UWM Research Report 2015

2015 RESEARCH REPORT

Big iDEAS

UW-Milwaukee 2015 RESEARCH REPORT

5 Big Potential

6 The Energy Revolution Starts Here

8 A Search-and-Destroy Strategy for Killing Tumors

9 Been Drinking?

10 Can Big Data Lead to Big Cures?

12 A Living Language

13 School integration Efforts Being Challenged

14 Physicians, Web Developers Team Up to improve Treatment

16 getting a grip on Diseases from Afar

18 Discovering How Memories Affect Attention

19 Johnson Controls Endowed Professor Comes to UW-Milwaukee

20 How green is My Battery?

21 Citizens and government Working Together

22 innovation Campus

23 Big ideas

24 Operation Hand: A Potent Purpose for 3-D Printing

26 Technology Breathes New Life into Ancient Treasures

28 Can Favorite Songs Soothe?

30 Theatre Duo Wrestles with Latino Subject Matter

32 Championing Places from the Past

34 Freshwater Sciences

35 Big Science

36 Faltering Fish? The Trout Doctor is in

38 Sensing a Demand for Better Water Monitoring

40 Expertise in Water Research Draws Startups to the Region

42 gearing Up to Boost Comfort for Wheelchair Users

44 Choking a Forest’s Ability to Tame Carbon

46 Autism: Could the Disorder Be Linked to the Dirty Air We Breathe?

47 invitation to Partner with UW-Milwaukee Research Foundation

uwm.edu/MadeInMKE

Big POTENTiAL Big SCiENCE

= See the story for yourself. Video online at uwm.edu/MadeinMKE.

On the cover: UW-Milwaukee metalsmith Frankie Flood is shaping lives worldwide through his work in the Digital Craft Research Lab, run out of UW-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts. Turn to page 24 to see the associate professor of art and design at work, or meet him at uwm.edu/MadeInMKE.

in

Milwaukee is a city that refused to be left in the rust after America’s economy collapsed. innovation was inevitable, and

collaboration became our university’s calling card as UW-Milwaukee faculty shared their expertise with partners in every

industry and every corner of southeastern Wisconsin.

ideas were exchanged, companies formed, problems were assessed and addressed. Transformation through research

and collaboration became a formula for UW-Milwaukee and the region.

Challenges remain, but the city’s collective will and the university’s dedicated faculty together redefine what it means

to be an engaged community.

Of course, the UW-Milwaukee vision transcends the region. The expertise and accomplishments

of our 1,700 faculty and instructional staff are globally relevant. Research and development

endeavors focusing on cancer treatment, climate change, Ebola, ecosystems and energy storage

hold the potential to shape economies and industries worldwide.

We invite you to learn more about our university, our city and the work that we might do

with new partners like you to revitalize economies in southeastern Wisconsin and beyond.

Milwaukee is a town long known for its generosity. Now we’re once again putting our

ingenuity on the map and into practice. There’s plenty to go around.

WElCoME to MIlWAuKEE –Milwaukee is our hometown, an essential part of the university of Wisconsin-Milwaukee identity, the setting for many of the stories that unfold in these pages.

A LETTERFROM CHANCELLOR

MONEOver 150 years ago, as much of the world headed into the industrial

Age, American industry turned to Milwaukee to get things done.

Milwaukee was America’s toolbox and pioneered advances

worldwide through the combined ingenuity, spunk and rock-solid

work ethic of its people.

Our ancestors made Milwaukee the world hub for creating items that

made it possible to make just about everything else in the new age of

manufacturing. The phrase “Made in Milwaukee” came to represent

the city’s reputation for top quality and innovation.

Although the world has changed, Made in Milwaukee continues to

have a special meaning. This is especially true when we consider that

UW-Milwaukee, as an urban public research university, is a living

laboratory of innovation and engaged research.

The work done by our students, faculty and alumni, in partnership with

others, changes lives and answers some of the most profound – and

the most practical – questions of the modern day.

This is Milwaukee’s university, and we remain committed to creating

dynamic research relationships throughout the region and beyond that

have significant impact on areas such as language, freshwater, arts,

humanities, public health, engineering and education. As an

engaged university, these collaborative efforts are crucial for the future

of higher education because these connections produce new and

better technologies and engender socioeconomic progress.

i think you will recognize the very powerful next generation of the

Made in Milwaukee stamp of innovation as you page through this

research report. The remarkable accomplishments of individuals and

organizations working together spotlight the power of building on a

storied past, expanding our strengths and focusing on service, lifelong

learning and invention.

Best regards,

Mark A. Mone Chancellor

IDEASBIgPotEntIAlBIg

It’s where our most promising research intersects with momentous challenge. University engineers work alongside industry partners to make Milwaukee an epicenter for energy control and storage. A nursing professor in Milwaukee reaches back to his home country of Liberia with suggestions to halt an epidemic and prevent future outbreaks. A chemist tests treatments that focus with deadly precision on cancer tumors, leaving healthy cells and systems intact. Public education and public works projects need overhaul, no matter where you live.

Read on, and consider reaching out. New ideas, innovators and partners are encouraged.

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REYou sayyou want a

Adel Nasiri

The timing is right. Recent advances are making alternative energy sources like natural gas, solar cells and even wind turbines more cost-efficient. Because they generate and distribute energy in different ways, however, these various sources must be made compatible with the nation’s existing grid.

The switch to microgrid energy distribution will be dramatic, equivalent to how the leap from landline to cellphone communication revolutionized the telecom industry, says Alan Perlstein, executive director and CEO of the Mid-West Energy Research Consortium (M-WERC), which is a funder of the UW-Milwaukee research.

A balancing actNasiri’s microgrid testbed will demonstrate new energy control and storage methods while also integrating multiple kinds of energy, including renewables – something of particular interest to industry leaders.

The grid infrastructure is designed to use power dispatched from power plants that can adjust their output to match user demand. Output is not as adjustable with other energy sources like wind, solar and batteries.

IN ENERgy, It StARtS HERETucked away in a small industrial area of Milwaukee lies a prototype of the future of energy distribution – technology that holds commercial potential in the billions. Once perfected, the experimental technology, called a microgrid, promises to integrate diverse energy sources into the national electrical grid where they can feed energy-hungry homes and businesses.

Electrical engineer Adel Nasiri is addressing the challenges that keep microgrids from entry into a market that is projected to generate revenues of $3 billion by 2017.

UW-Milwaukee 2015 RESEARCH REPORT 7

VolutIoNRE“By adding multiple other sources, we will need to ‘smooth out’ the intermittent power that each generates in order to keep the output-demand in balance,” says Nasiri, a professor in UW-Milwaukee’s College of Engineering & Applied Science.

Wind turbines, for example, generate electricity only when the wind is blowing. But in most places, the wind blows more often at night when demand for electricity is low. Nasiri’s patented technology allows energy produced when demand is low to be stored and then released when the demand is high.

Energy islands Microgrids can function in two ways. They are able to trade power from the combined sources and add those services to the electrical grid; they can also serve as freestanding power sources that provide uninterrupted power to a limited surrounding area.

This adaptability means microgrids could serve as “energy islands” for local areas during power outages. Or, grids could power small villages in developing countries where energy service is unreliable or even nonexistent.

The first piece of UW-Milwaukee’s microgrid system is a 100-foot-high, 10-kilowatt wind turbine erected in a parking lot near the university’s Kenwood campus. The system also combines power generated from wind, solar, natural gas and batteries.

the epicenter of the field Perfecting microgrid technology would strengthen an industry cluster that already exists in the Midwest.

“The region has a large footprint in energy, power and control,” or EPC, says M-WERC’s Perlstein. “The size and growth of that sector makes the Midwest the North American center for the field.”

The 80-member M-WERC pools resources to accelerate research and provide a trained workforce, helping sustain the eight-state region as a national stronghold in EPC research and development.

Six of the organization’s industry members are contributing microgrid parts, including Kohler, Rockwell Automation, LEM USA, Odyne Systems, Eaton Corp. and ZBB Energy Corp.

The university’s state-of-the-art testbed will give regional companies a first look at the compatibility of their parts.

LEM USA, headquartered in Milwaukee, is one of those participating in the project. The company is the world’s largest producer of transducers, a key component in the power electronics industry. Power electronics are vital to microgrids and the DC current that is part of the system.

“We have the good fortune to be involved at the ground floor of a new market,” says John Marino, LEM USA general manager and technology manager. “LEM wants to be there as the microgrid is evolving, so we have the right product when the market is ready.”

Electrical engineering graduate student Azadeh Mazaheri.

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Xiaohua Peng

Current cancer drugs do not distinguish between malignant cells and healthy ones. in order to destroy tumors, drugs must target all cells in the body.

“There are many ways of treating cancers, but the common problems are the side effects, so the patients suffer a lot during the treatment,” says UW-Milwaukee bioorganic chemist Xiaohua Peng.

But new compounds developed by Peng are actually attracted only to the cancer. The compounds she has designed are activated by trademark conditions inside cancer cells – increased oxidative stress and hypoxia. This strategy allows the drugs to kill the diseased cells selectively.

Oxidative stress occurs naturally in the body during processes like metabolism. Cancer cells grow and divide so quickly that they’re literally engaged in a metabolic marathon – leading to the formation of high levels of hydrogen peroxide and free radicals.

Peng’s compounds dispatch a toxic agent to the exact location of increased oxidative stress. The drugs have shown promise in recent laboratory screen tests conducted by the National Cancer institute and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, which investigated the compounds’ effects on human cancer cells. The

screenings found a 60-90 percent reduction in various kinds of cancer cells – leukemia, colon, renal and some types of lung cancer.

MD Anderson’s tests also found the compounds had no adverse effects on normal human cells. Next, Peng and her lab members will test these compounds on mice with cancer.

Also in progress is a second family of anticancer compounds developed by Peng. These seek another environmental trait of tumors – the presence of little to no oxygen. Hypoxia is common among tumors that are located farther away from blood vessels, and it diminishes the effectiveness of radiation treatment.

Peng’s hypoxia-targeting compounds could provide a way to improve results of radiation treatment.

“This unique approach, where the agent will only be converted to the toxic form in the presence of both radiation and hypoxia, holds considerable promise,” she says.

in the last five years, Peng has supported her research with funding from a mix of local and national sources: a Bradley Catalyst grant from the UW-Milwaukee Research Foundation, a Shaw Scientist Award from the greater Milwaukee Foundation and a grant from the National institutes of Health.

A SEARCH-ANd-dEStRoy StRAtEgy foR KIllINg tuMoRS


BEEN dRINKINg? the answer is right at your fingertipsSpring 2014: A team of social-science researchers at a university spend 16 weeks trimming the hair and fingernails of more than 600 college students – seeking answers to sensitive questions that have a reputation for generating false reports.

“Have you been drinking?” is one such question. “How much?” is the other.

Turns out nail clippings may be better than hair at answering these questions. Fingernail clippings capture evidence of high-risk drinking behavior better than hair samples or self-reporting, according to researchers Michael Fendrich and Lisa Berger. Berger, with the UW-Milwaukee Helen Bader School of Social Welfare, oversaw the project. Their particular test looked for evidence of ethyl glucuronide (Etg), a direct alcohol biomarker.

“Milwaukee, because of its brewing history and the tavern culture of Wisconsin in general, makes the city an important place to do research on alcohol use,” Berger says.

The project was a joint effort between the school and United States Drug Testing Laboratories (USDTL) in Des Plaines, illinois, funded by the National institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Offering tools to measure and evaluate exposure to alcohol, drugs and toxins, USDTL staff seek research on accurate screening information regarding drug and alcohol use.

“This project led directly to the implementation of our fingernail ethyl glucuronide test that we now offer as part of our package of forensic testing services,” says Douglas Lewis, president of USDTL.

“it’s a great example of collaboration between UW-Milwaukee and industry,” says Fendrich, who worked at UW-Milwaukee when the research began.

in the original study, students answered a detailed questionnaire about their drinking history during the 90 days prior to the clippings.

The study looked at students in three categories, finding “a few non-imbibers,” “lots of increasing-risk users” and “some high-risk users.” High-risk users were defined as consuming 30 or more standard drinks on average each week during a 12-week period.

“Heavy drinking can adversely interact with prescribed medications,” Berger explains. “Our research potentially identifies a tool that clinicians could potentially use to assess and address patient risks.”

in articles and ongoing research, the pair are continuing to explore data related to alcohol reporting behavior, family alcohol risk and the relationships between heavy alcohol use and other risk behaviors.

“This study adds to a relatively young body of literature focused on long-term direct biomarkers,” says Berger.

“This unique collaboration with private industry produced a very rich data set that promises to further our understanding of alcohol use and related behaviors,” Fendrich says.

“The hope is to have the research make a positive impact on individuals in the city and the state at large,” adds Berger.

Fendrich has since taken a position as associate dean for research and professor of social work at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work.

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BIg CuRES“ It’s significant in terms of public health

research because heart attacks and

heart disease are a leading cause

of death,” says Auer.

Paul Auer


big dataBIg CuRES

CAN BIg dAtA lEAd to BIg CuRES?Paul Auer doesn’t have a scalpel or stethoscope, but his work is having an impact on the treatment of heart and kidney disease.

Auer, an assistant professor of biostatistics in UW-Milwaukee’s Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health, uses mathematics and computers as his tools in the fight against kidney disease and heart disease, the latter being a leading cause of death in the United States.

Based in Milwaukee, he is part of a national team sifting through medical and genetic data, looking for genetic mutations that may help with prevention and treatment. He was one of the authors of a recent New England Journal of Medicine article that showed strong evidence that four specific gene mutations lead to lower levels of triglycerides in the blood. The study also provided evidence that triglycerides, a form of fat circulating in the bloodstream, may be as important to heart health as “bad” LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol and “good” HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol.

Another study he co-authored in the New England Journal of Medicine last year highlighted a rare genetic mutation that is connected to lower LDL cholesterol levels, leading to a 50 percent reduction in the risk of heart attacks. That study also could lead to validation of existing treatments and the development of new ones.

“it’s significant in terms of public health research because heart attacks and heart disease are a leading cause of death,” says Auer. “Findings like these that could help prevent heart disease are very exciting.”

Another study he co-authored in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that African Americans with sickle-cell trait face up to a twofold risk increase of chronic kidney disease.

Sickle-cell trait is a condition in which a person has only one copy of the gene for sickle cell but does not have sickle-cell disease (which requires two copies of this gene). it was previously believed to be a relatively benign condition that posed little risk to carriers. Approximately one in 12 African Americans has sickle-cell trait.

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Meg Noodin

“our native language is alive, and it’s staying alive.”

The ancient language that gave Milwaukee its name echoes in the halls of the UW-Milwaukee today.

A lIVINg lANguAgE

The Anishinaabe language – spoken by the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi tribes – is now being offered in full-credit university courses. it’s a first for this language on the edge of extinction that counts 8,000 to 10,000 speakers among 566 federally recognized tribes.

“Many of the native speakers are over 70 years old,” says Assistant Professor of English Margaret Noodin, “making this one of many world languages in danger of disappearing.”

But Milwaukee could be an ideal site for an Anishinaabe renaissance.

“The indigenous presence here is sustained and significant,” Noodin says.

Anishinaabemowin is embedded in place names common across these parts: Lake Michigan (great sea), Chicago (land of the chigag, or skunk) and Wauwatosa (firefly). “Five hundred years ago, people sat around and talked to each other, and that’s how languages were kept alive and growing,” says Noodin. “They had a world that allowed them to focus on language.”

Now people chat on Facebook and post pics on instagram.

And when a language is lost, the casualties are more significant than a vanished vocabulary. Culture erodes. Knowledge disappears. “Something in that language could be the very thing we need to move forward in scientific discovery.”

Noodin’s research, then, focuses on Native culture and preservation beyond words. She serves as the interim director of the university’s Electa Quinney institute for American indian Education and is president of the Studies in American indian Literatures Association. She collaborates with UW-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences and global inclusion and Engagement office.

Yet the classroom is where some of her most valuable contributions take hold, with the help of her students and 21st-century technology.

“One component of a living language is that it is not only spoken fluently, but also used creatively,” Noodin says about ojibwe.net, the website she helped create with Anishinaabe Web architect Stacie Sheldon. There’s also a Facebook page where users chat about current events in English and Ojibwe. “it’s how kids communicate now. it’s little moments here and there that add up. if we don’t use the language creatively into the future, then all we’re doing is documenting a language that’s dying.”

On a field trip to UW-Milwaukee’s Manfred Olson Planetarium, students learned Ojibwe names for constellations – that the skies functioned as an ancient-day gPS. The Ojibwe word for North Star comes from the Ojibwe verb “to go home.”

Between UW-Milwaukee and ojibwe.net, new language learners can take up where Noodin’s class ends: sharing stories, songs, prayers and poems with elders online. “Saving the language has become of utmost importance in many communities – on the rez, in the cities, in schools, in homes, in the lodge – where there are elders who speak the language and where there are none.”


from left: Raquel farmer-Hinton, Michael Bonds and Marie Sandy.

SCHool INtEgRAtIoN EffoRtS BEINg CHAllENgEd When he transferred to a suburban school district in 1989, Jelani Canser found more academic and artistic enrichment opportunities.

“it’s fair to say that the entire direction of my life changed,” he says of the move from Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) to a suburban district just minutes from Milwaukee.

A teacher himself, Canser now worries about the outcomes for other minority students who don’t have involved parents like his.

“Again, i appreciate what the program did for me, but a better long-term solution would have been to keep the best and brightest in MPS and try to put more resources into the schools – easier said than done, i know.”

Three UW-Milwaukee School of Education faculty members looked at the thorny issues involved in the voluntary integration of schools to overcome achievement gaps and decrease segregation. Their case study, recently published in Education and Urban Society, looked at Milwaukee’s pioneering Chapter 220 voluntary integration program, established in 1975.

They found that the benefits of Chapter 220 are now being substantially eroded by legislative changes.

“Chapter 220 was set up by the state legislature to alleviate hypersegregation,” says Michael Bonds, associate professor of education and lead author of the study. Bonds is also president of the Milwaukee Board of School Directors. Co-authors are Marie Sandy, assistant professor, and Raquel Farmer-Hinton, associate professor of education.

Chapter 220 allowed MPS’ predominately African-American students to attend one of 23 suburban schools, most of which were predominately white. The program also allowed suburban students to enroll in MPS.

The goal was to promote cultural and racial integration in education on a voluntary basis without cost to taxpayers. in addition, national studies demonstrated that students in racially diverse schools do far better in terms of long-term achievement.

However, enrollment in Milwaukee’s 220 program has declined dramatically since its 1993-’94 enrollment peak of 5,918 students. By the 2012-’13 school year, enrollment plummeted to 1,456.

“Milwaukee had a model program, and we are looking at how that essentially became imperfect over time,” says Bonds. Legislative changes that appeared race-neutral on the surface have contributed to resegregating schools, he adds.

Bonds explains that Wisconsin’s statewide Open Enrollment program, established in 1998, is a key factor behind 220’s eroding enrollment. Open Enrollment allows parents to enroll their children in any public school district in Wisconsin.

Under Open Enrollment, there are no integration goals and no financial support for transportation. This disadvantages minority parents who often don’t have the time or money to drive students to outlying suburbs, and encourages white students to flee city schools for the suburbs, co-author Marie Sandy explains.

Differences in the way the two programs are financed also give suburban schools incentive to accept Open Enrollment rather than 220 students.

Bonds says he and his co-authors hope their study and ongoing follow-ups will provoke discussion about the role of voluntary integration programs nationally as well as the need to improve urban schools.

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TECHNOLOgYpocket-sized

PHySICIANS, uW-MIlWAuKEE WEB dEVEloPERS tEAM uP to IMPRoVE tREAtMENtHealth care professionals may soon have a new tool to help treat patients – a pocket-sized technology created by teams from the Medical College of Wisconsin and UW-Milwaukee.Medical and training researchers, faculty and physicians at MCW are working with app developers at UW-Milwaukee’s App Brewery to pilot smartphone apps that could improve medical care.

from left: dustin Hahn, uW-Milwaukee App Brewery Project Manager; Chris Sampon, developer; Anthony Jesmok, developer; Joel Herron, lead developer; Medical College of Wisconsin Assistant Professor of Neurology Alicia Castonguay; Jon Major Condon, developer; and Julia Alberts, designer.


TECHNOLOgYimagine how apps can help researchers screen patients for clinical trials more quickly, aid doctors in “stepping down” doses of steroids for young patients and explain the process more clearly to their families, and encourage young people to donate blood.

“We needed a better process to quickly enroll stroke patients in clinical trials,” says Alicia Castonguay, assistant professor of neurology and director of the Stroke, Neurocritical Care, and Neurointerventional (SNN) research center at MCW.

The SNN research team, comprised of physicians, nurses and coordinators, recruits stroke and neurology patients for clinical trials of medical devices and medications. This can be a time-consuming and paper-intensive process. Doctors may have just three to four hours to determine if a patient meets the research study criteria.

“These trials are important to improving treatment, but some patients don’t want to take part, and others aren’t eligible,” Castonguay says. “it’s important to quickly reach out to those who are willing to consent and who are eligible.”

Consent forms, information on participating physicians and other details on who is qualified to participate are currently kept in a study binder. Tracking down the binder quickly when a patient comes into the emergency room at 3 a.m. can be a challenge.

“But almost everyone has a smartphone,” Castonguay says. “i thought: Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could provide information about our clinical trials to the primary physician and the patient in real time?”

The opportunity to find out came through a competition that brings doctors and researchers together with student developers from UW-Milwaukee. Founded in a renovated 19th-century – you guessed it – brewery complex in downtown Milwaukee in 2013, the App Brewery soon expanded to include a second

location at the university’s innovation Campus (take a close look at innovation Campus on page 22), a neighbor and research partner to the Medical College.

Castonguay and her team submitted a proposal that became the clinical research app REACH, one of the first MCW-UW-Milwaukee projects to be implemented. Following a winter pilot, REACH is scheduled to be in the hands of team members in early 2015.

The collaborative effort has been a learning process for both the medical staff and the student developers, led by UW-Milwaukee App Brewery Manager Quinn Madson. As graphic design and information technology majors, the student developers at first struggled to understand the medical terminology and health care reasons behind the app. Doctors had to learn how their decisions impacted the programming process.

“i realized when i wanted to make one little tweak to the app, that involved hours and hours of coding,” says Castonguay.

A series of initial meetings between the medical team and the developers helped the teams work out what the users needed and how the developers could meet their needs with an app.

“We’re really working closely with MCW to make sure that the tools we give them are useful and doing what they want to accomplish,” says Madson.

“This collaboration is great. i’m very grateful for the planning that went into it,” says Castonguay, who hopes to get funding to pursue further development of the app after the pilot.

“it’s really great to see an idea come to fruition. This is going to provide us a way to help improve patient access to successful therapies.”

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Aaron Buseh

living gEttINg A gRIP oN dISEASES fRoM AfARFor Aaron Buseh, the ongoing Ebola epidemic in West Africa is personal.“i am a man living in two worlds,” says the associate professor. “i am a Liberian and African, and i am here in the U.S. studying and teaching about health issues. The work i do in research and writing about Ebola and other health policy issues is my way of helping tell my people’s stories without being physically present.”

in TWO


WORLDSHe has researched and written about the stigma attached to HiV/AiDS both in the United States and Africa, as well as looked at ways to work with and engage Africans and African Americans in genetics and other health research.

Before the Ebola epidemic hit home, Buseh wrote the book “Empowering Resilience: improving Health Care Delivery in War-impacted African Countries.” With colleagues in the UW-Milwaukee College of Nursing, he recently wrote an article about the massive health challenges and learning opportunities the Ebola outbreak presents to the international community. That article can be found in the January/February 2015 issue of the journal Nursing Outlook.

“Ebola has become the leprosy of the 21st century,” Buseh says of the deadly infectious disease that frightens on a global scale and stigmatizes those it touches. That is why, he argues, it is critical to base prevention and disease-fighting policies on evidence-based science and cultural understanding. “it would be a travesty to see the fear of Ebola lead to the marginalization of individuals from West Africa.”

Rebuilding and strengthening health care systems in West Africa to prevent and control the disease is vital, he says. Otherwise, even if a vaccine or treatment is discovered and resources are bolstered through foreign aid or donor networks, it will be difficult to stop the spread of Ebola.

“The Ebola epidemic in West Africa highlights the disparities in health resources and health outcomes between developed and developing countries. it underscores the vulnerability of public health systems in sub-Saharan African countries.”

Strengthening health systems will be challenging. The three nations most impacted by the disease – Liberia, Sierra Leone and guinea – recently emerged from damaging civil wars. And, as in many sub-Saharan countries, entrenched poverty, lack of clean water, poor living conditions and endemic neglected diseases complicate the situation.

And while health care workers have worked tirelessly and many have lost their lives in caring for patients, the workforce is small compared to the need. in Liberia, there is only one doctor for every 14,000 people (compared to 25 per 10,000 in the U.S.).

To rebuild and expand health systems will require strong public-private collaborations among the affected countries themselves and the international community, says Buseh. “The international community is bolstering resources, which is good, but sustained funding for prevention and management of those who have already contracted the virus is needed.”

Every large-scale crisis provides opportunities for important decision-making. Although the Ebola epidemic in West Africa is unprecedented, Buseh says it gives the international community an opportunity to work with trusted local health leaders to find ways to address infectious diseases in resource-poor settings.

“Trust will be an important factor to consider as vaccines are developed and tested for efficacy on local populations. Although there is urgency, we must design and implement such research cautiously, ensuring that it is conducted ethically and that any potential harms are carefully weighed against potential benefits to the local population,” says Buseh.

TWO

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deborah Hannula

dISCoVERINg HoW MEMoRIES AffECt AttENtIoNWhen is a sharp memory not a desirable trait? The answer could reveal insights that mental health practitioners can use to better treat illnesses like post-traumatic stress disorder.Cognitive neuroscientist Deborah Hannula wonders whether people’s attention can be diverted from a task if there is an object in sight that triggers an unrelated memory – a phenomenon she calls “memory-based capture.”

CAPtuREmemory-based


deyang Qu

JoHNSoN CoNtRolS ENdoWEd PRofESSoR CoMES to uW-MIlWAuKEERenewable energy expert Deyang Qu has been named Johnson Controls Endowed Professor in Energy Storage Research, a collaborative appointment among the company, UW-Milwaukee and the Wisconsin Energy institute (WEi) at UW-Madison.

Qu has built a recognized research program in energy storage systems for electric vehicles, smart-grid technology and military applications.

The joint appointment, based in the UW-Milwaukee College of Engineering & Applied Science and affiliated with WEi, is part of an unprecedented industry-academic partnership among Johnson Controls, the world’s leading supplier of automotive batteries, and the state’s two public research universities. its aim is to advance research, development and commercialization of energy storage technologies.

in addition to the endowed professorship, Johnson Controls’ multimillion-dollar investment in research already has produced two laboratories at UW-Milwaukee’s College of Engineering & Applied Science, where students and the company’s scientists work side by side. One of the labs is a state-of-the-art “dry” lab, the only one of its kind on a university campus in North America, which enables work on the next generation of lithium-ion batteries.

Qu will provide long-term strategic coordination between the universities’ research and the clean-energy industry’s needs.

“it’s possible that memory-based capture is slowing us down or making us less effective in a variety of situations, particularly in cases of neurological or psychiatric disorder,” she says.

Hannula’s research into the relatively unexplored field of memory’s effects on attention has netted her an Early CAREER Development Award from the National Science Foundation, a first for the UW-Milwaukee Department of Psychology.

Her most recent experiment measures participants’ eye movements and simultaneous brain function, a two-pronged approach that is novel among researchers.

Using infrared light projected from a camera and a software program, Hannula can track what participants are looking at and for how long.

Participants in the study memorize a series of coupled pictures – for example, a woman’s face paired with a park scene. Participants then perform an attention task, which requires them to deliberately ignore one item in the pair of pictures they have just studied.

At the sight of the park scene, participants attempt to direct their attention away from the corresponding face, looking instead at other materials offered in a visual display. The question is, “Will the sight of the park trigger the recalled association with the woman’s face?”

Hannula’s previous work suggests that memory-based capture happens automatically.

in one study already completed, two groups of participants performed a matching task. One group was asked to do their best to identify the face, from among three choices, that had been associated with a place. The other group was instructed to deliberately conceal their memories of the studied face-place association.

The results showed that in both cases, participants looked almost immediately at the correct, previously memorized match – whether or not they ultimately chose it. in other words, their eyes “gave away” a memory that the participants were attempting to hide.

“The next step is to identify how this memory-based capture is supported by the brain,” Hannula says.

To do that, she will use functional magnet resonance imaging, or fMRi, to find which parts of the brain are active during the memory and attention tasks. She can then compare the brain regions activated when capture occurs to those that are activated without capture.

uRE

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Chris yingchun yuan

HoW gREEN IS My BAttERy? Next-generation lithium-ion batteries (NgLiB) will allow electric vehicles to travel much farther on a single charge. But the high performance of advanced rechargeable batteries comes with an environmental cost: disposing of the waste from manufacturing them.

Mechanical engineer Chris Yingchun Yuan thinks the time to address those costs is before NgLiBs hit the market, which could be in the next decade. “We want to be prepared for these questions while research on next-generation lithium-ion batteries is still going on,” he says.

Working with three industrial participants conducting research on NgLiBs – general Motors, Johnson Controls and PE international – Yuan is taking on the first study of the environmental impacts of the new technology.

“Making these batteries requires the use of more chemicals than the current technology, in addition to creation of the nanomaterials themselves,” says Yuan, an associate professor in UW-Milwaukee’s College of Engineering & Applied Science. Exposure to nanoparticle waste may pose risks for both occupational and public health, he adds.

The work is supported by an Early CAREER Development grant from the National Science Foundation.

One outcome will be a model designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in large-scale battery production, while also bringing down costs through waste reduction. The research group is also investigating how to dispose of and recycle the batteries when they reach the end of their 10-year life spans – without releasing nanoparticles into the air.

Yuan also is collaborating with Johnson Controls and general Motors on separate research projects related to NgLiB development and green manufacturing of vehicle batteries.


“ Think of this as an innovation

ecosystem that we need to build,”

says Nambisan.

CItIzENS ANd goVERNMENt WoRKINg togEtHERWhat if budget cuts and staff retirements at the Environmental Protection Agency or the Wisconsin Department of Transportation didn’t lead to fewer public services, but actually led to better results?

in an era of shrinking budgets, increasingly complex problems facing communities and greater, more accessible technological capabilities, public-service innovation is possible if citizens and governments can find and trust in new ways of working together, says Professor Satish Nambisan.

Nambisan holds a joint appointment in UW-Milwaukee’s Lubar School of Business and College of Engineering & Applied Science, specializing in technology entrepreneurship and innovation management. His research has been published in the Harvard Business Review and Academy of Management Review. Among his latest titles is “Engaging Citizens in Co-Creation in Public Services,” a report published in 2014 by the iBM Center for Business and government.

Co-creation, he says, has the potential to solve public problems and bridge the consumer-producer divide that can create unnecessary distance between citizens and government.

“Customers consume the product or service, and there has always been the divide between the entity that creates the value and the other entity, who consumes value.”

it doesn’t have to be that way, he adds.

Powered by mobile computing and crowd sourcing, citizen evaluators helping amass and analyze vast collections of data, and new practices like app-creation contests and innovation jams (see how the UW-Milwaukee App Brewery partners with the Medical College of Wisconsin on page 14), citizen co-creation enables citizens and government to get more done by working together. More common in Europe, it’s still in the developmental stages in the United States.

One example is Boston’s Citizen Connect app. With the app, Bostonians become the “eyes and ears” of their city and are able to quickly alert city employees to neighborhood issues – graffiti, damaged road signs, dangerous potholes – within minutes. They receive personal responses as soon as the problems are fixed.

For governments, the benefits include preserving precious financial resources, solving thorny problems and tapping into fresh talent, says Nambisan.

Transparency and clarity are key to making co-creation work, however, and the bureaucratic nature of government work doesn’t easily lend itself to either.

“government can start by speaking the language of citizens,” Nambisan says. “Trust is also an issue. Can government provide citizens with access to information they need to identify and solve problems?”

Trust is fostered through a shared vision for what problems need to be solved, and what the two parties – citizen and government – bring to the table.

“Think of this as an innovation ecosystem that we need to build – a collaborative environment of peers interacting with peers, nonprofits, agencies with a shared worldview and sense of purpose.

“Clarity removes friction among these groups, and facilitates coordination and communication.”

in Milwaukee, Nambisan sees huge potential for citizen co-creation to tackle public health issues like prenatal health and poor nutrition. Mobile app development and entrepreneurial exercises, like those already embedded in UW-Milwaukee arts, engineering and business curricula, are on the right path.

Satish Nambisan

Just across the street from the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center is UW-Milwaukee’s new 72-acre, next-generation research park, where UW-Milwaukee scientists collaborate and share ideas with nearby medical professionals. The aim is to build products that solve health care problems and then bring them to the marketplace. The first building on the grounds opened in the spring of 2014 and features a rapid prototyping center for use by both UW-Milwaukee faculty and research and business partners.

iNNOVATiON CAMPUS

IDEASBIg

It can be a seamless collaboration of old and new, the traditional and the topical. Ancient treasures take new shape and reach a wider audience through smart technologies. Elders with dementia find release and peace with a personal playlist – an approach our faculty scientists believe could displace drug therapy.

Mexico’s lucha libre wrestlers make a major theatrical debut in Milwaukee. Children around the world receive a new lease on life – literally – through a community of artists based online, enabled by technology and faculty on a university campus.

Discoveries you read about in these pages are the result of collaboration that is regional, national, global. Partners join our research endeavors from anywhere, everywhere. Join us.

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The 3-D printer will run for

14 continuous hours in order

to yield all 26 pieces needed to

make one prosthetic hand.

A PotENt PuRPoSE foR 3-d PRINtINg

Everything about UW-Milwaukee’s Digital Craft Research Lab (DCRL) carries the stamp of Milwaukee’s industrial and manufacturing past – right down to the former Ford Model T plant that houses it. But the work generated in this lab, which puts vintage and digital tools directly into the hands of students, serves both the city and the world.

in the last year, two faculty members have involved students in a global volunteer effort to design and make sophisticated 3-D-printed prostheses for children who have congenital hand deformities.

it began when Shea Stollenwork, a third-grader from Mukwonago, Wisconsin, wanted something very unusual for Christmas 2013 – a functional right hand.

Born with a partial palm and no fingers on her right hand, Shea had seen robotic-looking prostheses on the internet and asked her mom if she could get one.

Ranee Stollenwork’s search brought her to Frankie Flood’s door. A metalsmith in UW-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts, Flood has been active in the Milwaukee “maker” community, using production techniques as varied as old-fashioned machining to high-tech desktop 3-D printing.

Although they had never attempted it before, Flood and colleague Adream Blair, both associate professors, set to work.

“When Frankie introduced me to the idea, i immediately thought, ‘This is the type of thing we should be doing to make people’s lives better,’” says Blair. “it was Christmastime, so we were already in that mood!”

oPERAt


from left: Adream Blair and frankie flood.

IoN HANd:global CreationAbout the time the Stollenwerks contacted him, Flood had discovered a group called e-Nable, a community of people with a wide spectrum of backgrounds – from computer scientists to car detailers – who create custom prosthetic hands assembled from 3-D-printed pieces.

E-Nable volunteers share one common goal, says core member Jen Owen. “They have a 3-D printer and they want to help someone.”

Think of a 3-D printer as a copy machine for objects. Laying down a single layer of plastic at a time, the device replicates three-dimensional items from information contained in a computer scan of the item.

E-Nable has many dedicated and talented contributors, says Owen, but she describes Flood and Blair’s efforts as “above and beyond.”

“They have not only helped to come up with stronger and better designs, but their students have produced other very valuable materials that are of great benefit to the families we serve – from safety guideline pamphlets to ‘ikea-like’ instruction manuals for assembly of the devices.”

The duo’s design for Shea’s hand has been downloaded hundreds of times, and the new Raptor design that Flood contributed to – a streamlined version of the group’s previous work – is becoming just as popular.

Along with the lab’s students, they have worked on hand designs for seven other children, including one in Scotland.

Made in MilwaukeeThe crowd-sourced braintrust of e-Nable is a perfect fit for the can-do ingenuity of the 2-year-old DCRL, which Flood directs.

Blending the new and old fabrication processes, from anodizing to 3-D printing, gives students the vision to reclaim and reimagine their industrial heritage, he says.

An illinois native, Flood himself feels that Rust Belt connection.

“i had worked in a factory while i was going to college,” he says. “And i was always amazed that i wasn’t learning many of these processes used at the factory in my metals courses. i wanted to make sure that my students could learn the entire spectrum of processes.”

involvement in e-Nable takes the design experience a step further by providing inspiration, says Blair.

“When our students joined e-Nable, people that even i would be intimidated to talk to at first would chime in on their sketches and ideas,” she says. “You could just see that the students were proud of the fact that they were a part of this.”

See the story for yourself. Video online at uwm.edu/MadeinMKE.

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derek Counts

EEPdiggingdtECHNology BREAtHES NEW lIfE INto ANCIENt tREASuRES Archaeologists in Milwaukee are using the tools of the 21st century to explore ancient cultures from all over the world. Derek Counts, professor and chair of art history at UW-Milwaukee, is digging deep to understand how iPads and 3-D scanners can replace notebooks, sketchpads, pencils and cameras at archaeological sites and museums.


EEPDigital technologies allow Counts and colleagues to look at a 2,500-year-old terra-cotta figurine in closer detail than ever, right down to the ancient artist’s thumbprint. Matching the fingerprint of that anonymous artist to fingerprints on other pieces can help link the sculptor’s work to a more precise historical time and place.

“Our ability to harness this emerging technology has completely changed the way we access and understand the past,” says Counts.

Mobile computing (with tablets, even smartphones) is becoming more and more the normal way of collecting, mapping and archiving information, says Counts, who also serves as associate director of the Athienou Archaeological Project (AAP). The multidisciplinary, international research team has been investigating Cyprus’ Athienou-Malloura site since 1990 under the direction of Professor Michael K. Toumazou of Davidson College. The National Science Foundation has funded AAP since 1995.

Using smart tools on site, AAP archaeologists jot down notes as they excavate items, look up information on relational databases, create spreadsheets, complete drawings, take photos and make audio and video recordings to insert into their notes as they work.

“Tablets have long-lasting batteries, are highly portable, include high-resolution cameras and have really made mobile computing a reality in the field,” says Counts. “A researcher can even be inside a trench and bring up facts he or she needs right there. it is much more efficient.”

Counts and colleagues recently received a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Start-Up grant for a two-day workshop on the topic, to be held this year.

With help from the University of Kentucky Center for Visualization & Virtual Environments, Counts and colleagues are exploring how structured light 3-D scanning can capture both the surface and geometry of artifacts. They hope that this technology will eventually help put artifacts that have been excavated in pieces back together again.

The digital scans also allow researchers and art lovers to study details of color, texture and size, making it easier to study and interpret objects within their cultural and historical context. These high-resolution images can bring out details not visible to the naked eye, like a 2,500-year-old thumbprint.

Most significantly, 3-D scans give researchers incredible access from a great distance, leaving the original artifacts in museums in their countries of origin. Three-dimensional printing goes further, making it possible for archaeologists to hold replicas of these objects.

“People can experience the art of Cyprus in a really dynamic way,” Counts says.

Big iDEAS 28

CAN fAVoRItE SoNgS SootHE?Dementia is part of everyday life, and loss, for nearly 5 million Americans. Soon, researchers may know if listening to one’s favorite music — be it big band, Elvis or Motown — can lessen dementia patients’ reliance on drugs. “More than 70 percent of people with dementia are affected by depression, aggression, anxiety, apathy or withdrawal. The usual treatment is medication,” says UW-Milwaukee’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare Associate Professor Jung Kwak, also a scientist with the university’s Center for Aging and Translational Research. “We’re studying whether people with dementia who listen to their favorite songs require less anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications.”

Kwak is co-principal investigator of the first rigorous evaluation of the New York-based Music & Memory Program, which has extended to 45 states and six countries. With funding from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS), the program will be rolled out to 100 Wisconsin nursing homes by the end of 2015. Participating care staff and families identify a dementia patient’s favorite music, create a playlist and then use iPods and headphones to deliver the tunes.

Nursing staff who have witnessed the effects of the program describe it as “magical,” and the 2014 documentary “Alive inside” captures the excitement of watching a noncommunicative person light up and start talking when his favorite music begins to play. But until now, Music & Memory has not been rigorously evaluated.

music


Jung Kwak

With her UW-Milwaukee-based team, Kwak is closely following 60 residents at 10 nursing homes. The team will determine to what extent music might be as effective as drugs in reducing agitation, anxiety and depression in people with dementia.

The results are being awaited by health care professionals nationwide; meanwhile, the study has captured national attention in The Associated Press, USA Today, the Canadian Broadcasting Association, Wisconsin media outlets and more. Today, we know that one’s personal relationship with music does not weaken with age.

“There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of the immediate impact that the Music and Memory Program has when a resident with dementia responds to a favorite song, and that’s wonderful,” says Kitty Rhoades, DHS secretary. “But only through research will we begin to understand the long-range effects on things such as the extent of memory recovery, how the music can help to prevent agitation or combativeness without the use of medications and the program’s overall effects on the quality of life of the participants.”

Music therapy is an established discipline. But the ability to listen to one’s favorite songs on demand is an outgrowth of technology that wasn’t part of the lives of today’s dementia patients.

“Even if we develop dementia, our musical abilities and our memories associated with particular songs seem to remain intact,” says Kwak.

This is where the door has been cracked open. Whether it will usher in a new and scientifically proven therapeutic tool for dementia patients is to be seen.

Study results are expected this year.


& MEMoRy“ Even if we develop dementia, our

musical abilities and our memories

associated with particular songs

seem to remain intact,” says Kwak.

Big iDEAS 30

LIVE

from left: Alvaro Saar Rios and Michelle lopez-Rios.

tHEAtER duo WREStlES WItH lAtINo SuBJECt MAttERLive from Milwaukee, it’s Saturday morning theater – featuring a perspective you might not find on many other stages. Except for San Antonio, or Houston. Together, these three cities are fertile creative ground for the Royal Mexican Players, whose founding members, Alvaro Saar Rios and Michelle Lopez-Rios, brought their academics and their creativity to UW-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts in 2006.


fromMilwaukee...

Whether they are working on a project individually or as a team, Lopez-Rios says the Latino voice has always been at the core of their research.

“We started the Royal Mexican Players to tell Latino stories, those that were not being told onstage and in film,” explains the associate professor of voice and speech and head of acting at the Peck School. “We are both interested in getting people’s stories out, but we approach it in two different ways. I do it more by literally telling the actual story, and Alvaro does it mainly from the writing standpoint.”

In early 2015, Rios completed a play set in the world of lucha libre – Mexican wrestling. Rios, an assistant professor of playwriting and analysis, describes “Luchadora” as the story of a young woman who finds a pink wrestling mask and is taken on a journey into her Mexican-American heritage.

One Saturday morning, somewhere around the fourth draft, “Luchadora” was presented as a staged reading at the United Community Center on Milwaukee’s south side. The experience helped Rios mold the final project.

“It’s an opportunity to research what works and what doesn’t,” he says. “It also serves to let the community feel they are part of the development process, which they are, and that gets them more invested in the work. This is what I love about theater.”

A workshop production took place this winter in San Antonio, while costume fittings and set design were underway at First Stage, a Milwaukee theater company that caters to young audiences. “Luchadora” will make its world debut there in April with Lopez-Rios performing in a main role.

“For the arts, research is not about publishing books and papers; it’s about putting your art out there,” adds Lopez-Rios. “Our research is our art, and making it happen is our version of publishing. The advantage is that as opposed to someone reading your work in an office somewhere, we get the immediate reaction of the audience. We know right away if they liked it or not.”

Among their fans and community connectors is Griselda Aldrete, executive director of Hispanic Professionals of Greater Milwaukee.

“I have known Alvaro and Michelle for a number of years,” she says. “I think their work has been very important to the Latino community and to Milwaukee as a whole. They bring some cultural diversity to a city that sometimes still struggles with race and segregation issues. It’s great to have this kind of talent in our own backyard.”

Big iDEAS 32

what’s oldCHAMPIoNINg PlACES fRoM tHE PAStBy the time architect Matt Jarosz joined the Milwaukee Historic Preservation Commission in the mid-’90s, many of the city’s historic buildings had been quietly demolished. Today, only 43 National Historic Landmarks remain in Wisconsin, a relatively small number considering Milwaukee’s rich architectural legacy.

Jarosz, an adjunct associate professor at UW-Milwaukee’s School of Architecture & Urban Planning, believes that preserving places from the past is important to most Milwaukeeans.

“i wouldn’t have said that 30 years ago,” he says. “But if you give them the right tools, you can get developers and financers to prove that it’s actually more economical to keep old buildings than to build new.”

getting creditsAs director of UW-Milwaukee’s Historic Preservation institute (HPi), Jarosz has been a statewide promoter of historic preservation since moving to Milwaukee from Chicago in 1989.

Today, he is also a shaper of policy concerning the use of historic tax credits.

Convincing developers to renovate significant buildings while also retaining their historic features often comes down to cost. That makes state and federal tax credits powerful incentives.

Jarosz is helping to rewrite the criteria used statewide to determine eligibility for tax credits.


IS NEW

Matt Jarosz

Backed by students in the HPi, he is documenting how renovation supported through the tax credits “spreads the love” by spurring development that spans entire neighborhoods.

The HPi is evaluating 30 projects across Wisconsin to determine to what extent each investment stimulated economic benefits like job creation, an increase in neighboring new-building permits and rising property values.

“We are interested in revealing a picture that consists of more than charts and numbers,” he says. “What did the area look like before and after? We want to see the new residents walking their dogs. We want to see that new coffee shop.”

The project is funded in part from a grant from the Marvin Windows and Doors Company through the Wisconsin Trust for Historic Preservation.

An enablerThough the study won’t be completed until later in 2015, the results will likely have an impact on the future of the state’s historic tax credits, something Jarosz hopes to quantify for policymakers.

Their value was clear in 2014, when state historic tax credits increased for the first time. With the bar raised – 20 percent of renovation costs became eligible for credits – developers sent forth

a wave of new applications for historic redevelopment. Things stalled when the state briefly rescinded the credit

hike, then reinstated it a few months later. Jarosz says the political wavering has had a chilling effect on further applications, but he hopes that the results of HPi’s tax credit study will stabilize the climate.

Bringing together the public and private players, something that was missing 30 years ago, is the key to saving the most important buildings.

it is a strength Jarosz brings to the preservation community, says Chris Rute, development center manager in the city’s Department of Neighborhood Services and a senior fellow at HPi.

“Matt’s expertise provides a balanced, thoughtful approach to preserve those structures worthy of saving while understanding that not all buildings are of significant historic value.”

Jarosz’s role as connector was also recognized last year with a $500,000 gift from David and Julia Uihlein to strengthen partnerships between HPi and the city’s preservation specialists. David Uihlein is the president of Uihlein/Wilson Architects, a firm known for its preservation work.

The funding also supports a graduate-level design studio that focuses on reuse of historic buildings.

FRESHWATER SCiENCESA few feet from Lake Michigan stands a major addition to UW-Milwaukee and the study of freshwater sciences worldwide. Opened in summer 2014, the School of Freshwater Sciences new Starboard facility comprises 92,000 square feet: a pathogen-testing facility, biosecure and quarantine labs and the great Lakes genomics Center, America’s only DNA sequencing lab dedicated to water and environmental issues.

if you can’t find us here, we’re probably out on Lake Michigan.

SCIENCEBIg

How do we preserve our most vital resources – clean water to drink, ample air to breathe, healthy children and families? Science provides clues and can lead to answers, but collaboration is key to implementation. So is innovation.

Entrepreneurs, scientists and public officials who take part in our research endeavors seek both what has always been a part of Milwaukee and what UW-Milwaukee faculty bring to this region today. One of the world’s greatest bodies of water continues to shape our culture, commerce and health as a region. Lake Michigan is now the primary research facility for our School of Freshwater Sciences. City-based industrial spaces continue to welcome entrepreneurs and engineers. Today their products are high-speed underwater optical systems, one-of-a-kind design, microsensors that cleanse our most precious natural resource.

Big SCiENCE 3636

{trout}tHEfaltering fish?

Lake Michigan was once home to the largest commercial fishery of lake trout in the world. But by the 1950s, overfishing and the invasive sea lamprey had dramatically reduced their numbers. For decades, the native fish has resisted a comeback, despite interventions that brought the sea lamprey under control and a government program that continues to stock the lake with trout.

“it’s been half a century, and we’re just not getting positive results,” says John Janssen, a professor of freshwater sciences and a recognized expert in fish ecology in the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences. His quest is to diagnose and treat the lake trout’s reproductive woes.

Since coming to UW-Milwaukee in 2000, Janssen has been a primary gatherer of information about lake trout and an indispensable resource for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR), says Bradley Eggold, the DNR’s southern Lake Michigan fisheries supervisor.

in 2004, Janssen was the first to find baby lake trout in deep water 30 miles from the Sheboygan, Wisconsin, shoreline – an area known as the Mid-Lake Reef Complex. Now a major aspect of the DNR’s plan to manage the lake trout calls for stocking certain strains of the fish in the Mid-Lake Reef.

“He’s done a lot of geographical mapping of lake trout out in that location,” says Eggold. “He’s helped us pinpoint where they are, based on his overall tracking of the fish’s preferred habitat. Before he came, i don’t think people believed that there was any lake trout natural reproduction going on there.”

If you build it, will they come?in 2008, We Energies joined forces with the DNR and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to design and build an artificial reef to test whether lake trout would lay their eggs in a custom-made environment.

Six reef structures were built at a location 2 1/2 miles from shore, between the cities of Milwaukee and Racine.

Janssen’s charge was to assess the reef’s use by both lake trout and yellow perch, another declining native species. Sampling between 2008 and 2013, Janssen and his students collected very little evidence that either fish was using the artificial reef.

in roughly the same time period, the DNR has recorded a slow increase in the number of young trout without any fin clips, an indication that they probably were naturally reproduced.


John Janssen

doCtoR IS INMultiple culprits?“i don’t think the artificial reef is the answer,” says Janssen. in fact, he says, stimulating a resurgence of the trout may not be about location at all. He and other scientists say indications are strong that the decline of the invasive alewife in lakes Michigan and Huron could explain why young trout have increased – most likely under natural conditions – in the last few years.

“Trout eat the alewives, which contain an enzyme called thiamine that then causes a vitamin deficiency in the eggs and young,” he says.

But alewife numbers are down dramatically in the lake, thanks to management strategies to bring them under control, says DNR’s Eggold.

it’s likely that the remedy is not singular, Janssen is quick to add. it’s too difficult to identify a precise formula that promises the return of a sustainable lake trout population. There are too many variables: location of the stocking, the strain or species being stocked, the time of year the DNR stocks and the size of the fish.

Whatever the remedy, discovering why lake trout have struggled to reproduce as they once did is essential information, says Janssen.

“The lake is a big, complicated machine, and we don’t know what all the pieces do. You don’t know what will happen if you take one part out, maybe nothing. But then, if it really is important, you won’t know until it’s gone.”

Junhong Chen and Bob Heideman

Big SCiENCE 3838

serious SSENSINg A dEMANd foR BEttER WAtER MoNItoRINg Between the treatment plant and the tap in people’s homes lies a stretch of the unknown. “We always take it for granted that the drinking water is safe after it is distributed from the utilities,” says engineer Junhong Chen. “in reality, especially with an aging infrastructure, older pipes contain materials like lead that can leach into water by the time it reaches homes.”

from left: Junhong Chen and david garman.


ENSoRSserious Singesting heavy metals like lead is detrimental to human health, particularly to children. Bacteria that can infiltrate through cracks in pipes also pose a health risk.

That’s why Chen and a cluster of other UW-Milwaukee researchers are developing the next generation of high-performance micro-sensors that can continuously monitor water systems and detect contamination at the very moment it happens, even in trace amounts.

“This technology will be radically new, making time-consuming and costly sampling obsolete and primitive by comparison,” says Chen, a professor of mechanical engineering.

This work will feed the development of new products, helping Milwaukee snare its part of the $500 billion global freshwater technology market.

“it’s a very big priority for us,” says Dave Averbeck, chief engineer of water treatment at A.O. Smith Corp., a Fortune 500 company that produces water heaters and purifiers. “Customers pay a lot of money for water treatment, and they want some assurances that the system they purchase is reliable. There are water sensing products out in the market now, but they aren’t specific for the target contaminants, which are primarily heavy metals and bacteria.”

in fact, a major reason membership in the Water Equipment and Policy (WEP) Research Center in Milwaukee has doubled in the last year is the interest in water sensor technologies. Backed by the National Science Foundation, WEP is a member-based consortium of industries, including A.O. Smith, and researchers at UW-Milwaukee and Marquette University.

Many sensing platformsChen’s sensors are so small that hundreds of them occupy a silicon wafer the size of a fingernail – the right size to be integrated into existing water equipment like pumps, purifiers, meters and pipes.

The sensor material he developed blends two kinds of nano-structures, yielding a material that is cost-effective, highly accurate and “tunable” to detect a range of targets.

This is of particular interest to three of Chen’s industry partners: A.O. Smith; the Milwaukee-based meter manufacturer Badger Meter; and Baker Manufacturing, a Madison-based manufacturer of water pumps and filters.

The work has attracted an $800,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, matched one-to-one by partners, which also includes Chen’s own startup company, NanoAffix LLC.

Chen’s work constitutes one slice of UW-Milwaukee’s research in water sensors, projects that are conducted by faculty in several disciplines.

Speeding products to marketAnother path for rapid discovery in water sensing began last year when funding from the University of Wisconsin System established a Water Technology Accelerator (WaTA) through the School of Freshwater Sciences at UW-Milwaukee.

Product development seeded through WaTA includes three water-sensor projects, says David garman, dean of the school, who has teamed with Chen to produce a water sensor for rapid detection of low levels of E. coli.

Ultimately, the research is aimed at perfecting individual sensors so that networks of them can be connected to modeling software that would analyze and monitor all the parts of an entire ecosystem or water distribution system at once.

“it would enable us to consult Big Data at fine detail, which would give us, for the first time, a full picture of what’s going on in Lake Michigan and alert us immediately if conditions change.”

The payoff would be enormous, he says. “You could now see how monitoring the lake directly affects your health.”

More UW-MilWaUkee research in Water sensorsreal-time optical sensors for wastewater treatment control. (Peter geissinger and Alan Schwabacher, Chemistry)

autonomous wireless sensors that monitor the movement of water through trees. (Stefan Schnitzer, Freshwater Sciences)

a multiple-monitoring “lab on a buoy.” (Matt Smith, Freshwater Sciences)

Water-related ph sensors. (Woo-Jin Chang, Mechanical Engineering)

Big SCiENCE 4040

tiny

from left: Jose Ramirez and Rudi Strickler.

BuBB EXPERtISE IN WAtER RESEARCH dRAWS StARtuPS to tHE REgIoNA UW-Milwaukee water scientist known internationally for his high-speed video of aquatic life lends his technology to a startup in search of nearly microscopic bubbles.Biologist Rudi Strickler’s research on microscopic aquatic organisms, called zooplankters, has reversed previous scholarship that asserted the tiny lobster-like creatures survived by chance encounters.

This internationally known work has been possible because Strickler can see them with high-speed video in optical systems that he designs and builds himself in his lab at Milwaukee’s global Water Center.

Seeing is truly believing. Observing Strickler’s academic inventiveness in a business setting convinced Chicago- based entrepreneur Jose Ramirez to locate his startup company, MikroFlot Technologies, at the gWC.


lES BuBB MikroFlot is a business that removes suspended contaminants from wastewater using micro-bubbles to herd particles to the surface so they can be skimmed away.

“The smaller the bubbles, the more efficient the removal of very fine particles will be,” says Ramirez.

Turns out, creating micro-bubbles is surprisingly difficult.

“i saw immediately that the camera techniques he uses to observe tiny animals would help me with seeing the bubbles at the scale i use them,” says Ramirez, who himself holds a PhD – in engineering.

the secret life of zooplanktersStrickler, a Shaw Distinguished Professor of biological sciences based at the gWC, has been recording the bottom of the aquatic food chain since the 1980s, thanks in part to his deftness as an inventor.

Magnification of the barely visible organisms is only one challenge to filming them. Zooplankters move their mouthparts 60 times per second.

Yet Strickler’s cameras offer such a clear view of zooplankton behavior that he’s been able to prove the creatures manipulate the water around them to find mates, avoid predators and snatch morsels of alga (one of his videos shows the animal spitting out food it didn’t like).

Strickler’s techniques are giving Ramirez the same visible proof in his quest for the perfect bubble.

Larger bubbles rise more quickly in water, leaving little time to collide, and it’s the collision that forces solidified contaminants up to the top. it is more energy-efficient, says Ramirez, to generate micro-bubbles selectively.

“We need to understand all the variables that result in the kind of bubble we need,” Ramirez says. Using a high-speed camera and a laser, the pair is testing conditions like pressure, pulsation and airflow rate in the bubble-making process.

Valuable give and takeMikroFlot is among 14 startups housed at the gWC, sharing space and equipment with a cluster of corporate partners and other organizations that have ties to Milwaukee’s burgeoning water sector. UW-Milwaukee scientists and students who conduct related research occupy the top floor.

“There’s a cross-section of the university’s top scientists located here, from freshwater sciences to engineering,” says Strickler, making joint work between business and academic research as easy as a short trip down the hall. Students involved in collaborative research here are introduced to new ideas from business and vice-versa.

Entrepreneurs aren’t the only ones interested in the gWC, says Dean Amhaus, president and CEO of the Water Council, the economic development agency that created the center. The council brings together industry, academia and government officials to promote the city’s leadership in water technology innovation.

in 2014 alone, the Water Council hosted visitors from 26 countries interested in the work being done by gWC entrepreneurs and scientists. Officials from the general Counsel of Canada, for example, have asked to meet with Strickler.

Although his work attracts global interest, the scientist says Milwaukee’s industrial and manufacturing pedigree has kept him anchored to the city for the last 25 years. “in this city, you can still find places that can fabricate something you need and get it to you quickly and relatively cheaply.”

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Brooke Slavens

20M


gEARINg uP to BooSt CoMfoRt foR WHEElCHAIR uSERSit takes more than 20 muscles in the arms and upper body to propel a manual wheelchair. That constant repetitive motion usually causes shoulder injury and pain for people who depend on wheelchairs for mobility.

USCLESgetting around hurts, but it doesn’t stop most of her patients from using a manual wheelchair, says Dr. Vaishnavi Muqeet, a physician at the Clement J. Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Milwaukee. The reason, she says, is they fear that they will lose their main form of exercise – and their independence.

On the fast track to intervention is Brooke Slavens, an assistant professor in UW-Milwaukee’s College of Health Sciences Department of Occupational Science & Technology.

Slavens has joined with an illinois startup company, intelliWheels, on a research project that proposes an entirely different idea for manual wheelchair assistance.

The company has created a multigeared wheel system that operates much like the gears on a bike. This system allows the user to maintain a steady speed on an incline with the same amount of effort as on level ground.

“There are no solutions that are similar to what we are doing, so it’s a unique aspect of a simple concept,” says Slavens.

She and Muqeet are testing the intelliWheels prototype with patients at the VA hospital who have spinal cord injuries. The research collaboration also includes the University of illinois at Urbana-Champaign and TiLite, a manufacturer of ultra-light wheelchairs.

The project, funded by the National institutes of Health (NiH), could be an ideal compromise for chair users: They can manage their discomfort while continuing to use a manual wheelchair.

“This study is giving us direct clinical interaction with patients,” says Slavens, “and it has great potential for changing how people use their chairs.”

Mapping joint stressAdult manual wheelchair users make four distinct patterns with their arms and wrists to propel themselves. identifying the most damaging aspects of those patterns is a goal Slavens is working toward.

With the help of some of the most advanced simulation software available, Slavens is revealing vital information that could help wheelchair users change arm-movement habits because they can actually see where the stress occurs by watching the animated program.

“We’re able to use our models to see when joint forces are really high with certain motions,” she says. “This is how we quantify which patterns result in the most force to the joint, and then we can provide recommendations to patients.”

Mentoring Slavens, as part of a prestigious Career Development Award from the NiH, are two experts in the rehabilitation field. One is Stanford University Professor Scott Delp. Slavens joins thousands of investigators in an international research collaboration using Delp’s OpenSim software to make and exchange biomechanical models.

Another mentor is Jules Dewald, chair of the Department of Physical Therapy and Human Movement Sciences at Northwestern University. Dewald’s work combines neurophysiology, imaging and signal analysis techniques, rehabilitation robotics and clinical testing.

“My ultimate goal is to help surgeons, clinicians and therapists improve someone’s life,” says Slavens. “And when that happens, there’s no limit to what people can do.”

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CHoKINg A foRESt’S ABIlIty to tAME CARBoNThe dense forests of Panama are representative of many of the Earth’s tropical forests. Here, biologist Stefan Schnitzer and his team of student researchers use sophisticated data-collection equipment – and machetes – to prove that a botanical competitor is threatening trees.

It’s bad news – and not just for treehuggers.The loss of trees weakens our best defense in the battle against rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) – a greenhouse gas that hastens climate change.

All trees soak up CO2 during photosynthesis, but tropical forests are true hoarders, storing around one-third of the terrestrial carbon on the planet.

Their competitors are parasitic woody vines, called lianas. Schnitzer has found that lianas are increasing in tropical forests throughout Central and South America, choking out the mature trees that store the most carbon.

Lianas use trees to support their thin stems as they climb to the forest canopy. There, they blot out sunlight required for tree growth. To make matters worse, lianas are more drought resistant than many tree species and continue to grow during the dry season, when trees fall dormant.

Although lianas also take up carbon during photosynthesis, they account for only a mere fraction of the amount of carbon that trees accumulate.

Stefan Schnitzer

tree tRou


“When plants compete in a tropical forest, people think it’s a zero-sum game – the one that prevails takes up the same amount of carbon that the one that was displaced did,” says Schnitzer, a professor in UW-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences. “But this assumption is now being challenged.”

getting a footholdin the first experimental study to demonstrate that competition between plants can result in forest-carbon loss, Schnitzer has quantified the outcome of runaway liana growth. The verdict: Lianas can reduce forest-wide carbon uptake (mostly by trees) by nearly 20 percent.

Lianas grow quickly in gaps created by fallen trees, a process that tells the carbon-imbalance story best, says Schnitzer.

To determine how much damage was being done, he conducted an eight-year liana-removal experiment.

in research supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), he and his team, armed with machetes, chopped out lianas in some plots in the Panamanian forest and recorded the rate of tree growth and mortality in all of the sites.

By comparing data from liana-free plots with plots in the same forest where lianas were present, they quantified the extent to which vines limited tree growth: Lianas reduced tree-carbon accumulation by nearly 200 percent in the cleared areas. The lianas themselves were able to compensate for only 24 percent of the carbon that they displaced in trees.

Data collection has been daunting. Across a 125-acre plot, the researchers have tracked over 67,000 lianas. No matter what species of liana, the researchers found that most of the trees in plots where treefall occurred were negatively affected by the vines.

Restoring balanceWhat is driving this proliferation of lianas? Schnitzer says it still isn’t clear. His lab has an NSF grant pending to investigate this question.

The outlook isn’t completely bleak, however.

Despite lianas’ hardiness, Schnitzer doesn’t believe the encroachment of lianas will ultimately smother whole forests.

“it’s still beneficial to be a tree,” he says. “Once they gain a canopy position, they could be there for 500 years, putting out lots and lots of seeds year after year. Also, vines have a higher mortality rate than trees.”

One to 2 percent of the tropical forest turns over annually. When trees fall, they rip some of the lianas away from the canopy. if the remaining trees are big enough, they stay vine-free for a long time, says Schnitzer, because it’s more difficult for the lianas to gain a foothold on large trees.


BlE

from left: biology major david defilippis; biology doctoral candidate Ellie Rodriguez; and recent uW-Milwaukee grad Jeremy la Che, who now runs the lab.

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Amy Kalkbrenner

Autism isn’t caused by vaccines. it’s not contagious. There is certainly a genetic component to it. About its origins, epidemiologist Amy Kalkbrenner has this to add: “There is something about traffic-related air pollution that can be linked to autism rates. We’re not sure what exactly, but the latest research shows we’re on to something.”

Kalkbrenner’s landmark study, just published in the journal Epidemiology, showed that air pollution’s impact on autism rates in North Carolina is similar to results of pollution-autism studies in California – despite weather and climate differences between the two states.

These findings build on previous studies that have shed light on the origins of the world’s fastest growing developmental disorder. Kalkbrenner and her colleagues found that exposure to higher amounts of traffic-related air pollution might do the most damage to unborn children in the third trimester of pregnancy.

“This supports the hypothesis that environmental chemicals are part of the autism puzzle,” says Kalkbrenner, who is an assistant professor in UW-Milwaukee’s Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health.

Kalkbrenner’s study zeroed in on PM10, airborne coarse and fine particulate matter that arises in part from traffic-related air pollution. A research team of eight evaluated mounds of medical records, covering pre-conception through the first birthday for 87,000 children in North Carolina and 77,500 in California born in the mid- to late 1990s. Key regions in each state were selected based on the team’s ability to simultaneously measure the level of particulate matter present and know which children had autism in these regions.

Researchers used a new, more exact tool to measure the levels of particulate matter in smaller slices of time, based on pollution at the family’s address during pregnancy. With this method, they were able to compare exposures during specific weeks of pregnancy. Approximately 1,000 children who later developed some form of autism spectrum disorder were then compared to all other children.

Better measurement tools and the two-state comparison are what make this study more likely valuable, Kalkbrenner says. Evidence for a link between a chemical exposure and a health impact like autism is more likely when it can be shown in more than one region.

“We’ve now had three solid studies saying the same thing. The evidence is pretty compelling that something is going on with air pollution and autism,” says Kalkbrenner.

“Our findings of greater susceptibility in the third trimester are consistent with other studies that demonstrate links between autism and altered brain network development, specifically synaptic connections that develop during the final months of pregnancy.”

Future research will dig deeper into the chemical components if the autism-pollution connection. What chemicals are most dangerous? When is their impact strongest?

AutISM: Could tHE dISoRdER BE lINKEd to tHE AIR WE BREAtHE?

{dir t y}

catalyst grant

supporttHE uWM RESEARCH fouNdAtIoN:

Research and education that transform the economy

catalyst Grants make a difference in bringing promising

early-stage research at UW-Milwaukee to market.

take partPartner to support research and

innovation in the Milwaukee area: uWMresearchfoundation.org

Where do the creative ideas generated in UW-Milwaukee’s research labs go? They involve, teach and inspire students, of course, but through the UWM Research Foundation (UWMRF), those ideas also make their way into the hands of local and state industry.

in many cases, the best way to get research out to the broadest possible audience is by taking it to the commercial marketplace. That’s where the UWMRF can help.

We not only manage intellectual property for university inventors, but we foster commercialization of new technology by investing the most promising early-stage work through our Catalyst grant Program. Now in its seventh year, the program has awarded more than $3.7 million in seed funding for 67 projects.

Administered by the UWMRF, the Catalyst grants originate in our own backyard, supplied by industry and foundations with deep roots in Milwaukee, including the Rockwell Automation Charitable Corp., the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, gE Healthcare and the Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation.

Together these donors provide a pool of resources used to seed research development in areas where UW-Milwaukee has the greatest potential to impact the regional economy – areas such as water, energy and health care.

These are also sectors where UW-Milwaukee has strategically partnered with companies like A.O. Smith and Badger Meter, Johnson Controls and gE Healthcare. Outcomes to date are shown in the graphic on this page.

UW-Milwaukee’s industry collaborative research involves students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, which is supplying a workforce tailored to fit employers’ needs.

The UWMRF is also part of a greater effort to equip our students with entrepreneurial skills. Our support for the Student Startup Challenge offers students an avenue to attempt to turn ideas into startup companies. But more important, our programs help to transform them into innovators. UW-Milwaukee graduates are going to be more valuable to existing companies if they already understand the process of moving an idea into the marketplace and have experienced the leadership necessary to make that happen.

Simply put, UW-Milwaukee research makes Wisconsin companies more competitive. And that’s the best result of all.

Want to know more? We would welcome a chance to explore your needs and share with you the resources of this great institution at uWMresearchfoundation.org.

$3.7 Million

Awarded Since 2007

$13.5 Million

In Follow-on Funding

14patents

7startupCompanies

18 License & Option

agreements

Brian thompson, President of the uWM Research foundation

uwm.edu/MadeInMKE

take partPartner to support research and

innovation in Milwaukee and beyond.

Documents

UWM Research Report 2015