University of Wisconsin-Madison
ADVANCED MATERIALS INDUSTRIAL CONSORTIUM
What is UWAMIC?
The Advanced Materials Industrial Consortium gives commercial partners the opportunity to collaborate with students and faculty in advanced materials research across the UW–Madison campus. The consortium facilitates interaction with university resources through a wide range of paths, including:
- Technology transfer
- Shared instrumentation
- Sponsored research
- Student internships in industry
- Visiting industrial researchers at UW–Madison
- Early industrial access to student and
postdoctoral researcher recruiting - Industrial advisory committee functions
- Consulting
UWAMIC Membership Levels and Benefits
Companies may join UWAMIC at any of three membership levels:
- Full membership
- Regional alliance membership for companies in WI, IL, IA, and MN
- Small business membership
Key member benefits include:
- Opportunities for input into research directions and planning
- Access to prospective student interns
- Invitation to an annual program review of research highlights presented by faculty, researchers, and students
- Access to shared instrumentation in university laboratories
- Collaboration by a visiting industrial fellow in residence in a UW-Madison laboratory. Details of the collaboration and residence period for hosted research may depend on the facility.
Research Programs and Facilities
Member organizations are provided access to shared UW-Madison research facilities at a discount for a time period dependent upon the membership level. Shared research facilities are available at these internationally recognized research and education centers:
- NSF Materials Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) in Nanostructured Materials and Interfaces
- NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC) facilities at the NSF-sponsored Synchrotron Radiation Center (SRC) in Templated Synthesis and Assembly at the Nanoscale
- Additional MRSEC/NSEC shared facilities as appropriate to research goals
- Wisconsin Center for Applied Microelectronics (WCAM)
- Materials Science Center (MSC)
UWAMIC News
Next >>| 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! [FULL ARTICLE] |
| 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. [FULL ARTICLE] |
| 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?" [FULL ARTICLE] |
| 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. [FULL ARTICLE] |
Liquid Crystal Droplets Discovered to be Exquisitely Sensitive to an Important Bacterial Lipid
19 May 2011
| 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." [FULL ARTICLE] |