Stories about discoveries, advancements, and forward-thinking ideas from WID’s research areas, hubs, and key collaborators.
Much remains mysterious in the realm of machine learning. The next generation of machine learning algorithms is expected to not only bolster national defense capabilities, but also benefit civilians.
A new paper in Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews describes how the steps of virus reproduction contribute to timing and productivity of cell infection.
Laurent Lessard is working to improve the algorithms and computer software that keep the modern world running smoothly.
Karen Schloss and Laurent Lessard are working on a method for matching colors to people’s expectations to send the right message — starting with the best colors for waste and recycling bins.
WID researcher Shaoqin Sarah Gong is working to more safely deliver a variety of drugs to treat cancer, heart disease and even blindness.
Newly characterized roles for plant histone deacetylases have implications for growth and development. The Zhong Lab explores the influence of the enzymes in both transcription and translation.
WID researchers are engaging in fundamental mathematical and statistical research to support the development, testing, and fine-tuning of tools for the future, finding new ways to make sense of the mountains of data that are available in the 21st century and bringing into view important applications on the horizon.
Error rates as high as 50 percent are a problem when the goal is to correct typos in the DNA that cause genetic disease. Now, a team of researchers led by WID’s Kris Saha has made the fix less mistake-prone.
WID researcher Sushmita Roy and collaborators at UW–Madison and the University of Florida will use a $7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study how some plants partner with bacteria to create usable nitrogen and to transfer this ability to the bioenergy crop poplar.
Karen Schloss talks about the psychology behind color preferences in an interview for Artsy.
Xuehua Zhong recently received an outstanding investigator award from NIH via the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) mechanism to support her research. She talked about how she uses plants to study epigenetics in an interview with Grow magazine.
Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID) researchers Rupa Sridharan and Sushmita Roy are combining their expertise in regenerative biology and computational biology to better understand how cells transition from one type to another through gene regulation.
Machine learning is a form of artificial intelligence by which algorithms are “trained” to analyze new information using existing data. Researchers are using it to identify individuals with a genetic condition known as fragile X premutation.
In a paper in Cell Systems, Sushmita Roy and colleagues develop a probabilistic graphical model-based method, multi-species regulatory network learning that uses a phylogenetic framework to infer regulatory networks in multiple species simultaneously.
WKOW Channel 27 highlights Randolph Ashton’s NSF grant to create blank model for spinal cells.
Kevin Ponto, a Principal Investigator in the Living Environments Lab is partnering with the Dane County Sheriff’s Office on a two-year, federally funded study to measure the effectiveness of virtual reality tools and 3-D-capture technology on crime scene investigations.
WID researchers Stephen Wright and Robert Nowak are part of a UW2020: WARF Discovery Initiative project to create machine learning tools that dramatically reduce the time and cost associated with screening compounds for therapeutic relevance.
Systems Biology researcher Kalin Vetsigian and graduate student Ye Xu recently published findings in Nature’s Scientific Reports about the stochasticity of growth within Streptomycetes spore communities.
WID scientists are combining theory with experiment to try to understand how life could arise from lifelike chemical reactions under the right conditions.
In a paper forthcoming in the journal Cognitive Science, Living Environments Lab professor Karen Schloss and her colleagues investigated whether and why color preferences change according to the season.
Kevin Ponto, PI in the Living Environments Lab, explains virtual reality for Blue Sky Science.
Kris Saha illuminates the inner workings of gene editing.
The podcast “Is DNA the Basis for all Life in the Universe?” produced by The Naked Scientists, an affiliate of the BBC at Cambridge University features John Denu speaking of his recent findings on how the gut microbiome affects DNA expression.
Systems Biology researcher Sushmita Roy is leading an effort putting computational methods to work characterizing the gene regulatory networks responsible for cell differentiation.
