About Us
The Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery is a visionary public-private partnership that is creating two world-class biomedical research institutes. Its partners include donors John and Tashia Morgridge, the State of Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin (UW-Madison), and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF).
When it opens in December 2010, the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery facility will house twin interdisciplinary research institutes: The Morgridge Institute for Research, a private, not-for-profit, research institute dedicated to improving human health by accelerating scientific discovery to patient delivery; and the public Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, which is part of the UW-Madison organized under its Graduate School. The state-of-the-art facility will bring together scientists and researchers from a broad spectrum of disciplines, such as the arts, humanities, social sciences, education, business and law . It also will include extensive public spaces in its Town Center (link) intended to promote dialog as a fertile crossroads for ideas among diverse parts of the UW-Madison and the larger community.
The key objectives of the public-private partnership are to:
- Foster new approaches to biological and medical programs at the convergence of biotechnology, information technology and nanotechnology;
- Create the potential for a fundamental transformation of human biology and medicine;
- Provide cutting edge scientific advances for clinical application and translation in the UW-Madison Medical School's new Wisconsin Institute for Medical Research (formerly IRC);
- Build on the University's Cluster Hiring Program by engaging and supporting the more than 100 multi-disciplinary faculty hired as part of that initiative;
- Establish educational components that will integrate cross-disciplinary science into K-12, undergraduate and graduate education; and
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Facilitate the invention of technologies that can be transferred to the marketplace and create jobs.
