Latest news with #UWM
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Statistics don't support UW-Milwaukee shuttering materials engineering program
Everything is made from something. The materials we use are so important that entire eras of human history are named for them: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age. The knowledge of how to make, process, and use these materials is fundamental to any form of society. A society that fails to pass this knowledge on to new generations will not survive or prosper. That's why it was disappointing to hear outgoing UWM Chancellor Mark Mone double down on the proposed closure of UWM's award-winning Materials Engineering program. This program provides students with life-changing opportunities for high-paying careers in an in-demand field. It's also critical for our region's manufacturing industry and national defense. Mone pointed to the relatively small size of the Materials Engineering program. He would be hard-pressed to find a school of engineering anywhere in the country in which materials engineering is not the smallest department in terms of number of students. Materials engineering programs typically have dozens of students, not hundreds. To put this into perspective, however, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts an average of just 10 job openings per year for neurologists in Wisconsin. Hopefully, no one would suggest that UW-Madison should stop training neurology residents, since most of us recognize that medical specialists are essential to the kind of society we want to have. Materials engineers are no less essential, but since we work behind the scenes, many people are unaware of the critical role we play. In fact, our work goes into every single manufactured item you see around you, from nuts and bolts to airplanes, and everything in between. Letters: Lack of state support, Republicans are to blame for UWM's budget constraints Chancellor Mone suggested redirecting resources towards UWM's Computer Science program. However, unemployment among computer science graduates is currently 6.1% — nearly 1.5 times the overall national average. While computer science is undoubtedly an important field, increasing the present oversupply of computer science graduates will not benefit students or Wisconsin's economy. Materials engineering graduates, in contrast, have an unemployment rate of just 1.85%, and Wisconsin manufacturers are struggling to fill materials engineering positions as the current generation retires. This critical shortage is why the Department of Defense created the METAL (Metallurgical Engineering Trades Apprenticeship & Learning) program, an initiative focused on rebuilding the materials engineering workforce. Given Wisconsin's position as the number one state for metal casting employment, the Defense Department has identified Milwaukee as a target location for a new $1.5 million METAL hub. Opinion: We asked readers about wake boats on Wisconsin lakes. Here's what you said. Funding from this initiative could be a tremendous catalyst to strengthen and grow UWM's Materials Engineering program. This would be a rare win-win-win-win situation: for UWM, for students, for industry, and for national defense. In order to qualify for this funding, however, UWM needs to continue to have a Materials Engineering program. UWM's incoming chancellor, Thomas Gibson, successfully worked with industry in his previous role to ensure UW-Stevens Point's offerings were aligned with workforce needs. Let's hope he brings that perspective to his new role at UWM. Outgoing Chancellor Mone has handed him an awesome opportunity to show that he is a different kind of leader who will take UWM in a new direction. By saving the UWM Materials Engineering program, the new chancellor has a chance to create a tremendous success story that will benefit our region for generations to come. Dave Palmer is a metallurgical engineer at Twin Disc in Racine. He earned his masters degree in Materials Engineering from UWM in 2014, and is currently working on a PhD in Materials Engineering at UWM. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: UWM materials engineering program must be saved from closure | Opinion
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Microsoft, Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and TitletownTech officially open AI Co-Innovation Lab to accelerate manufacturing innovation
MILWAUKEE, June 25, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft Corp., in collaboration with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) and TitletownTech announced on Wednesday the opening of an AI Co-Innovation Lab on the UWM campus. This marks Microsoft's first AI Co-Innovation Lab with a dedicated focus on manufacturing innovation. The lab's launch comes one year after Microsoft's landmark investment to build AI infrastructure in Wisconsin. Operating out of a temporary home on the UWM campus over the past year, the lab worked with a handful of companies from across Wisconsin to build AI solutions. Recent engagements show how manufacturers and other organizations are using AI to solve real-world challenges. From real-time fault detection in industrial machinery to multilingual voice assistants that streamline gate, dock and yard logistics, local companies are working to apply Microsoft's AI technologies to improve operations and decision-making. Others are building tools to forecast supply chain lead times, manage hydroponic farms and deliver proactive customer support. While the lab is rooted in manufacturing innovation, it works with organizations across industries, spanning small and medium-size businesses, enterprises, startups, and academia, reflecting the broad networks and experience of the lab's founding partners: Microsoft, WEDC, UWM and TitletownTech. AI promises to drive innovation and boost productivity in every sector of the economy. The Co-Innovation Lab will ensure that Wisconsin is well positioned to capitalize on that opportunity and to serve as a model for applied innovation around the world. "A year ago, alongside our $3.3 billion infrastructure investment, we committed to using the power of AI to help advance the next generation of manufacturing companies, skills and jobs in Wisconsin and across the country," said Rima Alaily, corporate vice president and general counsel, infrastructure legal affairs at Microsoft. "Thanks to our partnership with WEDC, TitletownTech and UWM, we're delivering on this commitment. With access to cutting-edge AI technology and technical guidance to bring their ideas to life, we can't wait to see what Wisconsin companies will build." "Through the strength of this partnership between Microsoft, TitletownTech, UWM and WEDC, the AI Co-Innovation Lab is helping businesses of all sizes and across all sectors apply the power of AI to their daily operations," said Missy Hughes, secretary and CEO of Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. "This is an exciting new chapter for our state — and for the world." "This lab will have a profound impact on our faculty members' and our students' ability to drive innovation and prepare their careers," said University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone. "Harnessing the power of AI and cloud technologies will help Wisconsin manufacturers advance their competitive edge while offering students hands-on, real-world experience." "The lab brings a startup mindset to industry by moving fast, building with purpose and focusing on outcomes," said TitletownTech Managing Partner Craig Dickman. "As AI becomes foundational to every sector, building fluency is critical not just for innovation but for staying competitive." The AI Co-Innovation Lab helps catalyze businesses toward AI adoption and acceleration through hands-on collaboration. Teams partner with either UWM or TitletownTech to define meaningful use cases and work directly with Microsoft engineers to explore and shape AI-driven solutions. Depending on the need, the lab supports both full prototyping sprints, where teams build working solutions using Microsoft's cloud and AI technologies, and design sessions that focus on solution architecture and feasibility. This flexible model gives startups, manufacturers and enterprises the strategic and technical support to unlock new value, drive efficiency and move confidently into AI-powered innovation. By equipping Wisconsin-based organizations with cutting-edge tools and talent, the lab ensures that the state is well positioned to compete and lead in an increasingly global, technology-driven economy. Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) creates platforms and tools powered by AI to deliver innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers. The technology company is committed to making AI available broadly and doing so responsibly, with a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Microsoft Corp.
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Two Wisconsin researchers part of global team that discovered a new object in space
When students open their science textbooks in the future, there's a chance they'll be reading about a cosmic discovery made by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Their discovery "may hold the key to unlocking a new kind of star that we don't yet understand," said UWM physics professor David Kaplan. Kaplan and others, including Akash Anumarlapudi, a recent UWM doctoral graduate, were part of a global team that discovered an unknown object emitting both radio waves and X-rays. This is the first time an object in this class has been detected using X-rays, which may help astronomers find and research more of these objects in the future. ASKAP J1832-0911, the unknown space object that the global team of astronomers first spotted in December 2023, is categorized as a long-period transient. LPTs are a new and rare group of cosmic objects discovered in 2022. Ziteng "Andy" Wang, member of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research and associate lecturer at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy in Australia, was another researcher involved in the discovery. After the object was initially spotted in 2023, Kaplan said, Wang spent the next year and a half finding radio telescopes across the world that could point to the area of the sky in which the object was located. Kaplan, who was among nearly 50 researchers directly involved with the project, explained the significance of the discovery. 'It'll still take more study, more observations, more mass to really understand this object and all of its related friends, but it's a lot of fun to think that you are one of the first people to find one of these and to study it and just figure out how weird the universe really is," Kaplan said. Kaplan explained that the techniques used to find LPTs are the same as those used to train advanced computer intelligence models used for security research, TikTok algorithms and more. He said a number of people who are interested in astronomy learn these techniques but go on to make careers in technology at companies like Facebook or Google. 'We're looking to inspire the next generation of everybody who finds interesting questions and wants to figure out how to answer them on their own.' David Kaplan, physics professor "We're not just looking to inspire the next generation of astronomers,' Kaplan said. 'We're looking to inspire the next generation of everybody who finds interesting questions and wants to figure out how to answer them on their own.' The human eye can see only a tiny fraction of the universe, Kaplan said. Without a carefully designed experiment and special telescopic equipment, light forms like ultraviolet X-rays and gamma rays are difficult to identify. 'When you look up at the sky at night, you can be overwhelmed by the number of stars out there,' Kaplan said. 'But unless you look at them in real detail, you might not notice that some of them are actually changing.' The research project sought to look at the universe through "radio eyes" to find out which cosmic objects were changing, Kaplan explained. Kaplan said 90%-95% of the time researchers were watching for the object, it wasn't actually visible. This is because the object rarely "blinks," only pulsing for two minutes every 44 minutes. A human would never be able to observe this kind of object by looking up into the sky just once, Kaplan said. He compared it to a lighthouse that's lit up for only a few minutes every hour. 'You have to get really lucky in order to see this flashing. And then we had to get even luckier — we accidentally discovered it flashing the X-rays as well as radio,' Kaplan said. 'This whole project is really luck, piled on luck, piled on luck.' The global researchers, along with astronomers from ICRAR, made their discovery using a radio telescope in Australia. The telescope is on a desolate, million-acre farm to avoid man-made noise from cell phones and satellites, Kaplan explained. At first, the team saw nothing when looking at the object through an optical telescope and X-ray telescope. Then, through NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Wang found that a Chinese research group had coincidentally pointed a telescope in the same area of the sky. The group discovered the same information as Kaplan and Wang, and both teams put out papers documenting their findings. Wang served as an author of the team's paper, which was published May 28 in the science journal Nature. Anumarlapudi and Kaplan, from Milwaukee, analyzed radio telescope data, calculated and contributed to the journal publication. Kaplan also helped lead the research team that discovered the object. The nearly 50 global researchers who made up the research team came primarily from the U.S. and Australia, with others from Italy, Spain, China and Israel. Contact Mia Thurow at mthurow@ This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee scientists help discover space object ASKAP J1832-0911
USA Today
25-06-2025
- Science
- USA Today
Two Wisconsin researchers part of global team that discovered a new object in space
When students open their science textbooks in the future, there's a chance they'll be reading about a cosmic discovery made by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Their discovery "may hold the key to unlocking a new kind of star that we don't yet understand," said UWM physics professor David Kaplan. Kaplan and others, including Akash Anumarlapudi, a recent UWM doctoral graduate, were part of a global team that discovered an unknown object emitting both radio waves and X-rays. This is the first time an object in this class has been detected using X-rays, which may help astronomers find and research more of these objects in the future. What was this cosmic discovery? ASKAP J1832-0911, the unknown space object that the global team of astronomers first spotted in December 2023, is categorized as a long-period transient. LPTs are a new and rare group of cosmic objects discovered in 2022. Ziteng "Andy" Wang, member of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research and associate lecturer at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy in Australia, was another researcher involved in the discovery. After the object was initially spotted in 2023, Kaplan said, Wang spent the next year and a half finding radio telescopes across the world that could point to the area of the sky in which the object was located. Kaplan, who was among nearly 50 researchers directly involved with the project, explained the significance of the discovery. 'It'll still take more study, more observations, more mass to really understand this object and all of its related friends, but it's a lot of fun to think that you are one of the first people to find one of these and to study it and just figure out how weird the universe really is," Kaplan said. What does this have to do with everyday life? Kaplan explained that the techniques used to find LPTs are the same as those used to train advanced computer intelligence models used for security research, TikTok algorithms and more. He said a number of people who are interested in astronomy learn these techniques but go on to make careers in technology at companies like Facebook or Google. 'We're looking to inspire the next generation of everybody who finds interesting questions and wants to figure out how to answer them on their own.' David Kaplan, physics professor "We're not just looking to inspire the next generation of astronomers,' Kaplan said. 'We're looking to inspire the next generation of everybody who finds interesting questions and wants to figure out how to answer them on their own.' How was the object discovered? The human eye can see only a tiny fraction of the universe, Kaplan said. Without a carefully designed experiment and special telescopic equipment, light forms like ultraviolet X-rays and gamma rays are difficult to identify. 'When you look up at the sky at night, you can be overwhelmed by the number of stars out there,' Kaplan said. 'But unless you look at them in real detail, you might not notice that some of them are actually changing.' The research project sought to look at the universe through "radio eyes" to find out which cosmic objects were changing, Kaplan explained. Kaplan said 90%-95% of the time researchers were watching for the object, it wasn't actually visible. This is because the object rarely "blinks," only pulsing for two minutes every 44 minutes. A human would never be able to observe this kind of object by looking up into the sky just once, Kaplan said. He compared it to a lighthouse that's lit up for only a few minutes every hour. 'You have to get really lucky in order to see this flashing. And then we had to get even luckier — we accidentally discovered it flashing the X-rays as well as radio,' Kaplan said. 'This whole project is really luck, piled on luck, piled on luck.' What was the discovery process like? The global researchers, along with astronomers from ICRAR, made their discovery using a radio telescope in Australia. The telescope is on a desolate, million-acre farm to avoid man-made noise from cell phones and satellites, Kaplan explained. At first, the team saw nothing when looking at the object through an optical telescope and X-ray telescope. Then, through NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Wang found that a Chinese research group had coincidentally pointed a telescope in the same area of the sky. The group discovered the same information as Kaplan and Wang, and both teams put out papers documenting their findings. Who was involved and what were their roles? Wang served as an author of the team's paper, which was published May 28 in the science journal Nature. Anumarlapudi and Kaplan, from Milwaukee, analyzed radio telescope data, calculated and contributed to the journal publication. Kaplan also helped lead the research team that discovered the object. The nearly 50 global researchers who made up the research team came primarily from the U.S. and Australia, with others from Italy, Spain, China and Israel.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Two University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researchers part of global team that discovered a new object in space
When students open their science textbooks in the future, there's a chance they'll be reading about a cosmic discovery made by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Their discovery "may hold the key to unlocking a new kind of star that we don't yet understand," said UWM physics professor David Kaplan. Kaplan and others, including Akash Anumarlapudi, a recent UWM doctoral graduate, were part of a global team that discovered an unknown object emitting both radio waves and X-rays. This is the first time an object in this class has been detected using X-rays, which may help astronomers find and research more of these objects in the future. ASKAP J1832-0911, the unknown space object that the global team of astronomers first spotted in December 2023, is categorized as a long-period transient. LPTs are a new and rare group of cosmic objects discovered in 2022. Ziteng "Andy" Wang, member of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research and associate lecturer at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy in Australia, was another researcher involved in the discovery. After the object was initially spotted in 2023, Kaplan said, Wang spent the next year and a half finding radio telescopes across the world that could point to the area of the sky in which the object was located. Kaplan, who was among nearly 50 researchers directly involved with the project, explained the significance of the discovery. 'It'll still take more study, more observations, more mass to really understand this object and all of its related friends, but it's a lot of fun to think that you are one of the first people to find one of these and to study it and just figure out how weird the universe really is," Kaplan said. Kaplan explained that the techniques used to find LPTs are the same as those used to train advanced computer intelligence models used for security research, TikTok algorithms and more. He said a number of people who are interested in astronomy learn these techniques but go on to make careers in technology at companies like Facebook or Google. 'We're looking to inspire the next generation of everybody who finds interesting questions and wants to figure out how to answer them on their own.' David Kaplan, physics professor "We're not just looking to inspire the next generation of astronomers,' Kaplan said. 'We're looking to inspire the next generation of everybody who finds interesting questions and wants to figure out how to answer them on their own.' The human eye can see only a tiny fraction of the universe, Kaplan said. Without a carefully designed experiment and special telescopic equipment, light forms like ultraviolet X-rays and gamma rays are difficult to identify. 'When you look up at the sky at night, you can be overwhelmed by the number of stars out there,' Kaplan said. 'But unless you look at them in real detail, you might not notice that some of them are actually changing.' The research project sought to look at the universe through "radio eyes" to find out which cosmic objects were changing, Kaplan explained. Kaplan said 90%-95% of the time researchers were watching for the object, it wasn't actually visible. This is because the object rarely "blinks," only pulsing for two minutes every 44 minutes. A human would never be able to observe this kind of object by looking up into the sky just once, Kaplan said. He compared it to a lighthouse that's lit up for only a few minutes every hour. 'You have to get really lucky in order to see this flashing. And then we had to get even luckier — we accidentally discovered it flashing the X-rays as well as radio,' Kaplan said. 'This whole project is really luck, piled on luck, piled on luck.' The global researchers, along with astronomers from ICRAR, made their discovery using a radio telescope in Australia. The telescope is on a desolate million-acre farm so as to avoid man-made noise from cell phones and satellites, Kaplan explained. At first, the team saw nothing when looking at the object through an optical telescope and X-ray telescope. Then, through NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Wang found that a Chinese research group had coincidentally pointed a telescope in the same area of the sky. The group discovered the same information as Kaplan and Wang, and both teams put out papers documenting their findings. Wang served as an author of the team's paper, which was published May 28 in the science journal Nature. Anumarlapudi and Kaplan, from Milwaukee, analyzed radio telescope data, calculated and contributed to the journal publication. Kaplan also helped lead the research team that discovered the object. The nearly 50 global researchers who made up the research team came primarily from the U.S. and Australia, with others from Italy, Spain, China and Israel. Contact Mia Thurow at mthurow@ This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: UWM scientists help discover mysterious space phenomenon
