Keep the human brain healthy Learn more

Slide As the average human life span increases, it is essential to ensure a high quality of life by maintaining brain and mind health. To match the advances in prolonging life, WID researchers seek a fundamental understanding of how the human brain and mind function through -omic profiling, tissue engineering, and predictions about health and disease using electronic health records. This understanding may lead to gene editing methods to correct neural problems, drugs to treat currently untreatable diseases, and methods to protect, repair, or regenerate neural tissue. Healthy brains mean better lives. Much of WID's research contributes to the Healthy Brain Grand Challenge.
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WID alumnus awarded first AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship in the U.S. Department of the Treasury WID News WID and Saha Lab alumnus, and current postdoc at the Morgridge Institute for Research, Amritava Das anticipates that he will put his engineering and bioscience training to use exploring the sometimes knotty connections between science, national security, and finance. Continue Reading UW researchers join three national artificial intelligence institutes WID News Institute for Future Edge Networks and Distributed Intelligence (AI-EDGE) led by Robert Nowak, UW–Madison professor of electrical and computer engineering and researchers at Ohio State. Continue Reading Arabidopsis thaliana Molecular Puzzles in 3D: Understanding a Mechanism for Methylation Featured Science A new publication from the Xuehua Zhong’s group at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery and the genetics department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison clarifies an important epigenetic mechanism in plants that will help researchers better understand the epigenomes of both plants and animals. Continue Reading This electron microscope image of the new “scaffolding” for growing and implanting retinal cells shows the ice cube tray-shaped reservoirs that hold cells and cylinder-shaped holes in the bottom layer, which provide channels for maturing photoreceptors to make contact with a patient’s retinal tissue. COURTESY OF THE MA LAB Micro-Molded ‘Ice Cube Tray’ Scaffold is Next Step in Returning Sight to Injured Retinas Featured Science WID's Sarah Gong is part of a team that developed a micro-molded scaffolding photoreceptor "patch" to be implanted under damaged or diseased retinas, the next step in restoring sight. Continue Reading Undergraduate Researcher Helps Fill in the Blanks on Virus Lifecycle Wisconsin Stories Tianyi “Herry” Jin, an undergraduate in John Yin's lab group at WID and the department of chemical and biological engineering, published discoveries about viruses in the journal Integrative Biology. Continue Reading Fixing Genetic Mistakes to Restore Vision Featured Science Shaoqin "Sarah" Gong collaborates on a new approach to target genetic mutations and develop a new therapy for restoring vision in children and adults. Continue Reading

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