About

From Cells to Societies

We believe the problems society faces in the 21st century don’t come in academic boxes, so why should their solutions?

We’re the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID), a public transdisciplinary research institute and “skunkworks” at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, focusing on the interfaces of computation, laboratory science, the humanities and entrepreneurship.

We search for solutions where others are unlikely to look.

Our values

  1. About_Item-11We promote a unique transdisciplinary culture for faculty, researchers, students and entrepreneurs, encouraging high-energy collisions within our intellectual commons.
  2. About_item-2_ucomm_23662We are inspired by powerful intersections among diverse fields, from behavior and mathematics to genetics, computation and the creative depth of the humanities.
  3. About_item-3_ucomm_1117543We are a place where innovative minds come to explore and where innovative companies come to collaborate.
  4. clang_item_54We value free expression, risk and the great potential for research to be amplified and accelerated through measurement and computation.
  5. Forevertron Image courtesy Kev_Walsh via Flickr5Our culture rewards creative, itinerant minds and draws from the radical aesthetic of the arts. If Ben Franklin and Pablo Picasso were to find a home in a 21st-century institute, we like to think they would join us.
  6. About_Item-66We believe in the spirit of constructive “hacking,” building a community of tech-savvy minds to solve problems through prototypes and trial and error.