Advances

(Advances gives a glimpse of the many significant research projects at the university. Tell us about your discoveries by e-mailing: wisweek@news.wisc.edu.) Advances gives a glimpse of the many significant research projects at the university. Tell us about your discoveries. E-mail: wisweek@news.wisc.edu.

Companies with UW roots gain national recognition
Two Wisconsin companies born of UW–Madison research, DNASTAR of Madison and Gala Design of Sauk City, have been selected as winners of the Sixth Annual Tibbetts Awards by the U.S. Small Business Administration.

The Tibbetts Awards recognize companies as “models of excellence” and leaders in innovation, job creation, growth and technology applications that have important social impact. They are awarded annually as part of the Small Business Innovation Research Program.

DNASTAR, founded in 1982 by UW–Madison genetics professor Fredrick Blattner and programmer John Schroeder, produces software used by scientists worldwide to help make sense of the mass of genetic information that powers much of modern biology. The company employs 25 people, many of them UW–Madison graduates.

Gala Design, founded in 1996 from research in the Department of Dairy Science, focuses on the production of proteins coded by the human genome and proteins used as pharmaceuticals. The company has 36 employees.

Both Gala Design and DNASTAR benefited from SBIR grants for startup.

School-family project prepares for national rollout
The U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance has awarded $1.8 million to senior scientist Lynn McDonald for her research project, The Families and Schools Together Project: Building Relationships.

McDonald developed the FAST program in 1991 to support the development of relationships among parents, schools and the community to enhance children’s academic and social performance.

The federal grant will help FAST launch as a major national initiative. FAST has been introduced to 600 schools in 38 states and four Indian nations.

The U.S. Department of Justice in a recent report recognizes the FAST Program as addressing “the urgent social problems of youth violence and chronic juvenile delinquency by building and enhancing youth’s relationships with their families, peers, teachers, school staff, and other members of the community.”

Such relationships form a “social safety net” for young, at-risk children that helps them to succeed at home, in school and in the community, the government agency says. With Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl’s support, McDonald says, FAST has had national recognition, and federal research and development support since 1991.

La Follette School to study charter schools
The La Follette School of Public Affairs has been awarded a $650,000 federal grant to study how well charter schools are working in Wisconsin.

The large range of educational choices available to Milwaukee families, compared with the smaller set of choices for other districts, sets up “a natural experiment” for research in the state, says John Witte, director of the La Follette School and principal researcher for the project.

The two-year study, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, is expected to provide information on the role of competition in education and its effects on student achievement and educational efficiency.

“By studying charter schools across the state, we will learn a great deal about how they work in Wisconsin and their performance relative to public schools,” Witte says. “We will also gain an understanding of the effects of competition on the initiation, performance and competitive linkages between charters, traditional public schools and other types of choice schools.”