graduate student research

Vacant, but not empty – graduate student explores the use of abandoned properties

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Vacant properties are often seen as remnants of the housing crisis or vestiges of industries that are no longer as present as they once were in U.S. cities. But graduate student Elsa Noterman sees more in these vacant properties, including current uses and important histories.

A PhD student in the UW-Madison Geography Department, Noterman was recently awarded a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation and American Council of Learned Society (ACLS) for 2018-19 for her dissertation exploring the conflict that arises over use and ownership of spaces in the urban commons.

Graduate student profile: Graduating PhD student reflects on research, outreach, and looks to future plans

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When PhD candidate Michelle Pizzo joined the Pharmaceutical Sciences program, she didn’t know what, exactly, she would be researching. Since then, she has made advancements in the field of pharmaceutical science and discovered a new direction she is excited to pursue.

Joining the Thorne lab in 2012, Pizzo came on board at a time when a new project was developing. Researchers already believed that the perivascular spaces – the tubular spaces around blood vessels – in the brain could take on waste clearance role, but the Thorne lab wanted to see if those routes could also be used to deliver drugs to the brain, Pizzo said.

Graduate student profile: Morales facilitates exchange among Indigenous peoples

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The way Reynaldo A. Morales tells it, his research is the story of knowledge, and the peoples who have preserved complex ways of knowing how to communicate with Earth.

A joint PhD candidate in Curriculum and Instruction and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, Morales explores Indigenous knowledge systems, and how their exchange is essential to sustainability around the world.

How human interactions with autonomous vehicles affect safety

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The idea of riding an autonomous shuttle around campus on the regular seems closer to reality after the Wisconsin Automated Vehicle Proving Grounds shuttle demonstrations last week. But before autonomous vehicles can become mainstream, the people who will commute in them have to be comfortable with the technology.

For graduate student Hannah Silber, that entails closing the gap between an autonomous vehicle’s “brain” and the human one.