This blog gives me the opportunity to occasionally highlight developments on campus that are deserving of attention.

While much attention has been showered on the recent collaboration we announced with Foxconn (which I will address later in this column), an initiative that didn’t receive quite as much coverage was the launch of the Forward BIO collaboration, a collaborative effort to make Wisconsin a recognized center of excellence for biomanufacturing.

This initiative, between campus, a nonprofit lab facility at University Research Park and BioFoward Wisconsin, a group dedicated to creating partnerships between government, higher ed and private industry, will help incubate new start-ups by our faculty and students, providing a space where entrepreneurial ideas in biotechnology can be tested.

We also recently hosted a celebration to mark the start of a $47 million renovation of the Babcock Hall Dairy Plant, as well as a new, three-story addition for the Center for Dairy Research. Funding for the project came from the state of Wisconsin, UW–Madison and donors. Nearly 200 individual and corporate donors — primarily from the state’s cheese and dairy industry — raised over $18 million to support the project.

We have long been deeply involved in working closely with the state cheese and dairy industry to test new ideas and there is space in this building that will only accelerate that collaborative work.

What do these stories have in common?

Each leverages our key long-term strengths at UW– working at the crossroads where multiple disciplines connect, sparking new ideas and building collaborations – not only within the bounds of campus but between the campus and our many partners in industry.