tech products, and ask them to help improve each others’ bottom lines. It’s a bold brand of research cross-
fertilization that the National Science Foundation (NSF) is betting will pay off. NSF’s Partnership for Innovation Program has recently awarded UWM a grant to support this entrepreneurial collaboration, involving Milwaukee-based Aurora Spectral Technologies LLC (AST), Madison-based NeoClone and PolarOnyx Inc. of San Jose, Calif.
AST, founded by UWM physicist Valerica Raicu and entrepreneur Thomas Mozer, has developed the first tools for determining the internal structure of protein complexes in living cells. The company’s novel two-photon microscope relies on fluorescent tagging of various proteins so they can be tracked as they interact.
“The companies represent three different aspects of laser-scanning microscopy,” says Raicu. “One purpose of the grant is to further develop the two-photon microscopy technology. But, as a group, we also will capitalize on our experiences in order to stimulate other companies and find investors.”
PolarOnyx will focus on modifying its cost-effective fiber-optic lasers so they fit the requirements of laser-scanning microscopy, with the aim of driving down the cost of the equipment. Meanwhile, NeoClone develops fluorescent-labeled antibodies that can be used to tag proteins and will investigate improving the lasers’ detection of the tags. AST will contribute its software and instrument-development capability.
The grant includes consultants who will look for additional companies that could play a role in
building on the discoveries of the original three. The trio’s microscopy technology already has the attention of a Danish company working on methods of identifying rare cancer cells in human blood.
Ultimately, the multiple business relationships will form the basis of a “UWM-Small Businesses Collaboratory,” a place not only for joint research but for other activities that foster new companies.
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The process of creating knowl-edge—where ideas and talent meet—is
UWM’s role as one of only two public research univer-sities in Wisconsin. That makes UWM a necessary ingredient in the recipe for sustainable economic development and social vitality in our region.
UWM scientists and schol-ars are not just generating ideas, but also translating them into practical applica-tion and commercial use, which maximizes their power and impact on the world. Many examples of this can be found in the
growing intellectual-property portfolio of the five-year-old UWM Research Foundation (UWMRF).
In fact, many of the researchers featured in the preceding pages are aligned with UWMRF to bring their innovations to market. Consider some of the UWMRF’s achievements:• 3startupcompaniesformedfrom
UWM research.• 22licenseoroptionagreementswith
companies in our region and throughout the country.
• Morethan100activeintellectual- property matters, half of them patent applications.
• $2.7millioninvestedinresearch seed funding through the Catalyst Grant Program.
How UWM makes ideas
POwERFUl
Written, designed and produced by University Communications & Media Relations.
Photography: UWM Photo Services; Mario R. Lopez (p. 2); courtesy Children’s Hospital and Health System (p. 3); courtesy Brady Corporation (p. 25); courtesy Serigraph Inc. (p. 33).
This publication may be requested in accessible format.
research-impact.uwm.edu