Wisconsin State Journal Local News

Archaeology is a discipline with one eye on the past and the other on the future. I engage students in hands-on, high-impact research experiences that take us on expeditions to the eastern fro…

Every weekend from the end of May through October in a state park in Wisconsin, you will find a UW-Madison astronomer hosting a star party, talking about the latest astronomical discovery or s…

What would you ask a Nobel Laureate?

It’s no secret that students today love technology and embrace it in their daily lives, from their ever-present smartphones to popular fitness watches. My passion as a computer scientist is to…

A new catchphrase in education is “data-driven decision making.” We suddenly have more data than we know how to use, and we believe, rightly, that decisions will be better if based on better i…

Discovery is the theme of this special section. As the heart of our great institution, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the College of Letters & Science (L&S) fuels discovery.

Bacteria are some of the simplest, tiniest organisms on Earth. They have short life spans and are, well, small – so their individual impacts on our world are seemingly minimal.

Matter is made of particles: protons and neutrons, electrons and neutrinos. Neutrinos are the most common, but it is likely that your high school teacher never mentioned them.

Imagine that you’ve been dropped into an unfamiliar country. People are speaking all around you. But you don’t recognize the sounds or objects surrounding you. You don’t even hear words; all t…

The civil rights movement insisted that integration and voting rights would be meaningless without measures to ensure that all Americans had access to decent housing, education and jobs that p…

With three children at home, I know firsthand how voices compete to be heard.

Looking back on the story of your own career, what do you wish you would have known during your college years about yourself, your education, or the world of work that awaited you upon graduation?

I magine the ancient southern Wisconsin landscape as a mosaic of prairies, savannas and forests shaped by fertile ground and the rhythms of natural fire.

I honestly cannot remember a time when the weather did not hold my interest. Growing up in eastern Massachusetts, I had a particularly strong interest in snowstorms whose dramatic fury, couple…

My research seeks to understand the effect the Internet has on the choices we make. When I began studying network communication back in 1994, I thought that it would make our world fairer by g…

Russia is blessed, and cursed, with the most fascinating culture on the globe.

I have been fascinated by factors that lead to economic growth across time and countries. These include patterns of schooling, fertility, the diffusions of technology, and socioeconomic policy…

What makes us prosperous, healthy and happy across our lives?

My research takes me to some very difficult spaces: the Holocaust, disability, traumatic memories. What I seek in these spaces is to understand a shred of a valued cultural practice that we fi…

During this past winter break, I worked 12-hour days in one of the last remaining fragments of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. This 2,400-acre protected forest reserve is situated on a coffee planta…