University of Wisconsin-Madison
ADVANCED MATERIALS INDUSTRIAL CONSORTIUM
What is UWAMIC?
The Advanced Materials Industrial Consortium gives commercial partners
the opportunity to collaborate with students and faculty in advanced materials research
across the UW–Madison campus.
The consortium facilitates interaction with university resources through a wide range of paths, including:
- Technology transfer
- Shared instrumentation
- Sponsored research
- Student internships in industry
- Visiting industrial researchers at UW–Madison
- Early industrial access to student and
postdoctoral researcher recruiting
- Industrial advisory committee functions
- Consulting
UWAMIC Membership Levels and Benefits
Companies may join UWAMIC at any of three membership levels:
- Full membership
- Regional alliance membership for companies in WI, IL, IA, and MN
- Small business membership
Key member benefits include:
- Opportunities for input into research directions and planning
- Access to prospective student interns
- Invitation to an annual program review of research highlights presented by faculty, researchers, and students
- Access to shared instrumentation in university laboratories
- Collaboration by a visiting industrial fellow in residence in a UW-Madison laboratory. Details of the collaboration and residence period for hosted research may depend on the facility.
Research Programs and Facilities
Member organizations are provided access to shared UW-Madison research facilities at a discount for a time period dependent upon the membership level. Shared research facilities are available at these internationally recognized research and education centers:
UWAMIC News
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In a presentation today (Aug. 19) to the American Chemical Society meeting, Ankit Agarwal, a postdoctoral researcher working with Professor Nicholas Abbott at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, described an experimental approach to wound healing that could take advantage of silver’s antibacterial properties, while sidestepping the damage silver can cause to cells needed for healing.
Silver is widely used to prevent bacterial contamination in wound dressings, says Agarwal, “but these dressings deliver a very large load of silver, and that can kill a lot of cells in the wound.”
Wound healing is a particular problem in diabetes, where poor blood supply that inhibits healing can require amputations, and also in burn wards. Agarwal says some burn surgeons avoid silver dressings despite their constant concern with infection.
Using a new approach, Agarwal has crafted an ultra-thin material carrying a precise dose of silver. One square inch contains just 0.4 percent of the silver that is found in the silver-treated antibacterial bandages now used in medicine.
[FULL ARTICLE]
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In a presentation today (Aug. 19) to the American Chemical Society meeting, Ankit Agarwal, a postdoctoral researcher working with Professor Nicholas Abbott at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, described an experimental approach to wound healing that could take advantage of silver’s antibacterial properties, while sidestepping the damage silver can cause to cells needed for healing.
Silver is widely used to prevent bacterial contamination in wound dressings, says Agarwal, “but these dressings deliver a very large load of silver, and that can kill a lot of cells in the wound.”
Wound healing is a particular problem in diabetes, where poor blood supply that inhibits healing can require amputations, and also in burn wards. Agarwal says some burn surgeons avoid silver dressings despite their constant concern with infection.
Using a new approach, Agarwal has crafted an ultra-thin material carrying a precise dose of silver. One square inch contains just 0.4 percent of the silver that is found in the silver-treated antibacterial bandages now used in medicine.
[FULL ARTICLE]
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An August 12 story, "Revealing the factors behind liver disease," in Highlights in Chemical Biology, quoted Biomedical Engineering Assistant Professor Bill Murphy. The story highlights University of California, San Diego, researchers' recent development of an array to test the conditions that lead to liver damage. In the story, Murphy calls the work an elegant example of the potential of array-based strategies in biology and medicine. "Emerging approaches like this may ultimately lead to a more advanced understanding of natural microenvironments, as well as identification of new microenvironments that elicit specific cell behaviors, such as tissue regeneration." he said.
[FULL ARTICLE]
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Chemical and Biological Engineering Professor Mike Graham was quoted in the July 13 issue of Physical Review Focus. Graham commented on research regarding fluid jets by a team of Australian researchers. Fluid jets are normally made by forcing liquid through a nozzle, such as in a squirt gun or a syringe. But in the July 10 issue of Physical Review Letters, researchers reported a way to induce a fluid jet to burst from an isolated droplet. The team placed a liquid droplet on a surface and blasted it with focused surface acoustic waves--nano-sized versions of the ground-shaking waves from earthquakes--causing the droplet to shoot upward in a narrow stream. The researchers believe the technique could be useful in drug delivery, biomedical research, and inkjet printing. This work is an "interesting approach to manipulating fluids on small scales that hasn't seen a lot of investigation in the past," said Graham.
[FULL ARTICLE]
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With the help of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and molecular engineering, researchers have designed synthetic protein-like mimics convincing enough to interrupt unwanted biological conversations between cells.
Interactions between proteins are fundamental to many biological processes, including some less-than-desirable ones like infections and tumor growth. For example, HIV and several other human viruses — including influenza, Ebola and the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus — rely on interactions both among their own proteins and with host cell proteins to infect the cells.
"There's a lot of information transfer that occurs when proteins come together, and one would often like to block that information flow," says Samuel Gellman, a chemistry professor at UW-Madison.
[FULL ARTICLE]
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