graduate student research

Astrophysical discovery rekindles excitement among researchers

Posted on

Deep in the ice beneath the South Pole, an array of sensors in the IceCube detector picked up on something in September 2017 that hinted at a solution to a centuries-old mystery.

In the following months, a team of international scientists including a number of UW-Madison graduate students scrutinized everything they knew about the cosmic event. They arrived at the conclusion that the subatomic, ghostly particle called a neutrino that entered the detector had come from a specific type of galaxy, far away from Earth.

Graduate degree bolsters clinician’s research into preventing blindness

Posted on

The technology for an eye specialist to review a picture of a patient’s eye taken miles away to screen for eye disease has been around for decades. Yet, less than half of Wisconsin adults with diabetes, who are particularly vulnerable to vision-threatening diseases, get annual eye screenings. Yao Liu, MD, an assistant professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, has been working to increase access to this technology.

Reimagining computer science education

Posted on

When Adalbert Gerald Soosai Raj came to UW–Madison for a master’s degree in Computer Sciences, he was surprised by the number of questions in the classroom. Why, he wondered, was it so different than his native India, where conversations were one-way and students rarely asked questions? The possibilities Soosai Raj is exploring to that end promise new directions for computer science education.

Translating raw data into insight

Posted on

Niko Escanilla was drawn from his background in mathematics to graduate study in artificial intelligence and machine learning because he was looking for a discipline that could be applied in real world and clinical settings. As a graduate student in Computer Sciences, Escanilla had the chance to put those techniques to work as a research assistant on a UW2020-funded project, assessing variables that can predict the risk of breast cancer.

Archiving today’s culture for tomorrow’s researchers, through podcasts

Posted on

When Samuel Hansen started producing podcasts about mathematics and science, it was possible for a small, independent podcast like Hansen’s to rank in the country’s top 60 most popular shows. Now, the top charts are dominated by network-produced podcasts, a change that has taken place in the last 10 years alone – but not the last the world of podcasting will see.

To preserve podcasts as they are now, and archive the changes within them, a project at UW–Madison is dedicated to making today’s podcasts available well into the future.

Taking a hands-on approach to catalyst research

Posted on

To Keishla Rivera-Dones, chemical engineering is about more than dealing with chemical reactions; it’s about understanding the building blocks of everything.

A PhD student at UW–Madison in the Dumesic and Huber Research Groups, Rivera-Dones works with supported metal catalysts and applies them to promote and improve the efficiency of chemical reactions.

Bob Dylan’s electric guitar and leather jacket inspire a dissertation

Posted on

Rivka Maizlish studies folk music, folklore, folk art, folk medicine – but she is not a folklorist. Maizlish is an intellectual historian, about to embark on a fellowship with the Smithsonian Institution to dive more deeply into the question, how did people in 20th century America define folk?

“I got interested in that from a number of angles,” said Maizlish, a PhD student at UW–Madison, “but the main thing is I just really love Bob Dylan.”

Applying machine learning models to improve dairy farm management

Posted on

As new technologies have opened doors for dairy farms to harness more data from their herds than ever before, farmers around the state have embraced these innovations.

That leaves farmers with vast amounts of data – on cows, herds, farms, the market, crops, and soils – but, as of yet, no way to integrate the entirety of that data into farm management.