Research news roundup
PostedAugust 6, 2025
WARF Innovator Profiles: Meet the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Timothy Donohue, Professor of Bacteriology and Director, Great Lake Bioenergy Research Center
Timothy Donohue leverages his expertise on bio-and genome-based conversion of renewable resources into valuable products as director of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, a renewable fuels and chemicals research center that has contributed to over 300 patent applications, 110 licensed technologies and seven startup companies.
Read more about Donohue’s research in WARF’s profile story.
New design framework makes it easier to create custom shock-absorbing materials
University of Wisconsin-Madison mechanical engineers have developed a comprehensive framework that accelerates improvements to shock-absorbing foam materials.
The materials have an array of uses ranging from sports or military helmet liners to struts that cushion a spacecraft landing.
“We’ve developed a novel design framework to help designers create a shock-absorbing material of a specific geometry that does exactly what they want it to do without adding weight or extra volume,” says Ramathasan Thevamaran, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at UW-Madison who led the research. “It allows designers to customize the material for the best performance, tailored to diverse applications, without going through lots of experimental trial and error.”
The advance also opens a new perspective on how to approach the design of protective materials by challenging conventional wisdom.
Read the full story.
UW-Madison researchers expose how automation apps can spy—and how to detect it
A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers and computer scientists has identified vulnerabilities in popular automation apps that can make it easy for an abuser to stalk individuals, track their cellphone activity, or even control their devices with little risk of detection.
After designing an AI algorithm to identify hundreds of automation sequences that could be used maliciously, the researchers are now developing an online service to find this covert abuse on digital devices.
Read the full story.
WIPAC at ICRC 2025
The 39th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC), the largest conference in the world for cosmic ray physics, was held on July 14-July 24 at the Geneva International Conference Center in Geneva, Switzerland.
The main topics covered included cosmic-ray physics, gamma-ray astronomy, neutrino astronomy and neutrino physics, dark matter physics, solar and heliospheric physics, multimessenger astronomy, and gravitational wave astronomy.
This year, WIPAC had a strong presence, with seven talks and and six posters that covered new results and future developments for the neutrino observatories ARA and IceCube; the gamma-ray detectors HAWC, CTAO, and the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT); and outreach projects such as DECO.
Read more.
Ask an expert: Li explains autonomous vehicle advances
Xiaopeng Li is a leader in connected and autonomous vehicle research. Li, the Harvey D. Spangler Professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studies how emerging technologies will influence the development of smart vehicles that communicate with other vehicles and equipment, or operate on their own. He leads the Connected and Autonomous Transportations Systems Laboratory, the Smart Highway Research Center, and has led or worked with multiple center-level research grants on emerging transportation technologies.
In this interview, Li discusses connected and autonomous vehicles, how they function, and both challenges and bright spots for their continued development.
Read the full story.
Moldable, flexible sensor is a versatile option for detecting irregularities in everything from manufacturing to mobility
After setting out to create a flexible sensor that could aid his advisors’ examination of the mechanical forces behind traumatic brain injury, Sinan Candan hit a roadblock.
While economical and useful, the sensor he’d developed wasn’t the right fit: It couldn’t provide the granular level of sensitivity and precision for characterizing brain material.
Candan, a PhD student in mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, showed his sensor’s data to his advisors, Professor Christian Franck and Associate Professor Jacob Notbohm. And the three researchers observed that, while the sensor might not be capable of tracking impacts on brain material, it was still effective for detecting periodic forces—the sort that might be relevant in structural health monitoring, underwater robotics or human health screening.
“We diverted a bit and found a really interesting set of applications,” says Candan (MSBME ’23), who came to UW-Madison from Turkey as a Fulbright Scholar.
The sensor could help detect irregularities in manufacturing equipment, report biomechanical data about a user’s walking gait, or even monitor vocal vibrations of someone recovering from an injury.
The researchers detailed their sensor in a paper in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies.
Read the full story.
Meet ARTEMIS: The new AI helping researchers reconstruct the hidden stories of cell development
Building a complete developmental trajectory of cells is close to impossible with today’s technology, but new technology developed at the Waisman Center is taking scientists a step closer to achieving it. Machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, can step in to help fill in the gaps.
The lab of Waisman investigator Daifeng Wang, PhD, associate professor of biostatistics and medical informatics, built a new machine learning algorithm that is able to extrapolate continuous changes in cell populations over time to give researchers deeper insight into cellular processes. The algorithm may enable a more nuanced understanding of cellular development possibly revealing how conditions like intellectual and developmental disabilities impact cells and brain development at the molecular level.
Read the full story.
UW–Madison virologists are at the forefront of efforts to keep tabs on avian influenza in dairy milk
Researchers at UW–Madison are working to answer important questions about the risks that avian influenza poses public health and food-safety.
Read the full story.
The Sky’s the Limit: Autistic youth explore science on their terms at STEM camp
Only three summer camps in the country give neurodivergent youth free access to science summer camps with programming tailored to their learning needs, and they’re all in Wisconsin. Since 2022, these camps have relied on federal funding to give neurodiverse learners a place to learn, make new friends and move past barriers that often prevent them from engaging in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).
While autistic students often have a higher interest in STEM fields than neurotypical students, systemic barriers prevent many of them from pursuing STEM degrees or careers. At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Michael Notaro saw an opportunity to fix that disparity by providing welcoming, sensory friendly learning environments where neurodivergent youth can thrive.
These camps are so special that Notaro — who directs the Center for Climatic Research in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies — was invited to speak at the United Nations General Assembly in 2024, sharing expertise and exploring options to expand such camps worldwide.
Now, due to changes in federal funding priorities and cuts to funding from the National Science Foundation, this is likely the last summer for the camps — The Sky’s the Limit STEM Camp in Beloit, Nature’s Navigators STEM Camp in the Wisconsin Dells and Zoo Explorers Sensory-Friendly Camp in Madison.
Read the full story.
How cells rust to death with age
By studying mouse models, scientists at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health have discovered how inflammation makes genetic instructions in muscle stem cells, or MuSCs, unreadable. DNA should tell the body how to regulate iron, so without those regulations, cells rust to death in a process called ferroptosis.
Iron is needed to make hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout the body. It is also vital to a functioning immune system and repairing muscle tissue. The study, published in Nature Aging, has implications for understanding and potentially treating sarcopenia, which is the age-related loss of muscle mass and strength in humans.
Read the full story.
New probing technique maps properties in quantum materials
University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have developed a new technique to map the quantum phase diagram in a promising class of quantum materials called Weyl semimetals by tracking “hotspots” in an unusual quantum phenomenon called the nonlinear Hall effect.
The technique, based on a unique quantum geometry signature, enables scientists to identify phase transitions in topological materials and determine whether these transitions are linked to deeper changes in the material’s topological properties. This insight could accelerate the discovery of exotic quantum phases and help identify materials with optimal electronic characteristics for building next-generation low-power, high-efficiency electronics and optoelectronic devices.
The research, led by Ying Wang, an assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering at UW-Madison, appeared July 10, 2025, in the journal Nature Communications. Daniel Rhodes and Jun Xiao, assistant professors in materials science and engineering at UW-Madison, collaborated on the research.
Read the full story.
Robotic space rovers keep getting stuck. UW engineers have figured out why.
Using computer simulations, University of Wisconsin–Madison mechanical engineers have uncovered a flaw in how rovers are tested on Earth. That error leads to overly optimistic conclusions about how rovers will behave once they’re deployed on extraterrestrial missions.
An important element in preparing for these missions is an accurate understanding of how a rover will traverse extraterrestrial surfaces in low gravity to prevent it from getting stuck in soft terrain or rocky areas.
On the moon, the gravitational pull is six times weaker than on Earth. For decades, researchers testing rovers have accounted for that difference in gravity by creating a prototype that is a sixth of the mass of the actual rover. They test these lightweight rovers in deserts, observing how it moves across sand to gain insights into how it would perform on the moon.
It turns out, however, that this standard testing approach overlooked a seemingly inconsequential detail: the pull of Earth’s gravity on the desert sand.
Read the full story.
