The Latest
New faculty profile: Marc Chevrette explores bacterial conversations happening within host-associated microbiomes
Marc Chevrette joined the UW–Madison faculty and the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery in August 2025 as an assistant professor in the Department of Plant Pathology. His position is part of RISE-EARTH, the sustainability-themed focus area of the university’s Wisconsin RISE Initiative strategic hiring effort to solve grand challenges.
Age in place app gets boost: Kevin Ponto and research team receive $1 million National Science Foundation grant
Audrey Rothermel Bascom Professor of Design Studies Kevin Ponto and a team of fellow researchers have received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to continue developing a new tool that uses augmented reality to help older adults and people with disabilities remain safely in their homes.
Wisconsin Science Festival makes curiosity to go with “Science in a Bag”
The Wisconsin Science Festival (WSF), now in its 15th year, returns Oct. 16-26 with more than 600 events across 56 counties—breaking its previous record of 52 counties. What began in 2011 as a three-day, Madison-only gathering has grown into a 10-day, statewide celebration of science, technology, engineering, art and math for people of all ages, backgrounds, and interests. A centerpiece of this festival is Science in a Bag — an initiative that will deliver 3,000 drawstring backpacks, each filled with ten to twelve hands-on experiments and activities designed to spark curiosity, plus access to an online portal for more ways to engage with STEAM.
CRISPR with a ‘dimmer’ could elevate precision gene editing
“This platform has the potential to ‘dim’ genome editing in a wide variety of contexts,” says WID faculty, Krishanu Saha, “not only inside the body, but outside the body, and also has implications for fundamental studies of how genome editing occurs in cells, in tissues, and in animals.”
