Campus research news round up
PostedApril 7, 2026
Christian Capitini named director of the UW Carbone Cancer Center
Dr. Christian Capitini, a national expert in the treatment and research of childhood cancers, has been named the next director of the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center. He will assume the role of Carbone Cancer Center director on April 19.
Capitini joined the school’s faculty in 2011 and currently serves as professor and chief of the Division of Hematology, Oncology, Transplant & Cellular Therapy in the Department of Pediatrics at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. Capitini is also a pediatric hematologist and oncologist with UW Health Kids at the American Family Children’s Hospital. Since December 2024, he has served as the acting director of the Carbone Cancer Center.
Capitini’s research focuses on stem cell transplant and personalized cellular therapies, a kind of immunotherapy that helps the body’s own immune system recognize and fight cancer. He trained at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, the University of Minnesota, Johns Hopkins University and the National Cancer Institute.
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AAMC Dashboard to monitor NIH funding activity
The AAMC has developed a new data dashboard to help the academic medicine community track National Institutes of Health (NIH) extramural funding activity during fiscal year (FY) 2026 by using publicly available NIH data.
The AAMC dashboard tracks multiple indicators, including total awards, funding obligated, research training grants issued, and the use of multiyear funding. It will be updated regularly to provide timely insights into NIH funding trends. The AAMC has also published a data brief that provides an analysis of emerging funding patterns in FY 2026. Additional data briefs will be published throughout the year to highlight insights from the data dashboard.
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LSC Researchers Study User Experience and Public Perceptions of AI in Recent Publications
From evaluating public trust in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to highlighting its potential equity implications, researchers in the Department of Life Sciences Communication (LSC) are paving the way for research at the intersection of AI and science communication.
By examining how people interact with AI and the effects the technology has at the individual and societal levels more broadly, LSC’s AI research focuses on producing data that can inform regulatory practice surrounding large language models (LLMs), while also assessing how humans encounter AI in their day-to-day lives. Many LSC projects have focused on AI in communication contexts over the last two years (see this international study, and this one on public opinion in the USA for instance), below we present some of the most recent ones.
Anqi Shao, a 2025 PhD graduate in the LSC Department (advised by Professor Dietram Scheufele), recently focused on AI hallucinations for her dissertation research.
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Ancient Antarctic ice cycles impacted ocean productivity thousands of miles away:UW–Madison study links Antarctic ice sheet growth and decay to a 40,000-year rhythm in subtropical marine productivity.
By Will Cushman
Cycles in the growth and decay of Antarctica’s ice sheets once shaped marine biological productivity thousands of miles away in the subtropical ocean, according to new research led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The study, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the obliquity cycle — a 40,000-year astronomical cycle tied to changes in Earth’s axial tilt — influenced ocean productivity in subtropical latitudes about 34 million years ago, when the Antarctic ice sheet was first expanding.
The finding surprised researchers because the 40,000-year cycle, while an important factor in the conditions at Earth’s poles, typically has a more limited influence on climate and ocean conditions near the equator.
“We generally expect other astronomical cycles to have a greater influence,” says Stephen Meyers, a professor of geoscience at UW–Madison and one of the study’s lead authors.
New vaccine strategy could help extend immunity against evolving viruses
UW–Madison research identifies a way to program longer-lasting T cells, a potential step toward broader, more durable protection against infections like the flu and COVID-19.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine have identified a possible way to make longer lasting vaccines for respiratory viruses like influenza and the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
The work, published March 25 in in the journal Cell Reports, focuses on T cells, a type of immune cell that helps control infections by killing virus-infected cells. Unlike antibodies — the basis of most current vaccines, which can lose effectiveness as viruses mutate — T cells recognize more stable parts of viruses, offering a path to broader protection.
A problem with designing vaccines around T cells, though, is their relatively short lifespan. The new research sheds light on a surprising potential workaround.
“We have discovered essentially a mechanism which we can target — a new clue to generating long-lived T cells,” says M. Suresh, a professor in the Department of Pathobiological Sciences who led the study.
Center for Healthy Minds Researchers Use AI and 7.5M Screenshots to Understand Suicide Risk: Latest findings in first-of-its-kind study show nighttime smartphone behavior can be an indicator of suicidal thoughts.
Every 43 seconds, someone loses a person who matters — a friend, a family member, a co-worker — to suicide. Victims of suicide in the U.S. often see a primary care or mental health service provider within the year before their death.
Are providers reaching people too late or not at the right moment? Statistics make it clear that those at risk for suicide urgently need health care practitioners to think about risk and prevention in new ways, beyond the constraints of a typical health care setting, and especially at times when people are most vulnerable.
A new study from researchers at the Center for Healthy Minds, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, sheds light on some new ways to understand suicide risk in adults.
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Did You Know? CHM Studies Use Specialized MRI Machine to Advance Brain Research: The ‘MAGNUS’ is housed at UW’s Waisman Center and is just one of six in the world used for research.
University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers, including experts from the Center for Healthy Minds (CHM), are conducting detailed brain imaging work using one of the first head-only, highly specialized MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanners in the world.
Researchers’ advantage comes from access to a powerful MRI scanner called the “SIGNA MAGNUS” (Microstructure Anatomy Gradient for Neuroimaging with Ultrafast Scanning). It’s capable of efficiently capturing precise, high-resolution images of the human brain, which can help detect abnormalities that traditional MRI machines may miss.
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How Food Delivery Apps Are Reshaping Mealtime—And Our Habits:Assistant professor Yash Babar shares insights from his latest study
Nothing drains the spirit quite like coming home after a long day and having to decide what’s for dinner. The rise of online food delivery apps like Grubhub, Uber Eats and DoorDash seemingly solved that problem overnight, replacing the mental load of meal prep with a city’s worth of restaurants a single click away.
WSB’s Yash Babar
For Yash Babar, this isn’t just about convenience, it’s about behavioral change. The John and Anne Oros Term Professor and an assistant professor of operations and information management at the Wisconsin School of Business is an expert on the sharing economy, examining how digital interventions reshape our daily identities and habits. His research spans everything from electric vehicle charging stations and ride-hailing to digital storefronts.
His latest study examines potential impacts food delivery services may have on our habits and health.
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New CHM Study to Examine How to Improve Effectiveness of Digital Wellbeing Apps
Last year, over 1 billion people were living with mental health conditions, according to the World Health Organization. At the same time, digital solutions for wellbeing were also prevalent. In fact, the top mindfulness app was downloaded globally over 100 million times by the end of 2025.
Now, as countless people continue to struggle with mental health and more turn to these digital resources, are there ways to improve digital wellbeing tools for improving individuals’ mental health?
A new study launched by a team of researchers at Center for Healthy Minds seeks to understand how mental health digital apps could become more effective in order to decrease the public health burden of mental illness.
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Reframing Wellbeing Through the Lens of Indigenous Filipino Psychology
Have you heard of the Usap Tayo study? The Center for Healthy Minds (CHM) community and guests learned about this collaborative study with CHM researchers and community partners during a talk held at the Center in Madison, WI, in December 2025.
Community partners from global non-profit FilExcellence, which fosters connections and promotes advocacy for the global Filipino community, included Matthew Veland, treasurer and director of development, and Chelsea Blake, director of partnerships.
Chelsea and Matthew presented about the practice of kuwentuhan, where community members co-generate knowledge and mutual understanding around specific topics (culture, politics, lived experiences, etc.) through storytelling. They gave the historical background of the kuwentuhan practice and its place within indigenous Filipino psychology, as well as demonstrating how they use it in the Usap Tayo study to meaningfully engage with Filipino community members across all ages and backgrounds.
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The Crystal Ball Paradox: How better AI could actually hurt the insurance industry
By Wisconsin School of Business
Insurance firms are leveraging artificial intelligence, and some envision a world in which they can predict exactly when and where a loss will occur . But as Professor Justin Sydnor points out in a recent interview with AM Best, the boundary between improving and eroding risk protection is a dangerous one to cross.
Sydnor, the American Family Insurance Distinguished Chair in Risk Management and Insurance, suggests insurance relies on a simple shared promise.
“[Insurance] works because both the insurer and the individual face a moment of uncertainty of real risk ahead of time. They don’t know for sure who’s going to be hit,” he tells AM Best, a global credit rating agency and news publisher specializing in the insurance industry.
However, better prediction modeling with AI puts that shared moment of uncertainty at risk. Sydnor likens it to using a crystal ball to predict the future.
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Building Research Leaders: A New Model for Empowering Undergraduates to Strengthen Research Teams: UW–Madison’s Center for Research on Complex Thinking Boosts Research Capacity, Student Skills
At the Center for Research on Complex Thinking (CRCT) in UW–Madison’s School of Education, undergraduates routinely perform at a graduate-student level and help train faculty and researchers from around the world, said Brendan Eagan, CRCT’s associate director of research, in a recent presentation.
That outcome is no accident. Eagan described it as the product of a deliberate, distributed leadership model that treats undergraduates as collaborators, mentors, and culture-shapers, rather than just assistants.
His talk, titled “Fostering Distributed Leadership: A Model for Undergraduate Success in Research,” offered campus colleagues a detailed look at how CRCT builds and sustains this model, and how other research teams can adapt it. Undergraduate Michelle Bandiera also shared her ongoing experience as a senior research intern at CRCT, describing several practices that sustain the model.
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UW–Madison research reveals experiences of HMoob (Hmong) undergraduates across Universities of Wisconsin: New report covers trends in enrollment, belonging, financial need, edentity
By Karen Rivedal, Office of Research & Scholarship
An updated statistical portrait of HMoob (Hmong)* American undergraduates enrolled in the 13 campuses of the Universities of Wisconsin reveals a college experience marked by unique challenges and opportunities. These enrollees, compared to their peers, are less wealthy and less likely to report having a disability. They are also twice as likely to be the first in their family to attend college, at two-thirds of HMoob first-year students compared with one-third for the same category in the general student population.
“These statistics showcase the diversity found within the HMoob student population,” said Bailey Smolarek, co-principal investigator, along with fellow researcher Matthew Wolfgram, of the study, which is funded by a $2.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation and based at the School of Education’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) at UW–Madison. “The findings highlight the social and educational needs of this group and demonstrate the importance of examining the enrollment and demographic trends of historically underrepresented populations.”
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New National Project Aims to Strengthen Career-Related Mentoring Conversations: UW–Madison’s CIMER contributes mentorship expertise to new push for evidence-based resources
By Karen Rivedal, Office of Research & Scholarship
A new collaborative project is bringing together the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER) at UW–Madison and the national nonprofit Professional Development Hub (pd|hub) to improve how career‑related mentoring happens in biomedical research environments. The project is funded by a five-year grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health. CIMER’s sub-award for its role is nearly 23% of the overall grant, or $609,043 of the $2,701,865 award.
The initiative responds to a well‑documented challenge: many graduate students and postdoctoral researchers struggle with career planning, yet research advisors — who are often their primary source of guidance — frequently feel unprepared to support these conversations. Many mentees, in turn, can feel uncomfortable initiating discussions due to power dynamics or uncertainty about what to ask.
In response, the project is developing a new set of evidence‑based curricula, tools, and resources to help mentors and mentees engage in productive, inclusive discussions about career development. These materials will address a full range of career stages that early‑career scientists move through, from exploring options to making decisions to navigating transitions. While many institutions offer workshops or career centers, the project proposal notes there is still a “dearth of resources for how to navigate career‑related mentoring conversations” within research groups.
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A Closer Look at How and Why College Advising Works — At Scale: UW–Madison study elicits new evidence showing benefits of professional advisors, manageable caseloads, in-person support
By Karen Rivedal, Office of Research & Scholarship
A recent working paper co-authored by UW–Madison School of Education assistant professor Taylor Odle and PhD student Isabel McMullen offers some of the strongest evidence to date on when and why college advising programs for high school students are successful at scale.
Their study, When and Why Does College Advising ‘Work’: Evidence from Advise TN, examines Advise TN, a statewide and state-funded initiative that, since 2017, has placed full‑time, professional college advisors in high schools across Tennessee, serving more than 47,000 students in nearly 50 high schools over multiple graduating cohorts. Findings from the study offer new, causal evidence on the effectiveness of large advising programs and provide actionable insights for policymakers from other states or schools interested in developing similar initiatives.
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New Research Reveals Whether AI Can Judge Teaching as Well as People: Findings show machine learning excels at analyzing classroom talk, falters on context
By Karen Rivedal, Office of Research & Scholarship
A new study co-authored by UW–Madison School of Education faculty member Courtney Bell explores whether artificial intelligence (AI) can help assess teaching quality using real classroom data and do it as well or even better than traditional human ratings, which can be time-consuming, expensive and inconsistent.
The international team of researchers used a type of AI model known as machine learning to analyze data from 92 math lessons on quadratic equations that were video-recorded in German schools. The participants included 46 teachers serving 1,132 middle school students, who also took achievement tests before and after the lessons.
The team’s goal was to see whether machine learning could produce reliable and meaningful scores on 18 widely used indicators of teaching effectiveness, including classroom management, student support, instructional clarity, discourse, and cognitive engagement. The study findings highlight both the promise and limitations of automated approaches to assessing teaching.
In an era of increased political polarization, innovative approaches to bringing diverse voices together may offer ways for communities to rebuild trust and increase civic dialogue.
Polarization has far-reaching consequences. As Americans increasingly distrust those with different political views, polarization can erode trust, narrow social connections, and discourage everyday civic conversation. Public meetings can become tense or unproductive, discouraging both residents and public officials from participating. Over time, this dynamic creates a reinforcing cycle that weakens civic dialogue and makes effective public leadership more difficult.
Read more news fro UW Extension.
Broadband Expansion in Wisconsin: Case Studies
