2026 Recipients: Igniting Interdisciplinary Innovation (I³) initiative | Research | UW–Madison Skip to main content
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2026 Recipients: Igniting Interdisciplinary Innovation (I³) initiative

Read the story about the 2026 recipients of the Igniting Interdisciplinary Innovation initiative.

Learn more about the initiative and the selection process.

Seventeen Interdisciplinary teams were awarded Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) supported grants in the inaugural (I³) year.

Here are the teams and their projects.

 

A Machine Learning Prediction Model of Weather Extremes for U.S. Agricultural Industry

Bringing the AlloyBot Self-Driving Laboratory to Life: Integrating Lab Automation, Computation and AI, and Developing Tungsten Alloys for Fusion Energy 100X Faster

Building the Badger Caregiving Clinic: An Innovation in Care Science, Practice, and Student Training

CULTIVATE: Transforming Scientific Systems by Cultivating Virtue Ethics in Scientists

Driftless Star: Transforming Stellarator Design for Fusion Energy

Establishing UW-Madison as a leader on human exposure to PFAS

From AI Innovation to Clinical Impact: Closing the Gap for Reliable AI-based Disease Screening PI: Irene Ong, Associate Professor

Harnessing the rumen to mitigate PFAS exposure and improve herd and human health

Immune and Metabolic Drivers of Brain Aging and Alzheimer's: New Opportunities for AI-Guided Therapeutics

Insuring Disaster: Developing High-Resolution Models of the Economic Consequences of Disasters to Improve Insurance Pricing

Intelligent Biomanufacturing: Achieving Broad Access to Cell Therapy via Gene Editing and AI

Juno: Contactless Detection of Life-Threatening Cardiorespiratory Events Across the Human Lifespan — and Towards Exposome Sensing

Launching a visionary Critical Minerals Working Group at UW–Madison

Overcoming Immune Barriers to Pluripotent Stem Cell-based Cardiac Regeneration

Preserving Skeletal Muscle, Vascular, and Psychosocial Health in the GLP-1/GIP Pharmacotherapy Era (PRESERVE-GLP Lifestyle Trial)

Scalable manufacturing and proximity labeling-enabled proteomic analysis of single-rosette human neural organoids

STRIKE (Selective Tumor-Reactive Immune Killer Effectors): Precision Immune Ordnance for Tumor Eradication