UW Innovation Grant

The UW Innovation Grant is an annual competition for five years (2023-2028) that aims to develop and apply advancements in human knowledge and/or promote economic prosperity in the state of Wisconsin.

The competition arises from the Universities of Wisconsin 2023-2028 Strategic Plan. Three annual award recipients receive two years of seed funding to develop their proposal. After two years, one proposal will be selected for an additional three years of funding to further develop their proposal.

2024 Call for Proposals

The round two call for proposals was sent to UW chancellors in May 2024.

FAQ

Budget Template xlsx

Contact: Stephen Schmid

2024 Award Recipients

UW-Milwaukee in collaboration with Milwaukee Area Technical College, Milwaukee Public Schools, South Milwaukee School District, Employ Milwaukee, Metrohm, MPP, Shimadzu, Church and Dwight, Ereztech

Project Details

The RE-CHARGE STEM program addresses concerning trends in the STEM workforce development in Southeast Wisconsin. Enrollment of two- or four-year colleges is low for high school graduates of all ethnicities, races, and genders mainly because of the rising college degree costs. Furthermore, there is a constant need for skilled laboratory technicians in the greater Milwaukee area that is largely unfilled. Unfortunately, rising costs of college education affect Black and Latino students in higher numbers than their fellow students; students of color and Hispanic or Latino students are, historically, less likely to be able to afford college and account for a disproportionate number of Pell Grant recipients and student loan borrowers. Consequently, the underrepresentation of these students in STEM fields, a field in which the median wages are considerably higher than in non-STEM fields, not only persists but will most likely increase.

UW-Milwaukee plans to utilize its longstanding collaborations with local chemical industry and its position as one of the institutions in the M3 Initiative (UW-Milwaukee, Milwaukee Area Technical College, and Milwaukee Public School District) to develop an eight-week paid summer internship program that trains students with some STEM college courses who stopped out and high school graduates from local school districts as chemical technicians. Graduates of the program will have a strong foundation in general STEM skills, basic laboratory skills, and industry-specific chemistry skills, making them ready for immediate employment. UW-Milwaukee faculty and industry partners will collaborate to design the program in the micro-credentialing format, with the intention of offering job placements to graduates.

The funding and the support of our industry partners and collaborators within K-12 education, and local employment agencies, allow us to offer a new professional pathway to a laboratory technician career starting in summer 2025.
Anja Blecking, associate professor, chemistry, UW-Milwaukee

Media Coverage

UW-Whitewater

Project Details

Silicides are nontoxic compounds made from earth-abundant elements which have great potential to serve as coatings within aerospace and for medical implants. Currently, the manufacture of silicide coatings depends on chemistries that are material and energy intensive, increasing cost and reducing sustainability. This project proposes utilizing a new technology developed at UW-Whitewater, wherein silicide coatings may be deposited onto any metal component used in aerospace superalloys and biomedical implants from sustainable feedstocks of diatomaceous earth, silica sands, and recycled glass. Our technology, patent pending through WiSys, can generate phase-selective silicide coatings onto metal with controlled thicknesses and composition, and can be accomplished in fewer steps, with inexpensive feedstocks, at lower temperatures, and lower cost than the current state-of-the-art. We will demonstrate these coatings to be resistant to oxidation and corrosion for high-temperature heat shielding applications in superalloys, as well as excellent substrates to grow glass/ceramic coatings for biomedical implants. We propose funding to develop this nascent technology by: i) demonstrate large-scale coatings for commercial marketability by establishing start-up lab space within the City of Whitewater Innovation Center; ii) enabling proof-of-concept silicide coatings using sustainable sources of silicon plentiful within Wisconsin, including algal diatoms, recycled glass, and silica sands; iii) demonstrate the value of our coating technology to industrial stakeholders within the bioceramics marketplace; iv) demonstrate our technology to be effective in reducing or eliminating deleterious MRI magnetic artifacts via collaboration with the UW-Madison Department of Neuroscience; and test oxidation resistance of our coating technology by developing a Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) embedded within the undergraduate curriculum and research opportunities.

UW-Eau Claire in collaboration with UW-Stout and Kilmer Innovation in Packaging

Project Details

The innovation is to advance education of undergraduate prelicensure nursing students and undergraduate packaging students regarding sterilized medical devices and their packaging to prepare them for the workforce in health care and engineering industries to impact patient safety, economics, and environmental sustainability. Through collaboration between UW-Eau Claire and UW-Stout with support from the medical device and packaging industrial group Kilmer Innovation in Packaging (KiiP), data will be collected from registered nurses (RNs) to identify the gap between nursing education and packaging design and sustainability regarding sterilized medical devices then used as guidance to develop interactive educational materials and medical device packaging kits. Educational materials and kits would be incorporated into UW-Eau Claire nursing and UW-Stout packaging courses. Materials and kits would be piloted and evaluated, with the aim of making them available to UW system nursing programs. The project builds upon a partnership between one UW-Eau Claire nursing faculty and one UW-Stout packaging faculty started in 2023. Under faculty mentorship, packaging students created one educational video and 72 kits, which included common medical supplies and 3D printed medical devices packaged in typical medical device packaging format such as a preformed rigid tray with a die-cut lid, flexible peel pouch, sterilization paper bag, header bag, and form/fill/seal tray. The video and kits were implemented in one junior level nursing course. Meanwhile, nursing students created two educational videos for packaging students implemented in one junior/senior level undergraduate packaging course. Feedback from both packaging and nursing courses were positive. When presented at a medical device packaging industrial conference PackOut in 2024 (Harmon et al., 2024), the preliminary study sparked high interest from industry.

...the packaging kits will be designed for knowledge and practice in the skills lab for students so the nurses are better prepared for when they go into the clinical setting and use the medical packaging there.
Charlotte Sortedahl, nursing professor, UW-Eau Claire

Media Coverage

2023 Award Recipients

UW–Stout in collaboration with UW–River Falls

Project Details

This project proposes an iterative, human-centered design approach to create an energy-efficient wireless sensor network (WSN) to support small farms in Wisconsin. WSN is a network of sensors that monitor conditions in an area such as temperature, humidity, and wind, and send data back to a central location. It is used in precision agriculture to monitor relevant environmental conditions to support farmer decision-making, enhancing profitability and the adoption of environmentally sustainable and regenerative practices. Our unique project is an interdisciplinary collaboration bringing together various engineering disciplines and social sciences, crossing campus boundaries, and engaging community and industry stakeholders in a design process resulting in a solution that meets local needs, is accessible to small farms, and increases adoption. We propose to bring local stakeholders into the design process at the onset, using the research expertise of social scientists to gather information about their needs and build empathy to better understand how this technology might fit into their daily lives. At all stages, the investigators of this project will connect with our agricultural community partners, incorporating feedback into the overall design created through the expertise of the engineering team. In addition to interdisciplinary expertise, we have connections with key stakeholders as evidenced by our letters of collaboration. Given the importance of agriculture to the state’s economy, especially the importance of smaller farms to the continued health, prosperity, and sustainability of small, rural communities, creating innovative and accessible technology in the agricultural sector will have a large impact across the state. By involving university students across diverse disciplines, and training stakeholders in the technology, we also contribute to workforce development in both technical and human skills areas such as communication, collaboration, and leadership.

The human-centered design process will help ensure the technologies meet the needs of small farmers and fit into their lives and farming practices, making them more likely to be adopted.
Tina Lee, professor, social science, UW-Stout

Media Coverage

UW-Stevens Point in collaboration with UW-Madison

Project Details

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of man-made chemicals with widespread use in industrial applications. Because of their exceptional stability and high-water solubility, PFAS are persistent in the environment. Unfortunately, studies suggest PFAS are correlated with a number of health problems, including kidney and testicular cancer, liver, thyroid, and reproductive problems, pregnancy-induced high blood pressure, low birthweight and increased risk of birth defects, among others. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has identified over 100 sites around the state that are known to be contaminated with PFAS or are currently under investigation for remediation of PFAS. The ubiquitous presence of PFAS, coupled with adverse environmental and health effects, poses a threat to residents in Wisconsin, and therefore remediation of contaminated sites merits investigation. The University of Wisconsin Stevens Point and the University of Wisconsin Madison are requesting funds to (i) evaluate the ability of hemp (Cannabis sativa) and alfalfa (Medicago sativa) to remove PFAS from soil through a process termed phytoremediation (i.e., the uptake of contaminants using plants). (ii) determine how and where PFAS are stored in plant tissues and (iii) understand how soil quality and the soil microbial community influence PFAS remediation. Phytoremediation has been demonstrated for the removal of heavy metal and chlorinated contaminants from soils and is an attractive remediation strategy as large amounts of soil do not need to be removed and replaced. Alfalfa and hemp are ideal phytoremediators as they allow for the rapid recovery of affected soils.

We are excited about the amazing opportunities that we will be able to offer our students while working on this project.
Brian Barringer, associate professor, biology, UW-Stevens Point

Media Coverage

UW Oshkosh in collaboration with ThedaCare

Project Details

The purpose of this innovation project is to reduce barriers to accessing healthcare in rural Wisconsin by providing residents with a well-prepared nursing workforce to meet their telehealth needs. Through an academic-practice partnership between the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh (UWO) College of Nursing and ThedaCare, the current and future nursing workforce will be educated on telehealth skills to improve rural chronic illness outcomes. An evidence-based telehealth-education infrastructure will be established by creating a flexible curriculum housed in UWO and incorporated into operational workflow of home health and telehealth services. This proposed project is significant in that it enhances the student experience and workplace readiness, engages the university with existing industry resources, expands the University's reach into rural and remote regions of the state, and has the potential to impact the quality of life and economic prosperity for families and communities impacted by chronic disease. The proposed project is innovative in its potential to transform the practice of current and future Wisconsin nurses, apply existing knowledge to the local context of rural Wisconsin, and elevate Wisconsin into a leadership role regarding innovative initiatives to improve rural health outcomes. This project is feasible through a commitment from a strong industry partner combined with the nationally recognized clinical expertise of UWO College of Nursing faculty, as well as a long-standing mission from both organizations to target resources toward regional needs that align with federal and state priorities such as telehealth expansion. This project is sustainable, given its emphasis on knowledge utilization and the creation of curricular pathways that, once developed and implemented, are not over-reliant upon costly equipment or recurring outside investments.

We’re addressing a missed opportunity for this project, which will guide our current and future nursing workforce to play a greater role in supporting rurally located patients with chronic illness with the use of telehealth.
Seon Yoon Chung, dean of the College of Nursing, UW Oshkosh

Media Coverage