Category: News

News items and stories about department’s faculty, programs, research, students, staff, etc.

Upcoming Biology Colloquia

The Biology Colloquium is a series of lectures hosted jointly by the Botany and Integrative Biology departments. The Spring 2026 Biology Colloquium takes place on Thursdays at 3:30 in Noland Hall, room 168, unless otherwise noted.  

Alumni share research on Yellowstone forest changes with story map

Kirstin Braziunas MS’18, PhD’22, and Nathan Kiel PhD’24, both from the Turner lab created a story map about forest change in a future with more (short-interval) fire, focusing on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the US Northern Rocky Mountains. View story map here.

Zoology Student Studies in Tanzania Over the Summer

Zoology student Daniela Hernandez is a recipient of the UW Global Gateway fellowship. Read more about her study abroad experience this summer in Tanzania. View full article here.

Graduate Student Spotlight: Adrianna Gorsky

For the September edition of our department’s graduate student spotlight. We are highlighting Adrianna Gorsky, a Freshwater and Marine Sciences PhD student. She is a part of the Dugan and Stanley lab. She provides insight on her work and life as a graduate student here. 1. Explain your research so that your grandparent or a …

Hiroshi Maeda wins funding to further study how plants can overspend carbon in photosynthesis

Professor Hiroshi Maeda and Michigan State University researcher Berkley Walker were awarded a $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study how plants compensate when they “overspend” carbon in the process of photosynthesis. Read the full article here:  https://prl.natsci.msu.edu/news-and-events/news/2024-08-nsf-grant-awarded-to-study-what-happens-when-plants-overspend%20.aspx

Students use scholarships for valuable internships

This summer, UW–Madison launched the Summer Internship Scholarship, designed to support students seeking to advance their professional experience and learning with awards of up to $1,500 to supplement unpaid or underpaid internships. View full article here.

Ives selected as Fulbright U.S. Scholar for 2024–2025

Professor Anthony Ives is among the 11 scholars from the University of Wisconsin–Madison selected as Fulbright U.S. Scholars for the 2024–2025 academic year. View full article here.

Award funds Muir lab work to identify genetic and developmental changes during adaptive radiation

Chris Muir, an assistant professor in the Department of Botany, is part of a team that received a three-year $1.3 million award ($352,9997 to UW–Madison) from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The project, Evolutionary and functional genomics of Hawaiian Bidens: determining the genetic basis of phenotypic trait diversification in a rapid adaptive radiation, is in collaboration …

Creating Glass Models of Deep Sea Creatures

Aquatic invertebrates are often difficult to study when they are living, and some can’t even survive outside their deep-ocean habitats. That’s why, 127 years ago, University of Wisconsin biology professor Edward Birge purchased glass models of sea creatures ranging from jellyfish to sea cucumbers from famous German glassblowers Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka, for use in …

Stability relies on dispersal in parasitic relationship between aphids and wasps.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison combined experiments with mathematical modeling to learn that dispersal of organisms involved in parasitic relationships through space can play an important role in balancing the effects of both ecology and evolution on those relationships, such as the one between Aphidius ervi and pea aphids. Read more here: https://news.wisc.edu/stability-relies-on-dispersal-in-parasitic-relationship-between-aphids-and-wasps/