Dear alumni & friends,
Greetings from Madison, where colder temperatures have officially settled in and our faculty, staff and students are winding up another fall semester before taking a brief reprieve during winter break.
As we close out the year, I want to share an update on exciting developments in the Letters & Science research enterprise. We have been and continue to be a research powerhouse — our faculty, staff and students do remarkable work, and L&S generates nearly $130 million in externally funded research every year.
With that said, we are at a moment that demands a shift in our approach. Driven in part by shifting priorities of federal funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes for Health, we must see to it that our scholarship — our deep commitment to advancing knowledge — has a powerful impact locally and across the state, nation and world. We also recognize that advancing knowledge to help address the most challenging problems facing us requires new approaches to research. Therefore, we must focus our efforts on building deep and meaningful collaborations and partnerships not just with other scholars across L&S and the University, but also in industry and our communities.
Collaboration between public and private industries forms a central component of this new approach, and L&S researchers are quickly adapting to this new environment. For UW–Madison, industry-sponsored research expenditures increased 28% from 2021 to 2022, and our overall ranking moved up six spots during that time. This is terrific progress, and we are already laying the foundation for more industry partnerships in the years ahead.
As just one example, amongst our most prominent collaborators is Mark Saffman, the Johannes Rydberg Professor of Physics and director of The Wisconsin Quantum Institute, who has joined the Chicago Quantum Exchange collaboration. He also helps lead Q-NEXT, a Department of Energy-funded project centered on advancing quantum computing discoveries.
Saffman’s work with the Chicago Quantum Exchange has ambitious goals: to advance quantum computing breakthroughs that will impact everything from medical imaging and technology to developing more secure methods for processing and sharing information. Importantly, Saffman and the Exchange are also tasked with fostering an environment that will engage private industries, support startups and help power the 21st-century careers that will leverage these new technologies. This is a powerful example of how curiosity-driven research, in this case the desire to understand the fundamental nature of physics, can and should lead to a remarkable impact on society.
Of course, L&S has always prioritized the concept that the research we pursue here in Madison should support communities throughout the state and the nation. That’s what the Wisconsin Idea is all about. And in so many ways our evolving approach to research today is a deep recommitment to the Wisconsin Idea. That idea, born right here in Letters & Science, has guided our teaching and research endeavors for more than a century. It is why we are so well positioned to navigate this sea change in the funding landscape and to set the standard for how these types of research collaborations can succeed.
L&S is prepared to meet these challenges because of the incredible support of our alumni and friends. Your gifts to the L&S Annual Fund allow us to continue our pursuit of research and teaching excellence by providing critical funds that support our faculty, staff and students.
Thank you for your continued support of L&S, and On, Wisconsin!
Eric M. Wilcots, Dean
Mary C. Jacoby Professor of Astronomy
College of Letters & Science
University of Wisconsin-Madison