UWM Research 2018

2018

next w a ve The NeXT WAVE of discovery of discovery UWM scientists delve deeper into the unseen universe

ESEARCH

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inside 34

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CHANCELLOR’S WELCOME

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UWM’s research impact

FRONTIERS

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The secret lives of birds A forest frozen in time T he intersection of science, religion and politics 5 Giving children a voice about race 5 How addresses affect inequality 6 P erched on an aquaculture breakthrough 6 Checking in on school behavior 7 T eaching culturally diverse classrooms 7 B lowing up buildings 8 When origami meets chemistry 8 Comfort for the dying in Malawi 9 Influencing

researchers around the world 10 Brain reaction 10 G etting food to where it is needed most

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SPOTLIGHT on Health & Wellness 11 Wellness programs worth the weight 12 S eeking answers to opioid deaths 13 M aking anything possible 13 H elping African-Americans beat breast cancer 14 T he science of self-management 14 T aking a stand helps students Energy help from giant kelp Energizing the future of batteries Tin for the win?

Beating the cold Charging into the marketplace A win-wind proposition M icrogrid expertise, major initiative

FEATURES 19

V irtually Limitless

UWM’s Immersive Media Lab stretches the boundaries of virtual reality.

The Ethics of Big Data

How should researchers approach an era of unprecedented information?

The Next Wave of Discovery

UWM’s role in a Nobel Prize-winning effort helped pull back the curtain on the unseen universe.

Menopause on Your Mind

How estrogen loss affects memory.

Renewable Horizons

Wilkistar Otieno helps companies get the most out of what they make.

Stoking an Industrial Revolution

UWM’s new Connected Systems Institute lays the groundwork for manufacturing innovation.

A Map to Recovery

A collaborative UWM project may revive the fish and environment of Milwaukee’s inner harbor.

An Immigrant’s Journey

Chia Youyee Vang’s own refugee experience sparked her passion to explore the lives of Hmong people worldwide.

BOOKS from UWM 46

Recent releases from our faculty

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH 48 50

SPOTLIGHT on Energy 15 16 16 16 17 18 18

How Math Makes Movies of Molecules

3-D movies of some of the smallest machines of life.

An immediate impact When data is for the birds

GRADUATE RESEARCH 51 52 53 53 54 54

The mystery of beach bum bacteria A beer from yesteryear The brain surgery app A dose of humor for treating fears Exercise and the telltale heart A doctorate earned from afar in Oman

Q&A 56

Justice for all

BY the NUMBERS 57

An elite research institution

Chancellor: Mark A. Mone Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs: Johannes Britz Interim Vice Provost for Research: Mark Harris Vice Chancellor for University Relations and Communications: Tom Luljak (’95) Senior Director of Integrated Marketing & Communications: Michelle Johnson Editor/Publications Manager: Howie Magner Copy Editor: John Schumacher Staff Writers: Angela McManaman (’00, ’08), Laura L. Otto, Kathy Quirk, Sarah Vickery and Greg Walz-Chojnacki Contributing Writers: Dan Egan, Nicole Etter, Adam Hinterthuer, David Lewellen, Jennifer Morales, Rich Rovito, Silke Schmidt, Pamela Seiler, Dan Simmons and Matthew Wamser Senior Art Director/Creative Lead: Shelly Rosenquist Designers: Kelly Grulkowski, Kendell Hafner (‘14), Lesley Kelling, Allie Kilmer and Hannah Jablonski ('06) Photography: Alexis Amenson, Pete Amland, Troye Fox and Elora Hennessey ('17) University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee P.O. Box 413 Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413

Like us: Facebook.com/uwmilwaukee Follow us: twitter.com/uwm Watch our videos: youtube.com/uwmnews Check out our photos: instagram.com/uwmilwaukee

uwm.edu/uwmresearch

Chancellor’s Welcome I’m amazed every day at the sheer breadth of research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and I’m immensely proud of the faculty, staff and students whose commitment drives it forward. As you read this latest edition of UWM Research, you’ll understand why.

You will see journeys of discovery that take you from the smallest molecules of life to the farthest reaches of outer space. You’ll learn how UWM is helping revolutionize industries close to home and sharing the stories of refugees halfway around the world. You’ll read about the barely tapped potential of virtual reality and the very real impact of our energy, freshwater and entrepreneurial research.

Our cover story details how UWM physicists contributed to a Nobel Prizewinning quest that’s changing how astronomers uncover the secrets of our universe. We’ll also introduce to you our new Connected Systems Institute, which is partnering with top companies to lay the groundwork for a new industrial revolution.

Our Spotlight on Energy section shows how researchers are developing new possibilities for wind turbines, batteries and biofuel. And our Spotlight on Health & Wellness explores beneficial strategies for children and adults while explaining important battles against cancer and opioids.

Students play an enormous role in our discoveries, too, and you’ll see how in our Undergraduate Research and Graduate Research sections.

There is much more inside and online at uwm.edu/uwmresearch.

So, I invite you to read on, and discover why we are one of the nation’s top 115 research universities.

Best regards,

Mark A. Mone Chancellor

FRONTIERS

The Secret Lives of Birds For a research lab, this one has quite the view.

Ornithologists Peter Dunn and Linda Whittingham are in their 21st year of studying tree swallows here at the UWM Field Station, set within a 320-acre wetland near Saukville, Wisconsin.

“It’s undisturbed,” says Dunn, a distinguished professor of biological sciences, “so you can record long-term change.”

It’s allowed Whittingham, a professor of biological sciences, and Dunn to uncover a secret life among female swallows: They quietly have extra mates, while the jilted male tends the nest containing offspring that he may – or may not – have sired.

Ninety percent of birds are monogamous, with mated couples raising their young together. But Dunn and Whittingham are most interested in birds that don’t follow that playbook because such behavior could lead to better disease resistance in their offspring.

For some birds, the strategy of “fooling around” increases the number of healthy offspring while passing along genes tied to strong immune systems – and better survival. Dunn and Whittingham have shown that females seeking extra mates are attracted by male plumage that tends to be brighter.

They also found that extra-pair matings produce offspring with brighter feathers, suggesting a reproductive payoff for both males and females.

This avian preference for the beautiful is more than featherdeep, Dunn says. If certain physical traits are signals of genes for strong immune systems in birds, could a similar benefit exist in humans, who also use immune systems to fend off disease? “We’re not that far away in basic animal research from things important to humans,” he says.

uwm.edu/uwmresearch

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FRONTIERS

A forest frozen in time During Antarctica’s summer, from late November 2016 through January 2017, an international team including UWM geologists Erik Gulbranson and John Isbell climbed the frozen slopes of the Transantarctic Gulbranson Mountains. High above the ice fields, they discovered fossil fragments of 13 trees from the end of the Permian Period, which predates the first dinosaurs.

The Permian Period ended 251 million years ago in history’s greatest mass extinction when the Earth rapidly grew warmer. More than 90 percent of Earth’s species disappeared, including the polar

forests. Remnants of those forests were exactly what the researchers were seeking, and what they found.

Media outlets around the world reported the discovery, including National Geographic, Newsweek, BBC, CNN, Scientific American and El Mundo, the second-largest newspaper in Spain.

“This forest is a glimpse of life before the extinction, which can help us understand what caused the event,” Gulbranson says. “With further study, we can better understand how greenhouse gases and climate change affect life on Earth.”

Because the Antarctic forests grew at polar latitudes where plants can’t grow today, Gulbranson believes that the trees were an extremely hearty species, and he is trying to determine why they went extinct.

The intersection of science, religion and politics Science and religion have butted heads since the days of Copernicus and Galileo, and it seems especially prevalent in American politics.

“There is this assumption in the popular imagination,” says Timothy O’Brien, a UWM assistant professor of sociology, “that if you’re scientifically oriented, you can’t be religious, and if you’re religious, you can’t be scientifically oriented. That is true to some extent.”

But O’Brien’s research shows that some 20 to 30 percent of the United States electorate doesn’t fit that stereotype, and is instead both religious and scientifically literate. He and University of Wyoming research partner Shiri Noy have dubbed this group “post-seculars.”

O’Brien and Noy examined publicly available survey data and sorted respondents into categories. “Traditionals” were the most religiously devout and the least attuned to science, while “moderns” were most familiar with and favorable toward science. Those two groups account for 70 to 80 percent of Americans, and their core beliefs “differ in virtually every domain of human society,” O’Brien says, including criminal justice, civil liberties, race relations and sexuality. “As you might expect, moderns tend to hold more liberal or progressive opinions, and traditionals tend to be more conservative or orthodox.”

Post-seculars, meanwhile, have worldviews that blend elements of both science and religion, which creates atypical attitudes toward social issues. They are more conservative when it comes to gender and sexuality but lean progressive when it comes to social justice, civil liberties and education.

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So scientifically oriented Americans aren’t necessarily liberal, and religious Americans aren’t necessarily conservative.

“The overall finding,” O’Brien says, “is that people’s attitudes about science and religion really map onto their sociopolitical attitudes in a more diverse set of ways than I think people usually acknowledge.”

Traditionals and moderns do vote predictably along party lines. There is more flexibility among post-seculars, who lean Republican, but less predictably. “It’s the post-seculars who have disproportionate sway in American political elections,” O’Brien says.

Giving children a voice about race At a moment when race and racism are prominent in the national conversation, Erin Winkler listens to people often unheard.

She researches the formation of racial beliefs, particularly in young children.

“We don’t listen to children enough,” says Winkler, an associate professor of Africology in UWM’s College of Letters & Science. “And adults haven't done a great job in fixing this problem.”

Kids as young as 2 1/2 reason people’s behaviors based on skin color. Winkler says they can answer questions such as, “What patterns do they see? Is this place safe for brown people or for white people?”

Winkler was part of a team at the Smithsonian Institution that taught schoolteachers how to have productive conversations about race in the classroom.

She says adults often deny children’s emerging insights and questions about racial differences by avoiding discussions of race altogether.

But ignoring such questions or using colorblind language denies children’s natural awareness of skin color differences and their observations of who seems to belong where.

“We’re more comfortable talking about culture than race, so that gets expressed in multiculturalism, like International Day,” Winkler says. “But that brings kids to the conclusion that we’re all the same. So, if they see inequities, they reason those must be deserved.”

of marginalization.

They’ll use digital cameras to “take photo journeys of their neighborhoods.”

When she interviewed mothers and children in Detroit, exploring how AfricanAmerican children begin to understand race, they provided valuable information about the family’s role. But they also led her to a new observation: Place itself creates racial identity.

Winkler will conduct group and one-on-one interviews about which photos they find most evocative. She wants to know, “Does it seem like the space belongs to anyone in particular? Who belongs? Who’s excluded? Does it feel safe or unsafe? Does the picture tell anything about themselves? And does any of that relate to race?”

Now she’s planning a project in New York City, working with AfricanAmerican and Latino children and youth experiencing homelessness or other forms

Winkler hopes her research will help the next generation find ways to make every place welcoming to people of all races.

How addresses affect inequality A child of the ’80s in Escanaba, Michigan, Marcus Britton joined the first wave of American kids dabbling in computer programming.

He’s still hooked. From his UWM sociology department office, the associate professor digs deep into massive data sets and writes analytical code, slowly unraveling the stark reality of what he calls place-based inequality.

“Segregation can even create poverty because it becomes harder for people to work when they live far from where the jobs are located,” Britton says. “That is the case in Milwaukee, where a lot of jobs are in suburban, predominantly white areas.”

Britton’s units of analysis are individuals – a Latina mother who delivered her baby at 28 weeks; an African-American boy who drops out of high school. They share one life-shaping similarity: urban segregation.

Where you grow up matters. To illustrate the point, he compares ZIP code 53206, a central Milwaukee neighborhood, and Whitefish Bay, a Milwaukee suburb.

They’re separated by less than five miles, but don't have much in common. The U.S. Census reports a poverty rate of 4.3 percent in Whitefish Bay. In 53206, that rate is more than 44 percent.

“That has consequences,” Britton says, “for the kinds of opportunities a child has, the kinds of outcomes that a child typically experiences later in terms of health or educational attainment.”

He believes his research can contribute health policy and business development ideas to address Milwaukee’s high African-American infant mortality rates and low employment rates for African-American men. When poverty is entrenched in a ZIP code, other disadvantages follow: violent crime, poor health outcomes, low graduation rates.

uwm.edu/uwmresearch

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FRONTIERS

Perched on an aquaculture breakthrough In a laboratory tank, 8,000 larval fish circle in schools, 18 days old and barely larger than an exclamation point. In another tank, a few thousand fish of the same species, yellow perch, are all grown up, trademark vertical stripes lining their 2-pound bodies. “You hook one of these guys, and you’re taking pictures,” says Osvaldo Jhonatan Sepulveda Villet, an assistant professor in UWM’s School of Freshwater Sciences.

The perch share the Freshwater Sciences lab with other research fish, including a giant tank swarming with baby sturgeon. About as long as a hand, the shark-like black fish skitter sideways across the water’s surface before resuming their leisurely swim. UWM is helping revive the numbers of sturgeon and perch, both of which were once plentiful in the Great Lakes.

Sepulveda Villet’s research focuses on shepherding yellow perch from commas to keepers and restoring the species through aquaculture. His work could have a dramatic commercial impact, too. The United States imports more than 90 percent of its seafood, resulting in a trade deficit of $14 billion in 2016.

Decades of research at UWM, pioneered by Fred Binkowski and now overseen by Sepulveda Villet, has shown massive gains. Up to 40 percent

Checking in on school behavior The challenge of teaching a classroom of students is magnified when some students are disruptive or not paying attention. David Klingbeil’s research aims to ease that burden by helping schools help students improve their behavior and academic results.

Klingbeil is studying CICO in 50 Milwaukee Public Schools. Half are using the traditional method and the other half are using the modified version. Klingbeil worked with the district to develop training for school staff.

Klingbeil is in the midst of a project with Milwaukee Public Schools, where he’s studying a modified version of the popular Check-In/ Check-Out program, or CICO.

Klingbeil will provide MPS full results and feedback on schools that implemented the modified CICO program.

“It’s an intervention for students who demonstrate mild problem behaviors,” says Klingbeil, an assistant professor of educational psychology in UWM’s School of Education.

CICO uses a daily point card to help students, teachers, parents and counselors track how students are doing on specific behavior goals. Students check in at the beginning of the day and pick up the cards.

They check out at day’s end with a completed card that’s taken home for parents to sign. Throughout the day, teachers provide feedback and positive encouragement to help keep students on track.

Klingbeil wants to know whether CICO can be improved by incorporating specific supports designed to change specific behaviors.

For example, if a student is always out of his seat or talking to friends across the room, a teacher might hypothesize the behavior shows a need for peer attention. The school’s intervention team would work with the teacher on ways to reinforce proper behavior. This could include having the student work with friends on an assignment if he meets the behavior goals.

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of the yellow perch grown there survive from hatch to market, double the rate of currently operating fish farms. Sepulveda Villet says a 50 percent yield is within reach.

“You’re making it cheaper to produce the fish,” he says.

In the late 1980s, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources surveys in Lake Michigan netted 1,000 perch a night. Now, due to the spread of invasive species, the same surveys yield about 40 a year.

In the wild, just 1 percent of yellow perch survive to market size.

Sepulveda Villet and colleagues implement a multipronged approach involving diet and environment to ensure that more perch grown in tanks survive.

He’s also found success through certain types of selective breeding – encouraging mating of the fastest and biggest females. By the fourth generation, he says, the time to market size shrinks to eight months, down from two years in the wild.

Blowing up buildings She was invited to an artists’ retreat, so Whitney Moon packed up the building.

The Warming Hive – a beehive-shaped, inflatable structure – stands 16 feet tall when filled with air and fits into her car when empty. It’s made from white nylon tubes that are fire-retardant, setting it apart from most pneumatic structures. At the retreat, it served as a kitchen that partially enclosed a wood-burning oven.

Moon is an architectural historian and assistant professor at UWM’s School of Architecture & Urban Planning. She researches how pneumatic structures can be flexible, functional alternatives to brickand-mortar buildings. This one was designed and built by her students.

“The Warming Hive is a form of architecture that’s available to anyone at any time for any use,” Moon says.

Moon traces the history of such buildings to the 1960s, when artists and architects began experimenting with new materials, such as plastics.

One of the largest early projects was the “Atoms for Peace” pavilion, which the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission used to promote nuclear power in South America and Europe. The 22,000-squarefoot building could be constructed over the course of two days by an unskilled work crew of 12.

Teaching culturally diverse classrooms Second-grade public school classrooms are often modernday melting pots. One desk may belong to a Burmese boy whose family spent time in a refugee camp. Sitting at another may be a girl whose first language is Spanish, while behind a third desk is a girl from Somalia. They are there to learn alongside students from Latino, Caucasian, AfricanAmerican and Asian families that have been in the United States for generations.

Teachers must respect each child’s cultural strengths while promoting academic achievement and well-being.

To help them, UWM’s School of Education has formed a partnership with Milwaukee Public Schools to study and support culturally responsive teaching.

UWM is working with 12 schools to instruct current and aspiring teachers how to best engage diverse learners. The project’s principal investigators are Donna L. Pasternak, professor of English education, and Kristen Taylor, director of UWM’s Office of Clinical Experiences.

Culturally responsive teaching incorporates strategies and philosophies as simple as showing respect for a student’s home language. The project involves teachers assessing their own cultural awareness and learning strategies developed for students from different backgrounds. Specific approaches will vary according to student demographics within each school.

UWM will work with staff at the 12 schools to design and expand professional development and improve culturally relevant practices schoolwide.

The schools will also serve as placement sites for student teachers from UWM and the UW System who want to build their skills in culturally relevant practices.

The effort is funded through a three-year, $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The grant also helps education assistants become certified teachers.

But the pneumatic bubble burst. “It was tied to the 1973 energy crisis and the oil embargo,” Moon says. “In many ways, pneumatics were doomed to fail because they were created with petroleum-based materials and needed a power source.”

Far removed from that era, the Hive cost $5,000 to create. Moon wants inflatables like it to be less wasteful than alternative temporary structures while promoting what she calls social resiliency.

“The Warming Hive can be used as a shelter, a performance space or a kitchen,” she says.

“Ultimately, it’s about how someone decides to appropriate the space.”

uwm.edu/uwmresearch

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FRONTIERS

When origami meets chemistry Inspired by origami, the Japanese art of paper-folding, UWM chemist Jian Chen integrated the concept into his research.

Chen developed a technique in which a common plastic material is treated with chemicals in a certain pattern. This allows the material to fold itself into complex 3-D shapes and, later, revert to its original form.

Chen and graduate student Adebola Oyefusi use the technique on sheets of Nafion foil – a commercial polymer. With the discovery, the Nafion film can fold, be “erased,” and then be reprogrammed to fold into a completely different shape.

It can even achieve configurations as complicated as the iconic origami swan.

Shape-memory materials are not new, but this technique adds another dimension of practicality to them. “The shapes of traditional shape-memory polymers had to be made using external mechanical force, such as a physical mold or template,” says Chen, an associate professor of organic chemistry.

“Prior to our work, no one had ever applied the chemical patterning to shape-memory polymers.”

It could provide a method for making reprogrammable master molds that would save time and money compared

Comfort for the dying in Malawi In the country where Lucy Mkandawire-Valhmu was born, her research helps women who are close to death. Many are relatively young and dying of AIDS or cervical cancer in the small, rural villages of Malawi, where support systems are strained or scarce.

“We are trying to find ways that palliative care can be done in a cost-efficient way,” says Mkandawire-Valhmu, an associate professor in UWM’s College of Nursing. She adds that the Malawi government wants to strengthen home-based care services, but it’s challenged by an already-overstretched health care system and an ongoing shortage of providers.

Africa’s AIDS epidemic hit Malawi hard. MkandawireValhmu says that in some communities, 26 percent of the population is HIV-positive. HIV prevalence is higher in urban areas, but the epidemic is complicated in rural areas by issues such as poverty, lack of education, challenges to health care access, food security issues and gender inequalities.

The burden of care for stricken women often falls on the family’s children, particularly girls. “They drop out of school,” MkandawireValhmu says, “and this perpetuates the vicious cycle of illiteracy and poverty among women there.”

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One recommendation from Mkandawire-Valhmu’s research: Allow existing health surveillance assistants, who are trained community health workers, to monitor and ensure the comfort of palliative care patients and perhaps administer some medications.

Right now, she says, end-of-life patients from rural areas must travel long distances for medication.

Where communities are very strong and there is less stigma toward AIDS, Mkandawire-Valhmu has found that dying women have more mental and physical support. “It might be as simple as a neighbor fetching water,” she says, “or bathing the 3-year-old.”

Mkandawire-Valhmu works with organizations like Tigwirane Manja – which means “let’s hold hands” in the local Chichewa language – to research the dying women’s experiences and look for community-based help. She has included UWM nursing students in her research efforts, most recently on a trip in January 2018.

“Simply by playing with these women’s children,” MkandawireValhmu says of the students, “they are providing some support.”

to an alternative like 3-D printing. The two scientists also wanted to provide ways to repurpose massproduced polymers, such as Nafion or laminate, which are difficult to recycle.

The process involves applying a pattern onto basetreated Nafion foil sheets using hydrochloric acid.

When heated to a specific temperature, the sheet shrinks along the pattern’s lines, forming creases where the fold occurs. Parts not treated with the chemicals stay flat. To revert the sheets to a flattened state, the entire form is treated with hydrochloric acid and again heated to a specific temperature.

The process may provide insight into chemically modifying other properties of polymers, such as waterproofing, which could then be tuned or reversed.

Influencing researchers around the world UWM’s Junhong Chen has been named one of the world’s most influential researchers in the materials science field, with his work among the top 1 percent of most-cited research papers over the past 11 years.

Chen, a distinguished professor in the College of Engineering & Applied Science, is one of 3,300 researchers from 900 institutions to achieve that status. It indicates he’s “won peer approval in the form of high citation counts” with work that inspires and challenges colleagues, according to Clarivate Analytics, a leading company that monitors scholarly data and produced the most-cited list.

Chen’s expertise is in the fields of mechanical engineering and materials science. His publishing reflects a wide range of research interests, including carbon nanotubes and hybrid nanomaterials, nanostructured sensors with wide applications, and renewable energy and corona discharges. He has developed a unique, inexpensive method of producing hybrid nanomaterials for use in advanced technology devices.

He’s grateful so many researchers worldwide are interested in his lab’s work. “This honor also belongs to UWM,” he says. “It has enabled me to grow my career and research program, which I really appreciate.”

Chen is on a leave of absence to serve as a program director of the Engineering Research Centers program at the National Science Foundation, but he retains his UWM faculty status.

“It comes as no surprise that Dr. Chen ranks among the most cited researchers in the world,” says Mark T. Harris, vice provost for research. “This recognition demonstrates the value of his research into the potential and nature of nanomaterials.”

uwm.edu/uwmresearch

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FRONTIERS

Brain reaction It is the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States, and UWM is playing a crucial role.

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study will follow the biological and behavioral development of more than 10,000 children at more than 20 sites nationwide. Beginning with children at ages 9 or 10, and tracking them through adolescence and into early adulthood, the ABCD Study seeks the optimal biological and environmental building blocks for raising successful and resilient young adults.

“This is an unprecedented opportunity for Wisconsin to be involved in a study of this scale,” says Krista Lisdahl, the UWM associate professor of psychology heading up the UWM site. “The results will give vital insight into how family dynamics, environment,

lifestyle and health behaviors affect our children’s development for generations to come.”

Over the next decade, scientists will use advanced brain imaging, interviews and behavioral testing to determine how childhood experiences interact with a child’s changing biology to affect brain development.

Understanding these relationships may help prepare young people to become successful adults while they’re still developing physically.

Lisdahl researches the impact of health behaviors, such as physical activity and substance use, on brain health during adolescence and young adulthood. Her research methods include brain scanning with magnetic resonance imaging.

The ABCD Study is funded by the National Institutes of Health. UWM scientists have recruited 240 student participants from Milwaukee, Pewaukee, Wauwatosa, West Allis, Richmond/Menomonee Falls, Shorewood and Sussex schools.

Getting food to where it is needed most When Laura Peracchio thinks about how to fight hunger, she starts by looking at what nonprofits already do well. One of the best examples she’s found is Milwaukee’s Hunger Task Force.

“There are gigantic food deserts in Milwaukee,” says Peracchio, the Judith H. and Gale E. Klappa endowed professor of marketing in the Lubar School of Business.

“There’s a supply of food in Milwaukee, but if you’re living in poverty, you don’t always have access.”

To alleviate that, Hunger Task Force runs a mobile grocery store called the Fresh Picks Mobile Market. It goes directly to food deserts to sell fresh produce, dairy products and meat at discounted rates. The organization’s MyPlate initiative also aims to provide more balanced, nutritious food at its food banks.

Peracchio is part of a group of researchers from the United States and the United

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Kingdom who are examining successful endeavors like this one. Their goal: Create a model that provides better access to nutritious food for impoverished people. Peracchio also seeks to improve the marketing efforts of nonprofits so they can better reach their constituents.

“Hunger Task Force provides an example for others to follow,” Peracchio says.

“We have theoretical concepts about what a successful nonprofit should do, but on their own, they’re just ideas. Success is more

attainable when we look at Hunger Task Force initiatives that embody the ideas and have a real-world impact.”

Hunger Task Force also runs a farm and teaches Milwaukee Public Schools students about nutrition and cooking. Peracchio says educating people about nutrition and letting them choose healthy food improves their food wellbeing, which she defines as an individual’s or community’s positive psychological, physical, emotional and social relationship with food.

SPOTLIGHT ON HEALTH & WELLNESS

Wellness programs worth the

weight

The promise of cash can get people to participate in employee wellness programs.

But that incentive alone may not be enough for overweight workers to win their battles of the bulge.

Researchers at UWM’s College of Health Sciences have conducted several studies about the effectiveness of employee wellness programs, or EWPs. Good EWPs are important to employers, because employees who maintain a healthy weight are less likely to develop chronic health problems, which lead to using more sick time and higher insurance costs.

Two studies showed that cash incentives attract employees to the programs, but it’s the quality and variety of the program that keep them participating, says Ron Cisler, College of Health Sciences dean and a professor of health informatics and administration.

Cisler conducted studies with two Milwaukee companies that offer EWPs with cash incentives. At both workplaces, participants showed marked improvement toward reducing their body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight. They also lowered their triglycerides, a risk factor for diabetes, while decreasing their blood pressure and “bad” LDL cholesterol. Most

participants were middle-aged and relatively healthy but had an average BMI of 27, which is considered overweight.

Cisler says the success of both programs stemmed as much from how they were structured as the incentive amounts. “They were created as yearlong wellness challenges,” he says, “with a whole menu of things people could choose to be part of.”

One program, for example, let workers accumulate points by completing activities.

The number of points was linked to the amount of their incentive – between $250 and $1,000. Another reason for the encouraging outcomes, Cisler says, could be that these workers continued their participation over two consecutive years, boosting their feeling of control.

Other research found that demographics play a role in predicting whether employees will try to lose weight using an EWP. Jennifer Fink, a UWM assistant professor of health informatics and administration,

studied the data of about 20,000 Aurora Health Care employees from the last five years.

Fink discovered that older, white women making less than $45,000 annually are more likely to participate, so program administrators should find ways to cater to younger employees, men and ethnic minorities.

Many employees lost weight, but Fink’s results also demonstrated that long-term commitment was important to a program’s success. Aurora saw a steady decline in the number of obese workers who participated in each of the five study years.

“Many believe they can lose weight in six months,” Fink says. “But if they don’t, they also lose the cash incentive – and perhaps the motivation to keep at it.”

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SPOTLIGHT ON HEALTH & WELLNESS

Seeking answers to opioid deaths Almost 300 people in Milwaukee County died of an opioid overdose in 2016, and about one-third of those victims had children. But what do those children need now?

And did they see anything that might prevent other opioidrelated deaths?

UWM Helen Bader School of Social Welfare researchers are seeking the answers to those questions by conducting sensitive interviews with the relatives of overdose victims. They’re working in partnership with Milwaukee County agencies to stem the growing opioid crisis. Tina Freiburger, chair of the Criminal Justice Department, and Melinda S. Kavanaugh, assistant professor of social work, are co-principal investigators on the project.

members, including the administration of medicine. “This is a very similar thing. Kids should know what to do with Narcan,” she says of the medication that can reverse opioid overdoses. “I get pushback on that. But adults should, too.”

When someone dies, “the kids are there.

They don’t get asked a lot, but they see and hear,” says Kavanaugh, an expert in working with children on health-related research projects. By doing dozens of oneon-one interviews, she hopes to gain insights that might be shared with community workers and first responders.

During the project, which is in its early stages, Kavanaugh and Freiburger also plan to talk with health care providers, counselors, law enforcement workers and other stakeholders. Kavanaugh says, “Everyone’s really asking the same thing: What can we do?”

Milwaukee County statistics show that the typical overdose victim is a white male in his 30s who was originally prescribed opioids for pain relief. But there are plenty of

Kavanaugh has done groundbreaking research on children who provide health care for older family

Yan

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unknowns – who usually calls 911 when someone is overdosing? Who drives the victim to the hospital? How often does a first-time overdose result in death?

Throughout 2018, the research team will ask those questions and compile answers. And while Kavanaugh gathers information from children, she will note their environments and their needs.

They may be isolated from their peers, or live in chaotic homes, or have problems in school, or all of the above.

Jennifer Wittwer, associate director of the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division, says that every agency and municipality recognizes that the crisis is growing. “That’s why everyone is excited about the participation of UWM,” she says.

“In terms of getting access to resources and research, they’ve been excellent partners.”

Making anything possible In grade school, Roger O. Smith’s best friend was on the autism spectrum, and he couldn’t tolerate the scratchiness of new clothes. To help, Smith would wear the clothes first until they had softened.

That blend of compassion and practicality has characterized the career of Smith, a UWM professor of occupational science and technology in the College of Health Sciences.

And his lifelong commitment to helping people with disabilities mirrors UWM’s even longer commitment to the same goal.

2018 marks the 100th anniversary of UWM’s occupational therapy training program, which began at Milwaukee-Downer College. It became one of the world’s first occupational therapy baccalaureate programs.

And in 2017, Smith was at the center of another landmark anniversary. During the American Occupational Therapy Association’s centennial convention, he presented the Eleanor Clarke Slagle lecture, the association’s most prestigious honor, reserved for those who have made “lasting contributions to the profession.”

Smith’s work has touched on everything from making computer keyboards more accessible for people whose hands tremble to making UWM’s commencement ceremonies inclusive for graduates with mobility challenges.

“He’s a source of energy, ethics and inspiration,” says Ginny Stoffel, a UWM occupational science and technology professor who’s a past AOTA president.

“He thinks anything is possible.”

Smith is director of UWM’s Rehabilitation Research Design & Disability Center – colorfully abbreviated R2D2 – which conducts research and instruction related to technology and disability. That includes developing apps to assist people with disabilities.

Smith is working on two of those now.

One app, called HESTIA, evaluates people’s home environment, with the goal of helping them live there longer rather than at a care facility.

The other app rates home medical equipment to guide shoppers with disabilities.

Its value becomes clear when you consider the many thousands of medical devices that exist. “If someone with a disability goes to a pharmacy to buy a blood pressure monitor, which one do they buy if they’re blind or if they’re deaf?” Smith explains. “What if they have severe arthritis or hand function problems and can’t push buttons?”

Such things sound simple, but they can make a big difference in people’s lives. And making technology accessible to everyone has always been one of Smith’s passions.

Early in his career, while at UW-Madison, Smith was a main contributor to making computer keyboards more accessible.

Smith

He helped develop the concept of “bounce keys” to assist people with tremor, and it’s now a standard feature of Windows operating systems.

Today, Smith is a big reason UWM is on track to become one of the first assistive technology programs accredited by the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America.

“There’s a lot happening in the field right now,” says Smith, who is president of that organization, “and we’re on the forefront.”

Helping African-Americans beat breast cancer The statistics are stark. African-American women are only slightly less likely than white women to develop breast cancer. But if diagnosed, they’re 42 percent more likely to die from the disease, and their five-year relative survival rate remains lower than their white counterparts at 80 percent versus 91 percent.

“African-American women have a triple-whammy when it comes to breast cancer,” says Alice Yan, an associate professor of community and behavioral health promotion in UWM’s Zilber School of Public Health. “They are diagnosed at a younger age, have more aggressive types of cancer and higher death rates.”

Yan hopes to mitigate the toll by finding ways to encourage African-American breast cancer survivors to be more active.

It’s a goal building from earlier research that’s shown how exercise, even brisk walking, improves the lives of breast cancer survivors.

Yan worked with the Black Health Coalition of Wisconsin to develop a group exercise program. The original four-week pilot program included 12 breast cancer survivors and then expanded

to another 45 women. The project is part of a two-year study funded by the American Cancer Society and designed to reach underserved African-Americans.

Yan sought feedback from the women about what barriers might prevent them from regular exercise as well as factors that would increase their likelihood to participate regularly. “One thing we saw,” Yan says, “was how important it was that the programs be offered where the women live, work and socialize.”

With that in mind, classes were held at a neighborhood community center in Milwaukee, and the program added a layer of support by including lay health advisors, who are fellow survivors trained to be role models. The program also taught participants how to manage chronic conditions themselves.

She hopes it becomes a model for other programs that target underserved cancer survivors.

“I am proud to be a researcher that actually applies what I’ve learned from data into practice and makes tangible changes in people’s lives in real-world settings, one step at a time,” she says.

uwm.edu/uwmresearch

13

SPOTLIGHT ON HEALTH & WELLNESS

The science of self-management Children with special needs may face two to three times the risk of obesity than other children, and it’s a concern that Michele Polfuss wants to alleviate.

institutions, such as the Medical College of Wisconsin, the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center or Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin.

“Anytime a child is obese,” Polfuss says, “it takes away from their health promotion, their wellness, their ability to interact with peers as fully.”

Polfuss, an assistant professor of nursing, holds a joint research chair in the nursing of children with UWM and Children’s Hospital. She’s done pilot studies on the energy expenditure and body composition of children with Down syndrome, spina bifida and other conditions.

Polfuss wants to develop interventions that could help families and health care providers.

To do so, she’s working through the UWM College of Nursing’s Self-Management Science Center, or SMSC. Established in 2007, it researches ways to help people better manage their own health and improve their quality of life, even when dealing with chronic conditions.

The SMSC is funded as an Exploratory Center by the National Institute of Nursing Research, part of the National Institutes of Health. Examples of current SMSC projects include seeking ways to help young adults manage their fatigue during chemotherapy and improving the health of low-income African-Americans who have hypertension.

Often, SMSC research is done in collaboration with other UWM departments, as well as other universities and health care

“Because muscle burns more calories than fat, if you have two children both weighing 120 pounds, the one with more muscle is going to burn more calories with every activity they do,” Polfuss says.

This comes into play for children with Down syndrome, who generally have less muscle tone, or children with spina bifida, whose physical limitations may curb activities and decrease their muscle tone.

That was borne out in one of Polfuss’ pilot studies. Children in a control group expended 2,500 calories a day. Children with Down syndrome and children with spina bifida who were ambulatory expended 2,000 calories a day. Those with spina bifida who

used wheelchairs were closer to 1,700 a day.

Polfuss’ next steps include repeating the pilot studies with larger groups and starting research on ways to intervene.

“It’s really a passion of mine to help children start in the healthiest frame possible,” Polfuss says, “so they have the best opportunity for the rest of their life.”

Taking a stand helps students Standing desks are all the rage in office buildings.

Perhaps they should be in classrooms, too.

during waking hours and better concentration in the classroom for younger students.

Studies of adult office workers suggest more frequent movement during the day, even if it doesn’t rise to the level of exercise, counters the negative health effects stemming from long intervals of sitting. “I’m sure you’ve heard before, ‘Sitting is the new smoking,’” says Ann Swartz, UWM Department of Kinesiology chair and an exercise physiologist who researches activity in adults and seniors.

The yearlong pilot study followed 100 students at Shorewood’s Atwater Elementary School who agreed to use a standing desk in the classroom for one semester. Students also wore an accelerometer – similar to a Fitbit – to measure their activity throughout the day, both in school and at home. Finally, they took tests to measure their cognitive focus.

Swartz and graduate student Nathan Tokarek explored whether the benefits of standing desks extended to elementary school kids. They found positive effects on two fronts: an increase in physical activity

All grade-school children’s physical activity drops greatly at the beginning of each school year, but for students who used a standing desk, that decrease was slightly diminished. In addition, no students reported feeling tired from using a standing desk.

Preliminary findings on focus were mixed. Third-grade participants demonstrated significant improvements in attention and inhibitory control compared to their sitting peers.

However, fourth- and sixth-graders did not show improvement.

“This research topic is so new that our contribution, even though it’s a pilot study, is definitely going to be useful going forward,” Tokarek says.

Safco Products donated the standing desks. Other members of the research team were associate professor of psychology Krista Lisdahl, associate researcher Nora Miller, biostatistician Chris Cho, and Hotaka Maeda, a postdoctoral fellow in educational psychology.

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SPOTLIGHT ON ENERGY

Energy help from giant kelp It’s the fastest-growing organism on earth, and it could allow bioenergy to claim a bigger piece of the green energy portfolio in the United States.

for breeding kelp with the genetic traits that are bestsuited for mass production, and it will be tested in waters off the California coast.

Giant kelp has lots going for it as an energy source, says Filipe Alberto, a UWM associate professor of biological sciences. Among the biggest benefits: The seaweed could be cultivated in the oceans, so it wouldn’t compete with food crops for land and water.

“The populations that we’re going to focus on in Southern California,” Alberto says, “are actually the richest in terms of genetic diversity in the world.”

That’s what Alberto is attempting with his research partners. “The idea of the program is to actually develop offshore sea-farming,” he says.

Strategies are needed to make giant kelp crops sustainable. Alberto is developing a kind of “seed stock”

He aims to create genetic lines that are cost-effective and robust – even when they are grown in imperfect environments.

With $2.8 million from the Department of Energy, Alberto is conducting the work in partnership with the University of California-Santa Barbara and the University of Southern California.

uwm.edu/uwmresearch

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SPOTLIGHT ON ENERGY

Qu (right) and a student in UWM's Energy Advancement Center

Energizing the future of batteries The market for batteries is ever-growing. For lithium-ion batteries, it has surpassed $30 billion and is expected to double or perhaps triple by 2025. It also demands constant improvement in battery efficiency and storage capabilities. Answering this charge is a priority for UWM researchers, whose work in energy storage is helping power a strong industry cluster in Wisconsin and beyond.

UWM’s expertise got a boost in 2015 when Deyang Qu became the Johnson Controls Endowed Professor in Energy Storage Research. The endowment from Johnson Controls, a giant in the battery industry, funded a unique dry lab at UWM, the largest such facility at any North American university. Housed in the College of Engineering & Applied Science, the lab is a miniature factory, providing limited manufacturing of promising new batteries.

Today, the UWM Energy Advancement Center partners with several companies while researching battery science and developing next-generation power strategies. Among those companies is Milwaukee Tool, one of the world’s leading users of li-ion batteries.

UWM researchers attack the challenge from many different angles. Here are just a few of the ways they’re trying to take lithium-ion technology into the future.

Niu

Tin for the win?

In researching the batteries of the future, Junjie Niu thinks he’s found a winning combination of tin and a “super skin.”

He’s exploring batteries that have a hybrid composite with tin – rather than graphite – as their anode material, paired with a protective and resilient skin made of titanium dioxide.

“You can use it for many years,” says Niu, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering. “Plus, you can charge your battery in 10 minutes or less.”

In trials, Niu’s team found their batteries have a capacity two to three times larger than the graphite anodes now used in more than 90 percent of lithium-ion batteries. Niu and postdoctoral researcher Shuai Kang have applied for a patent on the work.

Niu’s UWM team has attracted about $1.2 million in funding, both from within the UW System and from industry and government sources.

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Beating the cold All car batteries labor to start an engine during a deep freeze.

But researchers in Deyang Qu’s lab have found a fix for the coldcar start – at least for electric vehicles, which use rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.

They’ve hit on the right recipe for the battery’s electrolyte. This liquid induces a chemical reaction to move lithium ions back and forth through the electrolyte during charging and discharging.

That movement is necessary for generating a current.

“It isn’t the conductivity or the melting or freezing point of the electrolyte that has the largest effect on performance,” says researcher Joshua Harris. “It really all depends on the electrolyte’s components.”

From reactions with the electrolyte, a layer of oxidation builds up on the anode. If it grows too thick, it restricts movement of ions in the electrolyte, hindering the power. But if it’s too thin, it allows the electrolyte to continuously react with the electrodes, reducing battery life.

The research team tested 46 different combinations of electrolyte components to find the ideal mix.

“This is one instance where we have developed the technology to solve the problem,” says Qu. “Now it’s up to companies to decide whether they want to invest to commercialize it.”

Charging into the marketplace

Hirschmugl (top) and Gajdardziska

UWM physicists have created a new hybrid material that dramatically boosts the energy storage capacity of lithium-ion batteries.

Professors Carol Hirschmugl and Marija Gajdardziska formed a startup company called SafeLi with the goal of breaking into a market hungry for improved lithium-ion batteries. Their graphene monoxide material would replace commonly used graphite in a battery’s anode, allowing for novel, lighter and safer anode materials that will charge faster and store more energy.

It has other advantages, too, because it can solve a problem with silicon-graphite, which has great potential as a next-generation material in anode research.

Adding about 10 percent silicon nanoparticles to the graphite anode doubles the battery’s capacity. But silicon massively swells and shrinks during charging and discharging, causing it to break up quickly. Graphene monoxide is a better match with silicon because it does not swell when it takes up lithium, and the new material’s flexibility compensates for the expanding silicon.

“Through Hirschmugl and Gajdardziska’s efforts, the mechanism of lithium insertion into graphene monoxide and silicon anodes will be understood, and that will help their startup remain competitive in this crowded market,” says Deyang Qu, UWM’s Johnson Controls Endowed Professor in Energy Storage Research.

LITHIUM-ION BATTERY – FLAT PACK

To learn how to think like entrepreneurs, the physicists, including team member Marvin Schofield, joined the Milwaukee I-Corps program. A partnership of five area universities, I-Corps trains academics how to turn ideas from lab research into products and startups.

Administered by UWM and funded by the National Science Foundation, it’s the only I-Corps site in Wisconsin.

“I-Corps taught us how to get potential customers to tell us what is needed to gain a market share,” says Gajdardziska, who is also dean of UWM’s Graduate School.

ANODE (-) LITHIUM-ION ELECTROLYTE SEPARATOR CATHODE (+)

ELECTROLYTE ELECTRON

Lithium-ion batteries consist of a short stack of metal and plastic layers, with the positive electrode – the cathode – on one side, and the negative – the anode – on the back. Researchers call this sandwiched architecture a “jellyroll.” Add the electrolyte between the electrodes, and you have a Li-ion battery in a pouch. The electrolyte carries positively charged lithium ions from the anode to the cathode and vice versa during charging or discharging, causing electrons to accumulate at the anode. These “free” electrons will return to the cathode along a wire that connects the electrodes, creating a current.

Through I-Corps, the team met mentor Loren Peterson, an entrepreneur in UWM’s Lubar Entrepreneurship Center. They also met with top companies in the battery field, like locally based Johnson Controls. The researchers subsequently were accepted into the national I-Corps program in the Silicon Valley cohort, giving them access to people in companies like Tesla, Apple and Samsung.

“I-Corps made our startup possible in a way that we never would have expected,” says Hirschmugl. “It is turning physicists into entrepreneurs.”

uwm.edu/uwmresearch

17

SPOTLIGHT ON ENERGY

A win-wind proposition High wind gusts – the very reason wind turbines can crank out energy – also cause severe vibrations that can crack the blades.

That poses unpredictable safety hazards, and replacing even one blade carries a hefty price tag.

When a crack forms on the blade’s surface, it breaks the delicate tubing, which releases the healing agent that seeps into the crack.

That reacts with the surrounding catalyst to create a kind of solder that solidifies in a matter of hours.

One possible solution? Blades that heal themselves. UWM mechanical engineering professor Ryo Amano and a former graduate student created a material that does just that. “Like blood clotting,” Amano says.

Successful tests of the concept were performed inside UWM’s experimental wind tunnel, the state’s largest such facility and one of the country’s largest, too. Amano says the method can add several years to the lifespan of blades.

Inside each hollow blade, which is made of polymer and fiberglass composites, Amano and Arun Kumar Koralagundi Matt insert short lengths of hair-like glass tubing. They contain a liquid healing agent surrounded by a hardened blend of epoxy resin and a special catalyst powder.

Microgrid expertise, major initiative UWM has become an academic partner in a National Science Foundation research center that’s developing improvements in how Americans will access energy in the near future. It could even lead to lower energy bills.

The research center is called Grid-connected Advanced Power Electronic Systems, or GRAPES. It collaborates with industry to develop new technologies for warding off cybersecurity threats while storing, controlling and distributing energy compatible with the existing national electrical grid. Energy storage systems are also a major focus of GRAPES. “The industry-led work at GRAPES aims to make the grid more reliable, greener and less expensive,” says Adel Nasiri, associate dean for research at UWM’s College of Engineering & Applied Science. “That makes it a perfect fit for the expertise in microgrid technology that UWM brings.” Microgrids integrate energy from many smaller sources, including renewables. UWM is home to experts like Nasiri, Lingfeng Wang, an associate professor of electrical engineering, and Rob Cuzner, an assistant professor of electrical engineering.

Microgrids are like energy islands that can act as freestanding power systems –

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independent of larger grid – for a fixed area, such as a neighborhood or factory. But they can also connect to a larger grid and contribute power to it. Because of this, they can help ease the nation’s near-exclusive reliance on huge power plants.

UWM researchers are working to integrate microgrids into energy markets projected to generate $1.6 billion in revenue in the next few years.

GRAPES is an NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) launched by the University of Arkansas and the University of South Carolina in 2010. Like all IUCRCs, it pairs academic researchers with industry partners. Industry memberships pay for the cost of research in a precompetitive, shared intellectual property arrangement.

GRAPES research has resulted in several spinoff companies in Arkansas since its inception. Nasiri says UWM’s membership will help create even more commercial products and startups. The center currently has 16 industry members, including Midwestbased companies such as We Energies, Eaton Corp., Leandro DRS, S&C Electric, American Transmission Company and G&W Electric.

UWM’s Immersive Media Lab stretches the boundaries of virtual reality.

BY ADAM HINTERTHUER

Chris Willey hands me a pair of bulky rectangular goggles, shows me how to fit them over my head and tells me to close my eyes. A screen inside the goggles blinks on, casting a white flash against my eyelids. It dims, and Willey tells me to take a look.

The impact is immediate. I know for a fact that I am in a concrete-floored office loft inside the Kenilworth Square East building of UWM’s Peck School of the Arts. But it seems like I’m drifting thousands of miles away.

I can feel the curve of the chair along my back and the hard corner of the table pressing into my forearms, and yet, I am drifting in space somewhere behind the dark side of the moon.

It’s my first experience in virtual reality, and it’s breathtaking how

uwm.edu/uwmresearch

19

Chris Willey (left) directs UWM's Immersive Media Lab, where students and faculty are exploring the possibilities of virtual reality.

quickly my brain accepts the premise. Willey introduces some VR terminology for this experience, saying my “mindbody” is in space, a way to distinguish the virtual sensation from physical reality. I hover far above Earth as it spins in a crazy orbit below me.

Countless stars dot my 360-degree view. Well, 8,884 stars, actually, since those are the data points Willey and his collaborators used to code this particular simulation, a joint effort between astronomy professors, art teachers and enthusiastic undergraduate researchers.

“This is coming from nothing but code,” Willey’s voice says somewhere off in space to my left. “We have literally conjured up everything that your brain is currently experiencing from scratch.”

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A CHANGE IN PERSPECTIVE While my mindbody hovers in space, my real body is conducting an interview with the creative director of the Immersive Media Lab. Founded in February 2017, the lab is home to UWM faculty, lecturers and students who, armed with little more than a DIY ethic and belief in collaboration across disciplines, are grappling with what’s possible in virtual reality. The experiences they’re creating aren’t just sensational, but educational. Their vision: people from backgrounds in science and humanities joining forces to teach complex topics in accessible ways.

Virtual or augmented reality devices are “disruptive technologies,” says

Willey, a Peck School lecturer in digital studio practice. Like smartphones or autonomous cars, they’re an advance in technology primed to become a ubiquitous part of our everyday life. It might take a decade, he says, but “this is going to disrupt the traditional college model. This is a tool, and I literally can’t think of a research area on campus that couldn’t benefit from it.”

The Dark Side of the Moon demo was a first modest step toward what Willey calls a “proof of concept,” and it started, of all places, at a party.

Willey’s partner, Tonia Klein, works in UWM’s physics department, and she introduced him to some of her colleagues, who asked what he was working on. He launched into the

wonders of virtual reality and remembers saying something like, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we made a pocket planetarium?”

“It turns out,” Willey says, “that I said it to someone who you can’t say that kind of stuff to without it happening. I didn’t know this at the time, but David Kaplan is a hummingbird of productivity.”

Kaplan, along with Dawn Erb, both associate professors of physics, met with Willey and his students. They brainstormed where educational needs and gaps in their teaching matched what VR could do. The first project involved placing several thousand stars into a virtual sky, mirroring how they were mapped during a European Space Agency survey.

“When we opened that file the next time we got together,” Willey remembers, “it was the universe.” It was the first time

he realized how raw data, rather than creative imaginings, could be turned into a VR experience.

They debuted the VR project at a local DIY festival called Maker Faire Milwaukee. Watching adults and children alike gaze in wonder into their goggles, Willey says, made them realize that VR could be a powerful teaching tool.

“When we teach astronomy,” Kaplan says, “we wave our hands a lot and show some static videos or basic 2-D animations. The ability to have interactive and immersive 3-D environments could be a huge leap forward in how we do this, especially if we can get the VR technology working on a scale that is accessible to hundreds of students.”

After that initial universe experience, Willey and his students created the Dark

Side of the Moon VR simulation. And, really, they’re just getting started.

The Immersive Media Lab is working on a more interactive simulation, this one geared toward explaining the physics behind the phases of the moon, which Willey’s astronomy collaborators say is deceptively tricky to teach. It’s one thing to read about something in a book or watch a video of where the sun is in relation to the moon and the Earth. It’s altogether different to head out into space and, using virtual gloves known as haptics, reach out and move the moon around. “When you’re controlling the clockwork orbits,” Willey says, “you’re going to understand the mechanics so much better.”

This concept also holds true for decidedly smaller topics.

For UWM student Natalie Krug, virtual reality is a way to explore, well, inner space.

Krug, an art education major, came to Milwaukee with designs on a career as an illustrator but ran across virtual reality at an exhibit of undergraduate research projects. Some students had mapped the surface of an iris and all of the intertwined muscle fibers that open and close the pupil. “You put on these virtual reality goggles,” Krug remembers, “and could weave in and out of the structures.”

Medical illustration and art in general suddenly took on new possibilities. Krug immediately asked Willey if she could join the lab, and she’s now working on a virtual model of the entire human eyeball. It’s like the “planetarium experience” for biology, she says, where people can put on a pair of VR goggles and gloves, and “interact with it and see and poke and tug.” She thinks such immersive educational experiences will be part of the future of her profession.

But it isn’t only VR’s potential as a science education tool that excites Krug. Like most Immersive Media Lab members, she thinks that when you strap those goggles on, VR can go beyond helping your brain learn new information. It can change your soul.

uwm.edu/uwmresearch

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LESSONS IN EMPATHY The true power of VR, says Immersive Media Lab member Emily Berens, is not how it puts you somewhere else, but how it puts you in the shoes of someone else.

“A lot of my research is around making VR a community experience, specifically with a focus on empathy,” says Berens, a Peck School associate lecturer in digital studio practice. It’s an idea she first encountered in the “immersive journalism” of documentary filmmaker Nonny de la Peña.

De la Peña created Hunger in Los Angeles, the first VR video to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. Viewers donned VR goggles to experience a simulated food bank and would often pull off the VR goggles in tears. The power of VR, de la Peña said, is its ability to let a viewer experience a story emotionally and then “take that back into their lives.”

For Berens, this idea has resonated as she explores new ways of connecting students to the bigger world around them. She’s part of the Milwaukee Visionaries Project, an after-school art and film program for Milwaukee Public Schools students. She’s working toward including VR experiences into the Visionaries curriculum.

Berens also works as an advisor and mentor for UWM students interested in immersive media research. For instance, she’s working with Krug on implementing VR into her art education studies.

Berens knows many teachers are using Google Classrooms in their curriculum. “Kids who wouldn’t necessarily be able to go on field trips can now take field trips across the world,” she says, and she wonders at the next-level possibilities. How much more powerful would those computer-assisted field trips be if they occurred in virtual reality? Would it help them better understand the social issues shaping our world?

Yes, according to some fledgling VR research at Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. Experiments have shown that experiencing VR simulations of humanitarian or environmental issues makes people more likely to feel stronger connections to that cause and more likely to donate money or take action.

For Immersive Media Lab members, these are important results. VR could easily become a technology for nothing more than entertainment, a doorway to the future depicted in the novel and movie “Ready Player One.” There, people binge on virtual video games, spending more time in a fabricated world than the real one.

But that would be a waste of the technology’s potential, which is why the lab’s faculty, staff and students are exploring its higher possibilities.

“I’m seeing an evolution that’s going on in education and technology and culture,” Willey tells me, “and my goal is to provide the space that allows for these ideas to come together.” He’s now plugged into the lab’s virtual reality system, creating a painting by waving his haptic-gloved hands around, making broad virtual brush strokes. Behind him, a large, curved high-definition monitor displays the three-dimensional landscape those strokes have created.

Willey trained as an artist in a two-dimensional world, complete with rules and vanishing points and perspectives. Now, though, his mindbody is in a virtual space where he’s surrounded by every brushstroke he’s made, the painting stretching away from him on all sides.

He feels a bit unmoored, he says. Because the technology is so new, very few user manuals exist to teach people how to make virtual reality spaces. There are even fewer about how to use it as a teaching tool.

He and his colleagues in the Immersive Media Lab are, quite literally, conjuring up our future.

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How

math

makes movies

of

molecules

BY LAURA L. OTTO

A group of UWM physicists has made it possible to create threedimensional movies of some of the smallest machines of life.

“With this method, we are in a position to watch tiny biological ‘machines’ perform their functions,” says Abbas Ourmazd, distinguished professor of physics. It’s allowed a Nobel laureate to watch how a molecule reads genetic code to tap out proteins, and other scientists to see a virus preparing to infect a healthy cell.

Such unprecedented movie-making was achieved using math, or more specifically, data science. Researchers in Ourmazd’s lab developed a new generation of powerful algorithms that reconstruct images in sequential order from an ocean of unsorted noisy data.

That’s how Ourmazd’s lab made movies with Joachim Frank, who won the 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing cryo-electron microscopy. This technique uses beams of electrons instead of light to take snapshots of frozen molecules, producing multitudes of high-resolution, 2-D views. The new algorithm then properly arranged those random snapshots to compile 3-D movies of functioning molecular machines.

The Ourmazd team also worked with the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and its X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) at Stanford University. The XFEL’s intense X-ray flashes produce “photos” through diffraction. In this instance, the X-rays hit a virus and scattered into particular patterns, which provided millions of data points for the mathematical reconstruction.

Members of the UWM team included physics faculty members Marius Schmidt and Peter Schwander, as well as scientists Jeremy Copperman, Ali Dashti, Ahmad Hosseinizadeh and Ghoncheh Mashayekhi.

Schwander

Dashti

Ourmazd

uwm.edu/uwmresearch

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y privac. a s i He vocate ad

She is on a dating website.

She is a stayat-home mom with 3 kids.

Michael Zimmer

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He just got a promotion.

The Ethics of Big Data

How should researchers approach an era of unprecedented information?

By Nicole Etter

The modern era of connectivity is, in many ways, a researcher’s paradise.

Research is built upon data, and everyday life creates unprecedented cascades of raw information about people. It flows from social media, mobile apps, internet searches and countless other sources. Your Twitter posts, shopping purchases or workout habits can drive corporate strategies, advertising campaigns and, yes, research initiatives.

“In this era of big data, everything is now collectable and sharable and could be aggregated,” says Michael Zimmer, director of UWM’s Center for Information Policy Research.

“You just never know what kind of data researchers might use next to do research.”

Zimmer has spent his career studying privacy and internet ethics, and he emphasizes that most research is conducted ethically. Still, the way information is handled today raises questions that deserve answers.

“How do users feel,” asks Zimmer, an associate professor in the School of Information Studies, “about the fact that something that they put out there for a certain reason is being used for a different reason?”

That’s just one of the many issues he and others are investigating through a project called PERVADE, short for Pervasive Data Ethics for Computational Research. The new four-year project recently received a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

Michael Zimmer

“ In this era of big data, everything is now collectable

and sharable and could be aggregated,” says Michael Zimmer, director of UWM’s Center for Information Policy Research. “You just never know what kind of data researchers might use next to do research.”

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PERVADE’s goal is to paint a picture of how pervasive data – in-depth information collected over a broad timeframe – is viewed and used in computational research. It will go beyond case studies, anecdotes and critiques to produce empirical research that can guide the field. Zimmer, one of the project’s seven principal investigators, will lead subprojects on ethical training and practices of computational researchers.

Zimmer’s team will survey researchers on their privacy beliefs and practices. It will assess more than 500 data science programs nationwide to see how – or even if – students are trained in data ethics. In addition, Zimmer will analyze the data management plans submitted by researchers who are funded by the National Science Foundation. “Did they talk about privacy?” Zimmer wonders.

“Did they address anonymity or try to de-identify data? Then, I’m going to look at whether there are differences across disciplines.”

The PERVADE team will also survey social media users, social media companies and universities’ institutional review boards to get their perspectives on the ethics of social media research. Institutional review boards are crucial to the research process, and any project involving human subjects must gain the board’s approval before proceeding. The goal is to protect subjects from a project’s potential to cause physical or psychological harm.

Zimmer worries about protecting subjects from reputational harm as well, which is why he takes a measured approach to online privacy. He knows some researchers believe it’s fine to capture and use any available data in the name of science, but for him, it comes down to informed consent.

“I don’t think I’m being radical in my position, but it’s often not what people want to hear,” he says. “My intention is not to stop research. We just need to make sure we’re doing it the right way, in the ways that respect the dignity and the autonomy of the subjects.”

Zimmer first became intrigued by the ethics of social media research in 2008.

He’d heard sociological researchers at Harvard had tracked an “anonymous” class of freshmen on Facebook to see how their social networks and interests changed over time. At the end of the project, the researchers publicly

released the data without students’ names attached. “I did a little digging,” Zimmer says, “and within about two days, I was able to identify the data was actually from Harvard students.”

His critique on the researchers’ handling of subjects’ privacy drew the attention of The Chronicle of Higher Education and other national outlets.

“It was one of the first big cases that got people to think in a different way about internet research ethics,” Zimmer says. “It brought to light all kinds of questions: What is privacy?

What kinds of rules should researchers follow if we’re going to use data from Facebook or Twitter?”

Zimmer knows how valuable a resource pervasive data can be for such tasks as building algorithms and studying human activity and communication. But he also knows that researchers, or even different disciplines, have different approaches to data.

As an example, Zimmer points to the high-profile case in which a Danish psychology graduate student collected data from some 70,000 users of the OkCupid dating site. The data was published in 2016 – including usernames, political beliefs and sexual preferences – with the reasoning that identities didn’t need to be protected because the information was already online and public to other OkCupid users.

“We’re constantly Friends running into this view,” Zimmer says, “that the data is already out there, so why do we need to worry about privacy.”

The PERVADE study will explore viewpoints from across the spectrum and offer researchers tools to navigate the information landscape.

“We’re hoping to generate a whole bunch of new knowledge and come up with a set of guidelines for research ethics in the big-data environment,” Zimmer says. “I think we’re going to have a big impact.”

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She is looking fo new pair of bootr a s. uwm.edu/uwmresearch

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the

NEXT WAVE Of discovery UWM’s role in a Nobel Prizewinning effort helped pull back the curtain on the unseen universe.

Creighton

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Wiseman

Brady

Siemens

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olien Creighton was visiting family in Calgary, Canada, when the brief text came in from an Irish phone number: “BNS + GRB. Real and For Sure.” A cryptic message for most, but the UWM professor of physics instantly knew its significance.

It was Aug. 17, 2017, and he’d just been told that a decades-old quest had at last succeeded. The message came from UWM colleague and physics professor Patrick Brady, who, while traveling in his home country of Ireland, had just distilled a cosmic event of unimaginable magnitude down to six words.

Two far-off celestial objects called neutron stars had been orbiting one another, and they’d merged in cataclysmic collision, the likes of which had never been directly observed. A neutron star is the relatively small but ultradense core that remains after a once-massive star goes supernova. The merger of this binary neutron star system – shortened to BNS in the text message – created ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves.

Scientists knew of the collision because those waves were detected 130 million light-years away on Earth by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, for short. Simultaneously, from the same spot in the sky, a different type of observatory detected a corresponding gamma ray burst – the text message’s GRB. The information gathered from this kind of event could provide a cosmic jackpot of data, so Creighton’s initial reaction on the detection was understandable. “It’s too good to be true,” he recalls thinking. “But since it was paired with a gamma ray burst, it had to be!” Yes, the discovery was, as Brady’s text declared, “Real and For Sure.”

Kaplan

LIGO was two years removed from making humanity’s first detection of gravitational waves, a breakthrough that earned LIGO’s project leaders the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics. A team of UWM physicists, led by Brady, plays a key role in the LIGO project. They designed, built and maintain computational tools that handle LIGO’s massive amounts of data, so they shared in the Nobel celebration, even if they weren’t named on the award.

Brady, director of the Leonard E. Parker Center for Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics, explains UWM’s involvement this way: “You might say that, if the detectors are LIGO’s eyes, we played key roles in developing the brains and the mind that perceived and understood what the eyes detected.”

Gravitational wave astronomy had given scientists a new way to view the universe and collect data previously inaccessible through conventional telescopes. That initial LIGO detection in late 2015 stemmed from the collision between two black holes. Because black holes have such strong gravitational fields that no light or radiation can escape, they’re impossible to directly observe with traditional telescopes.

But the neutron star collision was different. If traditional observatories knew where and when to look, they could also collect data on a slew of unanswered questions.

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How

Within hours, astronomers around the world were responding to LIGO’s alarm. After careful analysis and verification, the discovery was revealed to the world on Oct. 16, 2017.

The binary neutron star event might be described as the end of the beginning of a new era in astronomy.

It firmly established the role gravitational waves can play in multi-messenger astronomy – the observation of celestial events across multiple mediums, including visible light, radio waves, X-rays, cosmic rays and neutrinos.

Each approach offers different insights into different types of phenomena, and humanity’s ability to investigate the universe grows exponentially more comprehensive.

LIGO: a Nobel enterprise

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lthough LIGO’s discovery of the colliding black holes in 2015 seized the public imagination, the neutron star collision dovetails with the deeper history of gravitational wave science.

In 1916, Albert Einstein predicted gravitational waves as a consequence of his general theory of relativity: Any moving mass would create ripples in spacetime, the fabric of the universe itself. Einstein also suspected detection of the waves would be technologically out of reach because they would be vanishingly small.

A breakthrough came in 1974, when astronomers Russell Alan Hulse and Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr. discovered two neutron stars orbiting one another – a binary neutron star. Upon closer analysis, they saw the orbit was gradually shrinking. They realized Einstein’s theory accounted for the orbital change: The system was losing orbital energy as it generated waves of gravitational energy. This first indirect observation of gravitational waves earned Hulse and Taylor the 1993 Nobel Prize in physics.

Around that time, Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Rainer Weiss published a study about using interferometry – comparing overlapping 28

END MIRROR

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“We’d never witnessed a collision between binary neutron stars,” Kaplan says. “In fact, we’d never been able to observe anything discovered by LIGO before.”

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That’s why UWM radio astronomer David Kaplan, while at a conference in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 17, began receiving a flurry of notices about the neutron star event. He is part of a consortium of astronomers who had arranged to follow up on LIGO discoveries with more traditional telescopes. So Kaplan quickly arranged for his colleagues to point radio telescopes at the collision.

LIGO stands for Laser Interferometer GravitationalWave Observatory. Laser beams are shone through the observatory’s two perpendicular arms, which are 4 kilometers in length, and mirrors at each end reflect those lasers.

When a grav wave passes by, space is stretched and squashed, causing the arms to alternately lengthen and shorten, so the laser beams travel different distances. Although the changes are typically only 1/10,000th the width of a proton, sensors can detect the discrepancy, creating a measurable interference pattern. If the pattern matches what’s expected from a gravitational wave source, scientists know they’ve detected a grav wave.

– courtesy of LIGO Scientific Collaboration

light waves – as a highly sensitive way to detect gravitational waves. He was building on the insight that the stretching and shrinking of spacetime by gravitational waves could cause a pair of otherwise identical light beams to shift, creating interference that could be detected and analyzed.

Meanwhile, Kip Thorne, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, was investigating possible sources of gravitational waves and what their signals might look like. He was convinced that such waves from cosmic collisions could indeed be detected.

Together, Weiss and Thorne convinced the National Science Foundation that gravitational wave observation was feasible. They proposed two identical observatories separated by thousands of miles, each featuring a pair of 4-kilometer-long arms set at right angles. A laser, split into two identical beams, would travel down each arm, reflecting back and forth between mirrors at each end.

In a fraction of a second, the beams would travel about 1,100 kilometers, then be recombined and directed to a detector for comparison. If passing gravitational waves distorted spacetime and the beams during their brief trips down the arms, the resulting discrepancy would be recorded.

UWM joins the quest

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and is now director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany.

he LIGO Scientific Collaboration was established in 1997, and UWM was among its founding members.

“Since the early days of LIGO,” Thorne says, “our colleagues at UWM have been contributing intellectually on practically every aspect of scientific interpretation, as well as computational data management and data analysis.”

At Caltech, Thorne had assembled a group of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to tackle many of LIGO’s challenges, from computer infrastructure to theory and analysis, and all the details in between. Among them was Brady, who has devoted his scholarly career to studying black holes and became directly involved in LIGO in the mid-1990s during a postdoctoral fellowship at Caltech. Creighton and Alan Wiseman were also doing research with Thorne at the same time.

Wiseman, now a UWM associate professor of physics, came to UWM in 1998. He joined Bruce Allen, who had been at UWM since 1989, in developing the computing infrastructure required to analyze LIGO’s data.

Brady and Creighton arrived at UWM in 1999 to work on the theoretical aspects of the gravitational wave signals. In 2002, Xavier Siemens joined UWM’s LIGO team and worked to develop the data calibration – converting the electrical signals from LIGO’s detectors into data that allowed gravitational waves to be seen. Allen left his full-time role at UWM in 2007

LIGO first went online in 2002, then was shut down in 2010 for upgrades, which were completed by September 2015. Now called Advanced LIGO, its facilities were still being ramped up to full operation when they recorded what appeared to be a textbook gravitational wave.

“ You might say that, if the detectors are LIGO’s eyes, we played key roles in developing the brains and the mind...”

“We were involved in the pre-run stage – the dress rehearsal – when the signal arrived,” Brady says, “and we had to stop what we were doing and begin analyzing.”

The signal was so unambiguous that some initially suspected it was really just test data injected into the data stream. But on Feb. 11, 2016, after months of painstaking verification, the LIGO team confirmed Einstein’s 100-yearold prediction. LIGO had detected gravitational waves generated 1.3 billion light-years away by the collision of two massive black holes – 36 and 29 times the mass of the sun. The magnitude of the collision was the primary reason the detection was so clear.

In October 2017, Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish (who had overseen management of the enormous project) were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for their LIGO vision and leadership.

A new way to “see” the cosmos ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM

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INFRARED Since Galileo's telescope, we have studied the universe by collecting electromagnetic radiation that has traveled through spacetime from distant objects. With LIGO, we have entered an era in which we study the universe via waves in spacetime itself that are created by the acceleration of matter.

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Multi-messenger astronomy

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ore black hole-generated gravitational wave discoveries followed the 2016 confirmation, and slowly, Brady’s thoughts turned from black holes to neutron stars.

“Black holes by definition are invisible. Light – or any form of electromagnetic radiation – can’t escape from them,” Brady says. “But collisions of neutron stars, which contain matter – albeit truly exotic matter – allow us to connect what LIGO observes with things that can be observed by conventional astronomers.”

Such possibilities also excited Kaplan, whose background includes working with optical, radio, infrared and X-ray astronomy. He says the combination of LIGO and those more traditional types of astronomy “unlocks a whole new realm of physics. Gravitational waves give you information you can’t get from the electromagnetic spectrum, and the converse is also true.”

“This event could create a mass of gold equal to the mass of Saturn,” Kaplan says. “Imagine a sphere three times the size of Earth but 100 times more massive.

That’s the amount of gold.”

And neutron stars hold valued secrets beyond gold.

They are a unique source containing a hyper-dense type of matter, a teaspoon of which would weigh 10 million tons.

“It’s not something you can create in a laboratory.

You can never do this experiment on Earth,” says Creighton, co-chair of LIGO’s Compact Binary Coalescence group. “The only place in the universe where this sort of matter exists is in neutron stars.

These observations will help us understand these objects and the fundamental nature of this exotic matter.”

Brady details other mysteries that may await within the newfound data. “We get to test if gravity travels at the same speed as light,” he says. “And we can get a better handle on the rate at which the universe is expanding, which, in turn, will help make better measurements of distances in the universe.”

So when LIGO again sounded the alarm on Aug. 17, 2017, it marked another scientific milestone. Notified Moreover, as LIGO continues to improve, the rate of by their gravitational wave colleagues, astronomers gravitational wave detections will climb, perhaps to found the explosion in galaxy NGC 4993 within hours. one every two weeks. “Our big task for Traditional optical observatories, the coming year is to automate our process radio telescopes and orbiting “ This event could as much as possible,” Brady says, “so we instruments trained their tools to can keep up with the pace of discovery." create a mass of a spot in the sky 130 million lightIt’s a challenge he welcomes. years away. In all, hundreds of gold equal to the astronomers, using telescopes on “For nearly 20 years, we’d been paying mass of Saturn. all seven continents and in space, single-minded attention to simply getting followed this event nonstop until the project done,” Brady says, and he Imagine a sphere the source disappeared behind smiles. “But now, we’ve been enjoying these three times the the sun. two years of beautiful payoff. I’m excited size of Earth but any time I get to talk about this stuff.”

What they saw has given us new insights into the lives of stars, the universe and, indeed, our own world. It even shed some light on the age-old quest for the “philosopher’s stone.”

100 times more massive. That’s the amount of gold.”

Medieval alchemists never found the legendary substance that would enable them to turn base elements into gold. But astronomers, in their observations of the neutron star collision, finally witnessed the processes suspected as the source of heavy elements like gold, platinum and uranium, whose abundance in the universe had been something of a mystery.

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Each answered question will surely prompt more. And, as LIGO and its astronomical partners go forward, its objectives may well change.

“If you look at the questions that motivated the creation of the Hubble Space Telescope, they are entirely different from what Hubble is doing now,” Kaplan says. “In the same way, if you look at the LIGO proposals, you see questions it is already answering.

“But maybe there will be more that we don’t expect.”

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BY LAURA L. OTTO

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Neuroscientist Karyn Frick began studying how hormones affect memory by watching mice at play. She documented how well they navigated mazes, as well as what happened when they encountered a new toy or how they reacted when the expected location of a favorite toy was changed.

“Mice are curious,” says

“For me, the research is like detective work,” Frick, a UWM professor of she says. “What’s really exciting is when you read psychology. “By watching something that triggers an ‘I wonder what would happen them in their lab if…’ moment.” environment, we could see A fellow of the American Psychological Association, that female middle-aged Frick was recently named Investigator of the Year by mice were mentally old the Alzheimer’s Association’s southeastern Wisconsin compared to males of the chapter. She’s compiling and editing a book detailing same age.” the role of estrogens in cognitive functioning, and But such memory through her teaching and mentorship, she’s inspired problems don’t stop with hundreds of students, particularly women and mice. In humans, women minorities, to pursue careers in neuroscience. are three times more likely “Karyn is considered a global expert on how estrogen than men to develop memory hormones affect memory,” says Joanne Berger-Sweeney, loss and Alzheimer’s disease as Frick’s postdoctoral mentor at Wellesley College they age. Frick wants to know why.

Scientists already know memory deficits are linked to a decline in estrogens, hormones whose levels plunge during menopause. Estrogens enhance male memory, too, and testosterone is converted to estrogens in their DENDRITES bodies for that purpose.

As with most things regarding the brain, though, researching the answer is not so simple. You can’t just replace estrogens to solve memory problems, and NUCLEUS hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women can carry harmful side effects, such as an increased risk CELL BODY of cancer and cardiovascular problems.

Frick’s goal is to identify potential new drugs for AXON dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, ones that don’t carry dangerous side effects and are equally effective for men and women. To do that, she’s unraveling the intricate chain of cellular events through which estrogens enhance memory.

So far, she’s found that gender makes a big difference in the process. Complicating matters, estrogens act differently on mice AXON of different ages and mice that have TERMINALS differing levels of mental stimulation.

It’s a puzzle, not unlike those mazes the mice must navigate.

In her undergraduate years at Franklin & Marshall College, Frick decided to pursue psychology. Then as now, complexity was part of the appeal. She relishes fitting the puzzle pieces together.

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Signals are sent along “relay stations” between two brain cells, or neurons. The highway for this transport out of one cell, called the axon, ends at either the outer membrane of the receiving neuron or at one of the receiver’s many dendrites – extensions that resemble tree branches.

They’re docking stations where a multitude of communication processes unfold at the molecular level. Frick’s group studies the interconnectivity of different kinds of estrogens as they attach to their various receptors at these intersections. Other dendrites pictured are attached to the end of some other axon, and their different lifespans are indicative of the everchanging nature of neural communication.

and now president of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

Frick’s research focuses on the brain’s hippocampus region, which is crucial for memory and deteriorates with age and Alzheimer’s disease.

In the brain, signals are sent along “relay stations” between two neurons. The highway for this transport, called the axon, ends at either the outer membrane of the receiving neuron or one of the receiver’s many dendrites. Fringed with extensions that resemble tree branches, dendrites are docking points that play a central role in memory. Frick’s team studies what happens on the molecular level at these docking points.

Chemicals called neurotransmitters direct brain communication, and they’re activated when binding to their receptors. Proteins, which carry out genetic instructions, are also part of the cellular machinery, and their work can be influenced by estrogens. When estrogens are involved in the communication process, it improves the outcome, such as helping form a longerlasting memory.

But estrogens aren’t as plentiful in the body when menopause arrives, so memory problems arise. “It’s not like menopausal women can’t remember anything,” Frick says. “But with estrogens, they remember better.”

Frick took significant steps toward figuring out the puzzle in 2013. For estrogens to be effective, they must attach to specific receptors within the dendrite and the cell wall. Frick’s research team discovered that in order for two receptors to carry estrogen’s message to proteins inside the cell, a third receptor – for the neurotransmitter glutamate – must also be involved.

The combination unleashes a cascade of cellular signaling that enables a protein, called ERK, to enhance memory. Frick’s study was the first to link estrogens to one of the chemical processes known to create memories.

“If the biochemical events leading to enhanced memory are different,” Frick says, “then you may need to develop drugs tailored to the mechanism specific for each gender.”

The gender issue is magnified when you consider how important estrogens are in other areas of women’s health. Estrogens are needed to maintain bone density and healthy cholesterol levels, and are linked to the incidence of depression and other mood disorders.

But they have adverse effects on the vascular system and promote some kinds of cancer. All of those factors must be taken into consideration when trying to solve the estrogen-memory puzzle.

And Frick notes another complicating factor: One reason, she says, so little is known about estrogens’ effects in the body is that, for decades, researchers

“What’s really exciting is when you read something that triggers an ‘I wonder what would happen if...’ moment.”

Frick’s latest research has revealed some

crucial differences in the memory process for women and men. She’s discovered that, in women, the presence of estrogens links the hippocampus to a different part of the brain – the prefrontal cortex, where long-term memories are stored – and boosts memory mechanisms in both areas.

Frick also has found that the activation of ERK in women occurs at the neuron’s membrane. That’s important, because proteins in the membrane are better drug targets than those inside the cell.

With partners at other universities, Frick is helping kick-start the pharmacology for drug development by testing compounds that bind to one particular estrogen receptor and mimic the effects of estrogens. Early testing of one such compound delivered promising results in female mice.

But when Frick and postdoctoral fellow Wendy Koss investigated the signaling chain in male mice infused with a potent form of estrogen, they got a surprise: It doesn’t happen through ERK activation as it does in females.

excluded females in order to simplify their studies.

As a result, medical research is missing vital details on diseases or conditions that manifest differently in women and men. That’s led the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Drug Administration to establish new policies intended to close the gender gap in medical research.

Frick’s work is a crucial part of that process and part of a broader health conversation. “Few women are aware of the importance of talking about hormone replacement therapy with their physicians if they have a family history of Alzheimer’s,” she says.

And yet, some of her research has shown such therapy only supports memory if begun at the onset of menopause. Beginning the regimen later actually has detrimental effects on memory.

“It’s a powerful motivator for me and my students to know that our findings could ultimately help people,” Frick says. “Every finding allows us to see a new aspect of the puzzle and then put the pieces together.”

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HOR

RENEWABLE

BY ANGELA MCMANAMAN

Wilkistar Otieno helps companies get the most out of what they make.

Wilkistar Otieno is an expert in learning how something can be made better. And that even includes herself.

In 2010, in her early 30s, Otieno began running marathons.

Now, the UWM industrial and manufacturing engineer has completed 30 full and half-marathons. Several mornings a week, be it warm or wintry, she’s out with the UWM Chancellor’s Running Group, renewing her efforts to beat a personal-best marathon time of 4 hours, 3 minutes. “Being on time for an early run starts my day on a good note,” Otieno says.

Otieno’s research, too, is about renewal. Her branch of engineering doesn’t focus on making things, but on studying how things are made. She puts a special focus on how products can be crafted so they’re more recyclable, and she designs

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remanufacturing processes that keep industrial pollutants out of sewerage systems and heavy electronics out of landfills.

“The more recyclable a piece is, the more remanufacturable it is,” explains Otieno, an associate professor in the College of Engineering & Applied Science. “You want to keep the whole thing out of the landfill if you can.”

In addition to helping the environment, remanufacturing helps Fortune 500 companies and their clients. Otieno’s work entails gathering data and analyzing manufacturing processes, then using that information to improve the process and product. Such expertise has led to working partnerships with top manufacturing companies like Rockwell Automation.

“We put nothing to waste,” says Michael Cook, director of

RIZONS the University Partnerships Program at Rockwell Automation.

“When we talk about being a smart, safe, sustainable company, we have come to live and breathe that, becoming very serious and innovative with waste management and materials recycling.”

Otieno has created a model that helps companies and customers get more out of their products. Called the Analytical Hierarchical Performance Model, in simple terms, it determines whether companies and clients are better off creating a new product or a remanufactured one. While borrowing from previous performance models, Otieno has tweaked hers to focus more on the sustainability values that she shares with her research partners.

For example, one of Rockwell’s signature pieces of technology is the control drive, which directs a motor to move at a certain speed and frequency. Any company that has a conveyor system or uses hydraulics relies on a control drive, from mining companies to beverage bottling plants.

Drives can operate continuously for 20 to 30 years and cost anywhere from several hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. When they fail, some clients want their old drives repaired and returned – or “remanufactured.” A brandnew drive might be incompatible with older pieces of equipment that the company also relies on, or it might just be too expensive.

Otieno’s model factors in the economic, social, technical and energy implications of creating a new product versus remanufacturing an existing one.

Different products require different levels of labor during the remanufacturing process. A control drive that’s welded shut must be sawed apart, and every screw in a case must be unscrewed, and each step adds to labor costs. In the end, Otieno’s model produces a numerical score that helps company engineers determine when remanufacturing is in their best interest and that of their clients.

“Remanufacturing is critically important to continuity of operations for our customers,” Cook says. “Some firms may not be ready from an economic or technical perspective to get the next-generation products. And Wilkistar

certainly is able to understand the industrial perspective.”

The final phase of the performance-modeling process gets Otieno onto the plant floor, where she observes technicians as they make or remanufacture a product, analyzing the process and collecting anecdotal data. Her final report takes all of this into account, with an eye toward the consumer experience.

The concept of a “cradle-to-grave” product lifecycle is outdated, Otieno says. Looking at how a product moves from cradle to grave and “back to the cradle,” via remanufacturing, signals a new era of intelligent design.

“When a company maximizes utilization of their product,” Otieno says, “they gain customer loyalty and become more productive and efficient with less cost per unit. While I appreciate research that drives basic science to newer frontiers, I get a renewed sense of satisfaction when my work can have some benefit to a company.”

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UWM’s Connected Systems Institute lays the groundwork for manufacturing innovation.

BY LAURA L. OTTO

In Twinsburg, Ohio, Rockwell

Automation operates a manufacturing plant where annual costs have been trimmed 4 to 5 percent, ontime delivery has hit 96 percent, and quality is up 50 percent from a traditional plant.

The plant’s individual machines are studded with sensors that collect data and exchange a stream of real-time information online with both people and other machines. All of this data alerts workers when a problem arises. But beyond that, it corrects the issue and informs all processes downstream if adjustments are necessary.

Workers know conditions on the shop floor at any given moment – and so do all decision-makers.

The plant is “smart” because it is fully connected.

Rockwell Automation is a global producer of industrial automation and information solutions, and its Twinsburg plant is a prime example of the “industrial internet of things” (IIoT) in action. A cousin of the burgeoning “internet of things” (IoT) – which is fed by 20 billion devices communicating online – the IIoT makes companies more efficient and makes their plants and products safer, all while improving customer satisfaction.

Many believe the IIoT could usher in the next industrial revolution. But that requires the ability to extract specific information from the massive volume of data on demand.

To find the models and technology needed, UWM has launched the statewide Connected Systems Institute.

“Connectivity is unbelievably broad in its scope,” says Adel Nasiri, interim executive director of the Connected Systems Institute. “If you were able to organize all the data streams in the IIoT, it would reveal patterns that point to strategies for increasing efficiency, productivity and safety.”

The institute is a multidisciplinary collaboration involving the College of Engineering & Applied Science, the Lubar School of Business and the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center at UWM, as well as Microsoft Corp., Rockwell Automation, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. and other industry leaders.

“IoT is fast becoming a key strategy for companies of all sizes, yet there still exists a gap in cloud skills and training to develop connected solutions,” says Sam George, director of Azure IoT at Microsoft. “The Connected Systems Institute helps bridge that gap by combining advanced research with training for the next wave of innovation with IoT.” The institute is Wisconsin’s first comprehensive academic-industry consortium involving IIoT technologies. Scholars and industry representatives will collaborate on developing new technology.

Companies will be able to test concepts, train employees and share cutting-edge ideas.

The idea for the institute evolved from conversations between UWM and two partners: Rockwell Automation, a major employer of UWM graduates, and Microsoft, whose CEO, Satya Nadella, is a UWM alumnus.

“One of the things we like is the interdisciplinary aspect,” says Tom O’Reilly, Rockwell’s vice president of global business development.

“Bringing business, IT and engineering together will make the innovations possible.”

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UWM is uniquely positioned to lead the effort. Its faculty are experts in IIoT-related disciplines. It also has strong corporate ties and is located in a key industrial and manufacturing hub.

“This is going to be a world-class center in terms of scale,” O’Reilly says. “It’s great that we’re together in the Milwaukee area. And there is a buzz here, making it a great base to build off of.”

The institute’s core facility will open on campus in spring 2019 in the east wing of UWM’s Golda Meir Library. Longterm plans call for four off-campus test beds where industry partners can experiment and students get hands-on learning.

MAKING FACTORIES SMART One way to think about connected systems is that each physical plant has a digital twin. “Almost like parallel universes,” says Ilya Avdeev, a UWM associate professor of mechanical engineering.

What data are sensors recording? Everything that tracks a machine’s performance over time: energy consumed, operating temperatures, time in use, lubrication and wear, and vibration levels, to name a few. Each machine’s data is incorporated into a picture of systemwide performance.

And that system is connected to other systems, which are also streaming similar amounts of performance data.

Such information provides a digital history for every piece of equipment, Avdeev says. Computers can calculate when the machinery will need maintenance or repair and alert a human

operator. If one part stops or breaks, the data indicates how to best reorganize the system so it doesn’t fall idle.

The data, grouped in operational networks, can provide big-picture metrics like overall cost savings or comparative data among different plants. But the data also can detect a localized problem and fix it before word reaches the systemwide level. “Edge computing” is the term for the device-level activity, and it makes decision-making much quicker, says Wilkistar Otieno, associate professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering.

For instance, in a production line that recognizes parts by their serial numbers, if machine A doesn’t register a piece, then machine B immediately detects that the piece is missing and alerts workers. Edge software heads off an unfortunate discovery at the end of the production line, and it’s one of the defining characteristics of a connected system.

Another important facet is tracking and tracing processes at any point along the path from product design to customer delivery. Using IIoT data in this manner turbocharges supply chain management by improving coordination of business strategies and the flow of goods from raw materials to inventories.

For example, a multinational dairy could use software to manage big data, allowing employees to track a single gallon of milk back to the cows that produced it. This precision monitoring can be applied to product quality, safety and regulatory compliance, and the company can use such data in its marketing efforts, too.

INTEGRATED ASPECTS OF A SMART FACTORY The Connected Systems Institute will help companies reach new levels of efficiency throughout the production process.

SOFTWARE SHOP FLOOR

SMART SUPPLY CHAIN Real-time data allows optimized decisionmaking.

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Customers

Manufacturing

Suppliers DATA ANALYTICS Software provides advanced algorithm modeling and business intelligence.

CYBERSECURITY Encrypted data and protective mechanisms guard against cyberattacks.

CLOUD STORAGE Data is stored and shared, and applications operate on secure servers.

SENSORS Machines outfitted with wireless sensors stream data from their operations.

SMART MAINTENANCE Continuous data from individual machines powers algorithms that predict when repairs will be needed.

MOBILE WORKFORCE Workers can share real-time factory processes using augmented reality apps on their mobile devices.

ROBOTICS Assisted by machine learning, worker-robot interactions can lead to further automation.

CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS Machines or activities are controlled or monitored by computer software integrated with the internet.

RESPONSIVE MANUFACTURING Customers can weigh in on individual manufacturing steps in order to customize products.

CLEANING THE DATA Analyzing data seems like it should be a simple job for computers, but it requires sophisticated data science.

“The data we are handling is high-volume, coming in at a high speed and representing a wide variety – and a lot of it is unstructured,” says Atish Sinha, professor of information technology management in the Lubar School of Business. “Companies have to apply data cleansing, data visualization, data mining and other business intelligence techniques so that management can make sense of it and make better business decisions.”

Sinha directs the Center for Technology Innovation, or CTI, which supports collaborative research projects and workshops on topics such as business intelligence, big data analytics, social media marketing and mobile apps. Faculty and students create interactive tools that help executives see trends and mine data for insight. That includes putting information in accessible online tools, such as dashboards and scorecards, or even advising companies on the best software to accomplish their goals.

CTI’s partners and members include companies such as Northwestern Mutual, IBM, SAP, MGIC and Rockwell. CTI faculty have provided custom training to Harley-Davidson and Johnson Controls executives. Students at the center recently built mobile app prototypes that help MGIC employees track and analyze sales activities.

Sinha says the amount of IIoT data will require novel business intelligence approaches. They must integrate IIoT data from manufacturing, supply chain and sales processes into a usable enterprise resource planning system. These systems pinpoint popular products, explain how to meet demand and indicate if marketing efforts are effective. The Connected Systems Institute will help devise those approaches.

CYBERSECURITY All of these enhanced connected systems will need enhanced protection. The broad scope and online nature that makes such global enterprises useful also makes them more vulnerable to cyberattacks.

“The threat of cybercrime disrupting our lives isn’t fiction anymore,” says Lingfeng Wang, UWM associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science. He cites the Petya ransomware attack in 2017, which temporarily paralyzed scores of multinational companies.

Guangwu Xu, a UWM associate professor of computer science, says the security of online data is compromised because some content is publicly exposed during transmission. Cybersecurity experts encrypt data to protect it, but there’s a trade-off for businesses.

“The kind of high-security protocol that protects your bank account, for example, would keep data in an interconnected system safe,” Xu says. “But when that level of protection is used, it slows the transmission speed. So you have to keep a balance.”

Xu and Wang will address such cybersecurity issues within the Connected Systems Institute.

Xu creates tools that better analyze high-dimensional data, in which each sample from an enormous dataset is defined by hundreds or thousands of measurements, usually obtained simultaneously.

Wang’s specialty lies in writing algorithms that anticipate problems so they can be avoided as a system is being built.

He’s developed user-friendly tools that, for example, manage the switching of renewable energy sources in smart buildings.

The underlying algorithms rely on adaptive learning – engaging the most efficient energy source for the conditions and adjusting as necessary.

In a similar fashion, connected systems use algorithms that monitor data and detect anomalies or vulnerable spots.

Custom-made algorithms can be developed at the institute’s testbed facilities.

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TRAINING BEGINS NOW It takes new manufacturing employees about five years to learn how their jobs directly affect other parts of the company. One of the institute’s priorities is that UWM graduates begin their careers armed with such understanding.

Through the institute, beginning in fall 2019, students can pursue a joint master’s degree in engineering and business that focuses on connected systems. Institute plans also call for other certificate programs and ongoing professional development.

But students don’t have to wait to get involved. UWM already “ ...THE SMART offers two courses on industrial WAY TO connectivity – created by College of Engineering & Applied AUTOMATE IS Science professors Otieno and TO LOOK AT THE Naira Campbell-Kyureghyan – and one course on business WHOLE SYSTEM connectivity – created by Lubar RATHER THAN School of Business professors Samar Mukhopadhyay and JUST REPLACE Sarah Freeman – in partnership INDIVIDUAL JOBS with Rockwell.

WITH A MACHINE.” Also, because the concept of digital manufacturing is evolving so rapidly, the institute is offering a four-day executive education program in spring 2018. Participants will learn how to identify connected systems opportunities in their organizations and apply course concepts to create an implementation strategy.

The timing for a transition is right, says Freeman, associate dean at the Lubar School. Not only are connected systems requiring a hybrid education, but the change is happening at a time when manufacturers are facing the retirement of about 60 percent of their workers.

“In manufacturing, there’s a shortage of skilled labor,” Freeman says. “So automation has to happen; otherwise, companies won’t be competitive. And the smart way to automate is to look at the whole system rather than just replace individual jobs with a machine.”

The concept of connected systems represents a huge culture change for companies, she says, one that affects how employees behave and think about their work, and how they are rewarded.

The magnitude of that shift makes it all the more important that companies are armed with as much knowledge as possible.

“A majority of executives,” Nasiri says, “are interested to know how this will impact their business and create return on investment. They want to determine which components of connected systems they should start or apply.”

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Freeman

BEYOND MANUFACTURING Ultimately, the Connected Systems Institute’s work will prepare manufacturers for the next wave of automation.

Avdeev says that wave will incorporate artificial intelligence into production. Imagine robots that learn from watching human workers, then find further efficiencies as they master a task. And while the institute’s partners will focus initially on manufacturing, the knowledge gained from their collaborative work will help optimize other systems.

The possibilities are vast. In most metropolitan areas, highway sensors and cellphone information on the internet make possible new ways to manage traffic, public transit and parking. Institute discoveries should enable other futuristic city features, such as efficiencies in water and energy infrastructure.

Avdeev also notes the institute’s potential to apply advances in connectivity to the health care field, given the slew of medical devices that exchange data on the IoT. “Knowing about connected systems has many applications,” Avdeev says. “So if we teach our students the fundamentals of connectivity, they can use that skill in any number of fields.”

A MAP TO RECOVERY

BY DAN EGAN

A collaborative UWM project may revive the fish and environment of Milwaukee’s inner harbor.

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The heavy industry that thrived along Milwaukee’s inner harbor in the 19th and 20th centuries is long gone, and a redevelopment movement is well underway. West of the Hoan Bridge, projects call for parks, walking paths and boat ramps, all with the goal of drawing people back to the water.

But what about what’s going on in the water itself?

“We have plans for humans,” says John Janssen, a fisheries biologist and professor with the School of Freshwater Sciences, “but no plans for what’s going on under the water.

And they’re related. People, for example, like to see fish, and they like to see people fishing.”

Janssen’s research team seeks ways to make the inner harbor’s environment friendlier to fish. It’s collecting data for Kim Beckmann, a Peck School of the Arts associate professor, to create a comprehensive map that will assist revitalization efforts.

When completed, print and digital maps will be available to anyone.

“The maps offer important insights on the ecological system for the inner harbor and adjoining rivers,” Beckmann says. “By making this resource available, citizens can be more informed about protecting the environment.”

Some 30 agencies have joined forces to support the project through the Fund for Lake Michigan, and each has a particular interest. Priorities for the state’s Department of Natural Resources, which is a major sponsor, may center on ecology, whereas the Coast Guard’s focus may be navigation. But all of the partners in the project “ The idea is, you figure out share a desire to know what where. where, say, largemouth bass is The boxlike inner harbor, with are spawning,” Dow says, “and its steel and concrete shoreline, waters and siltthen you can try to replicate 30-foot-deep smothered lakebed, largely lacks fish habitat. Yet there those areas in other parts are pockets in and around the of the harbors and rivers.” harbor bursting with species like smallmouth and largemouth bass, bluegill, pike and sunfish.

Over the past two years, Janssen’s graduate student, Brennan Dow, has tried to locate these places, discern what makes them work and devise ways to re-create them. Such efforts could allow fish populations in and around the inner harbor to thrive.

For many years, the harbor has been classified as an ecological “Area of Concern” by the Environmental Protection Agency, meaning human activities have significantly impaired the area’s beneficial use.

Back in the presettlement days, the confluence of the Milwaukee, Menomonee and Kinnickinnic rivers featured wild rice beds, beavers, and lake trout, sturgeon and whitefish. But recovery doesn’t mean restoring that habitat, which is unrealistic, given how different things are now.

Instead, modern-day efforts are designed to plant a new environment, one where some fish species can thrive and Mother Nature, rather than just bulldozers and dump trucks, drives what’s happening under the surface.

The seeds are already there.

“Our harbor might be manmade,” Janssen says, “but it’s turned out to be an interesting ecosystem.”

Dow has spent the past two years cruising the harbor and the 42

rivers that feed it in a boat equipped with side-scan sonar. The gear allows him to see the undulations of the riverbeds and lake bottom and identify the makeup of those areas.

Dow has surveyed 37 miles of lakeshore and riverbank.

He’s learned that some 21 miles of it feature low-quality fish habitats – typically silt or muddy bottom with little to no vegetation for adult fish to hide, or rocks and pebbles upon which fish can spawn.

But with his high-tech gear, he’s also found plenty of potentially fish-friendly areas in the waters ringed by smokestacks, concrete silos, salt piles and railroad tracks.

These are places where vegetation still thrives. Or where trees have tumbled and canal walls have crumbled, leaving behind rocky, wooded underwater areas in which fish can find sanctuary and rear their young.

He’s found discarded items from terra firma – such as construction materials or even a submerged motorcycle – that have become hiding places for small fish.

The radar-like side-scan sonar images give Dow a bigpicture look, albeit a grainy one, at areas likely to support fish. But for a more detailed examination of fish-friendly areas, he needed to get closer to them. So he grabbed an underwater camera and diving gear, then plunged below to see what’s actually happening on the river and harbor bottoms.

A lot, it turns out.

In the Burnham Canal just south of the downtown We Energies power plant, Dow found dead trees and remnant

concrete and, not coincidentally, bluegills and largemouth bass spawning.

In a Kinnickinnic River channel, where gravel apparently spilled from a nearby parking lot, he found baby bluegills and a pinky-sized native species called the blackstripe topminnow.

In the outer harbor, just off a pebbly beach at the Lakeshore State Park inlet across from the Summerfest grounds, he found northern pike and thousands of baby largemouth bass.

This is not just an exercise in observation.

“The idea is, you figure out where, say, largemouth bass are spawning,” Dow says, “and then you can try to replicate those areas in other parts of the harbors and rivers.”

Getting fish to spawn is just part of the problem. They still have to reach adulthood, which comes with its own set of obstacles.

For example, the gravelly beach near the Summerfest grounds might be the perfect place for baby fish to hatch.

But prime adult habitat might be a half-mile of open water away. Along the outer harbor’s breakwall, food for adult fish swarms in the form of a non-native species known as the bloody red shrimp, which has exploded in numbers over the past decade. Baby fish must be able to reach those waters, however, which means having “rest stops” between the spawning ground and breakwall, and this is where mapping can help.

The biologists turned to Beckmann to make the hidden underwater landscape visible. She’s creating interactive maps that will show where key elements are located, and grouping them in layers that can be turned on or off.

Users can look at the correlation of one kind of element with another. The tool can identify, for example, where vegetation and a specific temperature coexist by viewing both of those layers.

“The goal of this isn’t just to locate productive areas,” Dow says, “but to then figure out how to bridge those gaps between them.”

The data Dow and Janssen are collecting can be used to guide the installation or construction of fish-friendly areas – heavily vegetated shoreline, or vegetated lake bottom, or rock and gravel patches along riverbanks and harbor walls.

That would help connect fish from an existing spawning ground to areas farther away where food is more abundant.

Janssen sees a fish recovery program as critical to the harbor’s overall revitalization. But just like the ambitious plans for the landscape now taking shape, having a strategy is essential.

“If we’re going to have some kind of ecological recovery,” Janssen says, “you have to have a map.”

Dan Egan is the Brico Fund Senior Water Policy Fellow in Great Lakes Journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences. In this role, he reports on pressing issues facing the Great Lakes for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other media outlets.

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An Immigrant’s

JOURNEY

BY JENNIFER MORALES

Chia Youyee Vang’s own refugee experience sparked her passion to explore the lives of Hmong people worldwide.

She was 9, new to the United States, new to its culture and the English language, and new to such taken-forgranted things as school.

It was 1980, and Chia Youyee Vang was a Hmong refugee from Laos. Her family had been displaced for months, the result of an attack on their village during the aftermath of the U.S.’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Neither her village nor her refugee camp provided a formal education. Now, in her new hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, she had classmates.

“All the refugee kids were piled up in these classrooms for English as a second language,” Vang recalls. “Even though we were 9 years old, we were still learning our ABCs.” Today, she’s a long way from ABCs. A UWM professor of history, Vang is one of the world’s leading experts on Hmong refugees. She’s also one of the first people of Hmong descent to become a full professor at a major research university, a position earned in 2017 after her groundbreaking efforts to document experiences within the Hmong diaspora.

Vang pays particular attention to the ways different refugee populations have adjusted to their new communities and what factors affected those adjustments.

“I've always been really concerned with people being displaced,” Vang says. “I think about not only what has happened to Hmong people – being forced from our homes and what has happened to us over 40 years – but also the millions of other powerless people around the world.”

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In addition to being deeply personal work, her research on Hmong communities informs policymakers attempting to address new refugee crises, such as those in Yemen and Myanmar. It offers lessons in how to better preserve refugees’ cultural and family connections. It’s an academic journey that began in earnest at St. Paul’s Johnson High School.

•••

Vang was one of some 170,000 Hmong displaced to the Western hemisphere in the post-Vietnam War era. About 145,000 of those Hmong refugees found a home in the U.S., while other Hmong communities landed in France, Canada, Argentina and French Guiana in South America.

As a teenager, Vang became an officer in the Hmong student club at Johnson High School, which taught a large Hmong population. “We still had new refugees coming in 1990, new kids who reminded me of me,” she says.

Newly confident in her language and leadership skills, she was an advocate for fellow Hmong students, especially the newcomers. “When I learned how to speak,” she says, “I spoke.” She asked the principal to provide a room during lunchtime so more established Hmong students could help newer arrivals.

Vang became a multisport athlete and played in the school band – all with her parents’ spirited support.

Her dad faithfully attended her swim meets, but he still struggled with English. He’d have to wait for one of Vang’s siblings to translate the announcer’s commentary

before jumping up to cheer for his daughter.

When she was a high school senior in 1990, Hmong students organized to win a spot in the Homecoming court, and Vang was elected lady-in-waiting. When the queen was dethroned for disciplinary reasons, Vang ascended to the role.

“The next year, I got to go back to crown the new king and queen,” she says. “That’s my American story.”

She earned a bachelor’s degree from Gustavus Adolphus College, which included spending her junior year abroad in France, then attended graduate school at the University of Minnesota. There, she earned a master’s degree in public affairs and a doctorate in American studies. Some 40 members of her extended family traveled from California to attend a celebration after her doctorate was awarded.

“I’ve been able to do well because it isn’t just for me,” she says. “They get to claim it, too.”

•••

Vang joined UWM’s history faculty in 2006 and established a certificate program in Hmong diaspora studies in 2009. Her current research focuses on Hmong refugee experiences in South America.

MINNESOTA, USA WISCONSIN, USA

LAOS

FRENCH GUIANA

ARGENTINA

population. The findings suggest that resettling people in larger groups and providing support for family connections, cultural preservation and economic stability could improve the long-term well-being of other refugees.

In French Guiana, French missionaries led the resettlement of 1,000 Hmong refugees from 1977 to 1979.

“They had to cut down the jungle – just like they did in Laos – and build their own homes,” Vang says. Locals resisted having the refugees there. “There were protests in the streets.”

But because they are French citizens, the Hmong Guianans thrived. Hmong farmers dominate the fresh produce market – a privileged position facilitated by the French government. This relative prosperity has raised educational ambitions for the younger generations. “They don’t send kids to high school in the village,” Vang says.

“They send them to the capital or to France.”

The Hmong population that settled in Argentina in the late 1970s was much smaller than the Guianans, only 21 families, and new arrivals were not relocated as a community. Instead, individual families were dispersed to farms to work as laborers with no way to communicate.

Over the years, families found each other, and some congregated in Rio Negro, a province in the country’s southern region of Patagonia. “They were able to have small Hmong New Year celebrations,” Vang says. “There was a little bit of social support.”

Family reunification has made it possible for some of the Hmong Argentines to immigrate to the U.S., French Guiana or Germany. “The rest are stuck there,” Vang says, and the economic success of their Hmong Guianan counterparts has eluded them.

Today, only about 100 Hmong people remain in Argentina. They are scattered across the country, living mostly as farmers on rented land or laborers in construction or other menial work.

But there are other strands of their legacy.

At an academic conference, Vang met a descendant of the Hmong Argentine community. She was an education undergraduate student, and the two struck up a conversation.

On Vang’s next research trip to South America, she had a new interpreter and research assistant.

“We know what has happened to our community in the U.S., but very little about those around the rest of the world,” Vang says. She seeks “lessons on different ways that people manage to survive and rebuild their lives.”

Vang is joined on her South American research trips

by UWM students. Through extensive interviews, they’ve explored the experiences of Hmong refugee communities in French Guiana and Argentina.

“Not only has Chia’s research expanded both scholarly and popular understandings of diasporic Hmong communities,” says fellow UWM historian Rachel Buff, “but she also has mentored a new generation of scholars in the field she helped invent.”

Vang’s research discovered a divergence in the former refugees’ ability to build community and develop a sense of belonging, circumstances affected by political and economic conditions as well as the sizes of the Hmong

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BOOKS FROM UWM

Memory, Reconciliation, and Reunions in South Korea: Crossing the Divide

Atari Age: The Emergence of Video Games in America Michael Z. Newman, The MIT Press, 2017

In August 2000, two 100-member delegations traveled between North and South Korea for brief reunions between family members from both countries. The reunions were rife with emotion and sent shockwaves across the peninsula, as participants had long been given up for dead since the Korean War. Kim, an associate professor of history, explores how public memory of unresolved war trauma prominently figures into Korean peace efforts amid Cold War animosities.

They’re commonplace today, played on computers, consoles and even smartphones. But video games were just emerging in the 1970s, much to the bemusement and occasional alarm of American parents and educators.

Newman – an associate professor of journalism, advertising and media studies – traces the medium’s early developments from a new form of TV to a new form of computing. He also explores how parents, educators and even politicians struggled to decide whether the new phenomenon was a boon or a menace.

The Transit of Venus

Paris by the Book

Susan Firer, The Backwaters Press, 2016

Liam Callanan, Dutton, 2018

Firer was the city of Milwaukee’s poet laureate from 2008 to 2010 and is a UWM adjunct associate professor emeritus.

This book, Firer’s sixth, offers reflections on the cosmos, loss and Firer’s favorite places in Milwaukee, particularly along the shores of Lake Michigan. Her poems cast such a broad topical net that even quagga mussels make an appearance. “The poem is a celestial sphere,” Firer writes, and she puts readers right in the center of it.

Callanan’s latest novel is a tale of dreams denied and realized, and lives lost, restored and reinvented. The associate professor of English introduces readers to Leah, whose troubled husband disappears without a trace from their east-side Milwaukee home. Circumstances draw Leah and her daughters to an unexpected new home and career in a Parisian bookstore. This is Callanan’s third novel, and he recently earned the George W. Hunt, S.J., Prize for Excellence in Journalism, Arts & Letters.

Nan Kim, Roman & Littlefield, 2016

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Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television

The Jazz Republic: Music, Race, and American Culture in Weimar Germany

Christine E. Evans, Yale University Press, 2016

Jonathan O. Wipplinger, University of Michigan Press, 2017

Evans dives into the archives of Soviet television and finds shows of unexpected experimentation and creativity. The associate professor of history explains how TV programming progressed from the relative freedom of post-Stalinism, through the repressive Brezhnev era and into the dawn of Gorbachev’s perestroika. Along the way, Soviet TV sought new ways to legitimize authority even in the absence of a coherent ideology or political role for its citizens.

Jazz may be the quintessential American-born music, but it played an important role in Germany’s first democracy, the 14-year Weimar era from 1919-1933. Wipplinger, an associate professor of foreign languages and literature, examined newspapers, novels, paintings and recordings to understand jazz’s influence. He argues that the music wasn’t just an ornament of the German avant-garde, but a central player in the cultural composition of the Weimar Republic.

The Politics of Pain Medicine: A Rhetorical-Ontological Inquiry

Against the Deportation Terror: Organizing for Immigrant Rights in the Twentieth Century

S. Scott Graham, University of Chicago Press, 2015

Rachel Ida Buff, Temple University Press, 2017

An entire new medical field is dedicated to addressing chronic pain. Graham, an associate professor of English and an expert in systems ethnography and qualitative modeling, outlines the challenges of such efforts. Finding solutions relies upon collaboration between disparate disciplines, a quest involving everything from psychology to physiology, anesthesia to chiropractic medicine. Graham’s book offers new conceptual tools and provides suggestions for a more effective alignment of science and policy.

The United States is home to the Statue of Liberty and a melting pot of different cultures. But, as recent public conversation shows, it’s also a nation where xenophobia and racism have a long history. Buff, a professor of history, traces the entwined histories of immigration restriction and of the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born.

From 1933 to 1982, the committee represented migrants in the U.S. during their struggles for justice.

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UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH

An Immediate Impact Research opportunities abound the moment students enroll at UWM. Freshmen can explore research even before their first semester, thanks to the UR@UWM Summer Research for Incoming Students program. And throughout their time at UWM, undergraduates can work directly with talented faculty at one of the nation’s top research universities. Students learn about the research process, and many gain experience using scientific equipment. More than 750 undergraduate research opportunities covering hundreds of topics are available each year. Students can even earn money for their work through such programs as Support for Undergraduate Research Fellows and the Senior Excellence in Research Awards. For many students, working with faculty members, who are world-class experts in their field, helps them refine their career goals and get valuable hands-on experience.

Here are several students who have done just that.

Nathon Breu Nathon Breu, a senior in American Indian studies, researches how the Ojibwe used plants for building materials, food and medicine. A former paramedic and of Ojibwe descent himself, he interviews elders and attends ceremonies in which the plants are used. Breu, a father of seven, plans to go on to earn his doctorate.

“This area is rich in Native history and culture, which fits perfectly for me and my research,” Breu says. “I want to teach native history, culture and language, continuing my research on ethnobotany.”

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Nisrit Pandey Nisrit Pandey looks forward to a career exploring renewable energy, and he’s already doing research in the field. He’s done experiments in the lab of Benjamin Church, an associate professor of materials science and engineering, that focuses on lithium and lead-acid batteries.

In 2017, Pandey – originally from Kathmandu, Nepal – was one of five students selected for UWM’s Senior Excellence in Research Award.

“He regularly inspires students who want to enter the field of energy sciences,” Pandey says of Church. “Working with him for the past three years has provided me with significant exposure in renewable energy, helping me jump-start a career in the field.”

Lainey Koch Lainey Koch, a junior studying photography, helped turn a trailer into a camera obscura with a built-in darkroom. A camera obscura, or pinhole image, is the natural phenomenon that occurs when an image is projected through a small hole in a screen, showing up on an opposite surface as a reversed and inverted image. Koch took the camera to local festivals and events to teach attendees about the science of analog photography. She collaborated on the project with Joseph Mougel, an associate professor of photography and imagery, and the Betty Brinn Children’s Museum.

Sara Seidita

Eugene Cherry

Sara Seidita, a junior biology major, studies how bugs called treehoppers create vibrations through plants to communicate with potential mates. Her research will increase understanding of mating and behavioral habits and how they contribute to the formation of new and distinct species. Seidita also helps collect treehoppers at Downer Woods and the UWM Field Station and raise them at the UWM greenhouse. Seidita’s work with Rafael Rodriguez Sevilla, a professor of biological sciences, earned her Support for Undergraduate Research Fellows funding.

Eugene Cherry is researching how to better diagnose and treat diabetic retinopathy. It’s the most common complication of diabetes, and Cherry wants to focus his research on helping inner-city populations. Through his work with Sandra Millon-Underwood, a professor in the College of Nursing, Cherry earned Support for Undergraduate Research Fellows funding.

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH

When data is for the birds Erica Gerloski remembers reading a book by famed ornithologist John James Audubon when she was in the fifth grade.

“I loved what he wrote and the pictures that he painted,” says the UWM junior, a conservation and environmental science major, “and I told people that I wanted to be an ornithologist when I grew up.”

These days, she’s helping the birds she loves by gathering data on dead ones around UWM’s campus. It’s research directed by Glen Fredlund, a UWM associate professor of geography, aimed at reducing collisions between birds and buildings. Such strikes kill between 365 million and 988 million birds annually in the United States.

Fredlund’s team – which includes students studying conservation, geography and architecture – wants to reduce that toll, especially at UWM. He and undergraduate volunteers started using clipboards and paper maps in 2014 to record bird strike

data on campus. Now, students like Gerloski record data through a mobile app that uses geographical information systems software and is instantly uploaded to an online map.

They can zero in on places that are particularly hazardous for birds, which helps them devise solutions. “GIS software has a wide range of applications,” Fredlund says, “so for students to gain real-world skills with these tools is really valuable.”

They also gain a deeper appreciation for the birds’ plight. “I remember one morning,” Gerloski says, “Professor Fredlund and I saw seven birds, including two golden-crowned kinglets, all in one spot under the skywalk between the Union and Bolton Hall, and it was so sad to see those little guys.” The skywalk has highly reflective glass, suspected as a strong contributing factor in bird strikes.

Modifications to windows at a problem spot on the School of Architecture & Urban Planning building have already been made, and they’re having a positive effect.

Engineering students are creating costeffective cameras to monitor other problem areas, which will provide more precise data on strikes. “It’s almost impossible to simply look at a building and know where and why these strikes occur,” says Fredlund, who partners with architecture faculty members Filip Tejchman and Mike Utzinger to lead the bird-collision study. “It’s only through data collection that we can identify those variables, measure which ones are larger problems and determine those that we can costeffectively mitigate.”

All the while, Gerloski gains research experience while tackling an issue close to her heart. “I really enjoy working on environmental problems while being in the heart of a city,” she says, “and this project has definitely opened my eyes to other career possibilities.”

Gerloski (left) and Fredlund

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GRADUATE RESEARCH

Rumball (left) and McLellan display an E. coli sample.

The mystery of

beach bum bacteria Growing up along the Pennsylvania shore of Lake Erie, Natalie Rumball had a front-row seat to one of the Great Lakes’ most pressing problems.

Afterward, E. coli can be washed into waters by rain, often accompanied by pathogens and viruses that pose serious public health risks.

“I saw how water quality changed in just my lifetime,” she recalls, which led to her interest in helping fix those problems.

So when beaches show elevated E. coli levels after heavy rains, those beaches are often closed, as it’s considered a sign of sewage-polluted runoff. But that’s not always the case, Rumball says, and most strains of E. coli, by themselves, aren’t harmful to human health.

It also led to her doctoral candidacy under Sandra McLellan, professor at UWM’s School of Freshwater Sciences, and doing research in the McLellan Lab. “What drew me to Sandra’s lab is her goal in helping society at the beach level,” Rumball says.

Now, she’s pursuing research that could help people spend more time at the beaches she loves.

Every summer, “Beach Closed” signs spring up along the Great Lakes’ sandy shores, a response to high levels of E. coli bacteria detected in monitoring samples. E. coli is found in the guts of everything from seagulls to cows to humans, and it leaves their bodies along with waste.

McLellan discovered one such false alarm several years ago while monitoring some of Milwaukee’s more frequently closed beaches.

“My students and I would go out by boat and take 50 samples, and we would see there was no E. coli in the offshore waters,” McLellan remembers. “But when we drove to the beach and took a sample, we would see really high levels of E. coli at the beach.”

Turns out that not all E. coli detections were a sign of sewage-polluted runoff. Sometimes, the

bacteria were already thriving in the sand.

Rumball says there’s a good chance “we’re really getting things wrong” when it comes to beach closures. What health officials need is a better pollution test to differentiate harmless E. coli instances from problematic ones.

In summer 2017, Rumball buried E. coli colonies obtained from different hosts, like gulls and humans, in beaches along Milwaukee’s lakefront and left them there six to 14 weeks. She’s comparing the genetics of colonies that survived their beachfront stay with those that didn’t, and she’s trying to identify which E. coli strains grow in the sand.

McLellan says Rumball hasn’t shied away from the “brute force” work needed to get the experiment up and running.

“I can’t give Natalie enough credit,” McLellan says. “She’s made this theoretical experiment we wanted to do real.”

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GRADUATE GRADUATERESEARCH RESEARCH

A beer from yesteryear Iron Age people living in what’s now Germany were buried with items important to them. That included their alcohol.

“Alcohol played a central role in creating a relationship between the populace and the leaders,” says UWM anthropology doctoral candidate Josh Driscoll. “People lived all across the landscape, and they’d come together at communal feasts hosted by powerful people. It was a way for leaders to project their power.”

So Driscoll, whose research includes re-creating old beers, was thrilled to be involved in a recreation using beverage remnants from a 2,450-year-old cauldron. Bettina Arnold, a UWM professor of anthropology and archaeology, found it in a grave near the Heuneburg hillfort in southwestern Germany during her excavations there.

Re-creating Iron Age beers helps Driscoll determine their shelf life. He believes there’s a correlation between shelf life and how many people could have attended those feasts where complex social ties were created.

Beer was quite different in the Iron Age, which ran from 800 to 52 B.C., and the

yeast used would’ve made for a tart taste. Hops, a bitter-tasting natural preservative, was centuries removed from becoming a standard ingredient. Driscoll wants to know how long the beers could have lasted without the benefit of hops.

“I’m finding that beer may have lasted longer than previously thought and was something that could be stockpiled, meaning that feasting could happen at a larger scale,” Driscoll says. “That means the people in power were able to create more social ties.”

Having access to beer even might have prevented wars. Driscoll notes that alcohol had a role in the peaceful transition of power from one king to another. “If you can store alcohol, you can prepare for unexpected moments like a funerary feast,” Driscoll says. “The heir in a line of succession would want to solidify his position by hosting a feast. Larger stockpiles would have meant that people with alcohol could better react to political situations in strategic ways.”

Using the Heuneburg beverage remnants as a guide, Driscoll and Arnold worked with Milwaukee’s Lakefront Brewery in 2017 to craft a braggot, a cross between beer and mead that uses malt and honey to fuel fermentation. Barley, mint, meadowsweet and honey were among the experimental brew’s ingredients, and though it wasn’t a strict re-creation, it gave researchers an idea of how Iron Age beverages might have tasted.

The result was a somewhat minty brew like a modern-day porter with an 8 percent alcohol by volume. “Quite quaffable,” Arnold says.

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The brain surgery app Chase Letteney has helped develop plenty of mobile and tablet apps during his internship with UWM’s App Brewery. But this one took the UWM computer science graduate student by surprise.

The app’s goal is to map and monitor critical brain functions during surgeries in which patients are awake. It aids neurosurgeons who are removing a tumor or tissue involved in epileptic seizures.

“The significance of what we were creating didn’t fully occur to me until after its first use,” Letteney says. “The surgeon was able to go much bigger with the tumor resection than he otherwise might have been able to do. To hear that was an inexpressible feeling.”

Called NeuroMapper, the app delivers a variety of cognitive and sensory stimuli to patients and evaluates their responses in real time. That helps surgeons avoid encroaching on tissue that would cause functional damage if removed.

The Brewery allows UWM students to develop apps for nonprofits, research groups and private-sector partners. On this project, UWM teamed up with Dr. David Sabsevitz, a neuropsychologist and associate professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin who conceived the idea for NeuroMapper.

In its first few months, NeuroMapper was tested in more than 30 surgical cases at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Other major academic medical centers around the country are testing it, too.

The app uses a sophisticated platform in which two tablets communicate while capturing and tracking sensitive behavioral metrics. It’s the latest of several apps born from a four-year partnership between MCW and the App Brewery, which gives students in computer science, information studies and graphic design experience in developing new medical solutions.

Sabsevitz says NeuroMapper lets surgeons perform more sophisticated testing in the operating room and monitor functions with audio and video. Until now, the process usually involved talking with and showing the patient pictures of objects to name.

“As far as I know, no one has done this kind of app before,” says Dustin Hahn, Brewery project manager. “And it was the most difficult job we’ve taken on to date. It took nine months to construct and evaluate it.” The average Brewery project is completed in a month.

Letteney figured out some of the app’s more complex functions – such as measuring patient vocal responses and the timing of those responses. “We’re using several different kinds of libraries, including audio and video, and intercommunicating over Bluetooth,” he says. “It was an incredible experience."

A dose of humor for treating fears

Researchers (clockwise from top left) Schwarz, Yund and Klein-Tasman

When children have significant difficulty reducing their fears and anxieties, the solution can be a surprisingly natural one: play, humor and silliness.

A team of UWM students is exploring that approach for children with Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects some 30,000 children in the United States. They’re working under the guidance of clinical psychology professor Bonnie Klein-Tasman using the facilities and assorted toys in UWM’s Child Neurodevelopment Research Lab. Children with Williams syndrome can struggle with anxieties and fears more often than most kids. Many are hypersocial, displaying an unusually affectionate behavior with intense eye contact. Other concerns include cardiovascular problems, hyperactivity and learning disabilities, though their strong interest in interacting with others and good verbal skills often mask significant developmental delay.

“Kids with Williams syndrome receive special education services in school for their cognitive deficits and hyperactivity symptoms,” says clinical psychology graduate student Brianna Yund, “but many families struggle with the impact of the phobias on daily life, and few clinicians are trained in treating anxieties in children with intellectual disabilities. Our study is intended to fill that gap.” The team hopes the results could be applicable beyond Williams syndrome cases, too.

A behavioral play therapy for reducing their phobias has already been developed, but it lacks a detailed how-to manual. Klein-Tasman’s team will create that manual and share it with practitioners through a web portal, allowing for a systematic evaluation of the intervention’s success.

A traditional strategy for treating phobias – say, of loud noises or receiving shots at the doctor’s office – involves gradually increasing levels of exposure to the object of fear. But this exposure therapy often causes discomfort, which is why many parents of young children don’t embrace it.

“Behavioral play therapy combines exposure therapy with humor in a playful setting,” says graduate student Nathanael Schwarz. An intervention for haircombing anxiety may start with pretend play: The therapist combs a doll, then exaggerates the brushing movements and makes silly noises while chasing the doll around the room. Next, the therapist may comb her own hair, and eventually the child’s. But if that generates signs of distress, the therapist backs up to less aversive behavior until the child is comfortable again, and perhaps silly herself.

“Anecdotal evidence suggests that kids respond very well to this approach because they love to be silly,” Schwarz says. “With the larger amount of data we will now collect, we can evaluate this intervention more systematically.”

Yund and Schwarz have a central role in researching and evaluating the new therapy and will assist Klein-Tasman and UWM graduate EJ Miecielica in developing the manual. The Williams Syndrome Association is funding the study through a grant and will assist with the recruitment of eight children, ages 4 to 10, who will be treated at UWM in 2018. It will also help disseminate the new manual.

“Very few studies have evaluated interventions for anxiety in young children with developmental disabilities,” Klein-Tasman says. “That’s why we hope our work will also inform the treatment of phobias in children with other conditions, such as autism spectrum disorders.”

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GRADUATE RESEARCH

Exercise

and the telltale heart The No. 1 cause of death in firefighters is a sudden cardiac event that occurs after high-intensity activity.

This can be caused by a glitch in the body’s autonomic nervous system that blocks the heart’s return to a normal resting state.

Graduate student David Cornell is researching a physiological indicator of such trouble. His work could help firefighters – and even professional baseball players – rest easier after the unusual physical demands of their jobs.

Cornell studies heart-rate variability, or HRV, which is the change in the time between heartbeats. It’s a measure of physiological stress and can indicate whether the heart is recovering from exertion normally.

“The HRV taken at rest gives us a picture of what’s happening with the autonomic nervous system, which controls the heart rate,” says Cornell, who is working toward dual doctorates in kinesiology and physical therapy. “In fact, it is considered a predictor of mortality.”

In addition to studying strategies to protect cardiac function, he’s developing tools that set optimal training loads for these professionals to improve their performance.

The research extends to starting pitchers, who are some of professional baseball’s most injury-prone athletes. Throwing a baseball may be nothing like fighting fires, but it requires pitchers to regularly go from a state of rest to heavy exertion.

In research he published in 2017, Cornell found that, one day after a pitcher’s regularly scheduled start, his resting heart rate showed an altered functioning of the autonomic nervous system. The HRV returned to normal, however, the next day, knowledge that could improve training and recovery regimens. In 2018, Cornell plans to work as a student physical therapist with the Milwaukee Brewers during spring training.

A doctorate earned from afar in Oman Amal Ali Al-Ghassani’s father-in-law was 96 years old when he had the stroke. A tribal leader in Oman, he suddenly needed assistance with basic daily activities. And though she’d made a career caring for people, Al-Ghassani now wanted to learn even more.

So inspired, she sought a doctorate in nursing from UWM, with the goal of improving care for the aging in Oman. What’s more, she did most of her studies online from Oman. With four children and a job as a community nursing educator, leaving her home in Muscat was not an option.

UWM’s distance learning program, however, meant Al-Ghassani could join the 2013 cohort of online doctoral students. She also found a strong

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research mentor in Christine Kovach, a UWM distinguished professor of nursing and internationally recognized expert in the care and treatment of older adults with dementia.

Support from the Oman Ministry of Health enabled Al-Ghassani to make several trips to the United States, where she worked with Kovach on research involving Milwaukee-area nursing homes. “I learned greatly from my exposure to research in the USA and at UWM,” Al-Ghassani says.

Oman doesn’t have nursing homes like the U.S., Al-Ghassani says, mainly because elder care is viewed as a religious and traditional obligation for families and the community. Within that context, her

Cornell

Al-Ghassani

dissertation research explored how strong networks and more frequent visits from family members and home health workers affects the care of older adults.

In December 2017, during a rare trip to Milwaukee, Al-Ghassani successfully defended her dissertation, then returned home to Oman with her doctorate. She hopes her work will help Oman’s plans for improved elder care, especially regarding the country’s expected increase in elders with dementia who live at home.

For more information on UWM distance learning, visit uwm.edu/online.

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JUSTICE for all

Tina Freiburger, chair of UWM’s Criminal Justice Department, researches the courts and judicial decision-making. She explores how discrepancies related to gender, race, ethnicity and age impact sentencing decisions and assesses the results of judicial initiatives.

Community partnerships are integral to her work, and among her active projects are studies about eviction cases and recidivism rates. She’s also exploring the targeted, systemic integration of trauma-informed care – an approach that recognizes how past trauma affects people – into the judicial process. The driving force behind her research: discovering how courts can function in the most effective and equitable manner.

How are you involved with the Eviction Defense Project?

How are you and the courts exploring trauma-informed care?

In Milwaukee County, fewer than 1 percent of people facing eviction have legal representation. Because it’s a civil matter, they don’t have any legal right to representation, like in a criminal matter. Through Legal Action of Wisconsin, pro bono attorneys provide representation. They help negotiate with a landlord and hopefully avoid an eviction.

That project involves a partnership with the Adult Drug Treatment Court and the Veterans Treatment Initiative in Milwaukee County, as well as the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division. The purpose is to introduce more evidence-based practices in trauma-informed care to see if it can make those specialty courts more effective and improve outcomes. We are working with providers to implement those treatment models. Most people in the court have experienced trauma. If that trauma – physical, emotional, sexual – is treated, can it enhance their outcomes or make them less likely to recidivate?

Once people have an eviction on their record, it’s publicly accessible and makes it very hard for them to find another place to rent. My role is to see if there is a change in outcomes for people with legal representation.

It’s still preliminary, but we’ve found that people feel their outcomes are better. They’ve been able to avoid a lot of evictions. Where there is an eviction, they’ve been able, in most cases, to get it sealed.

What are the connections between racial disparities in sentencing and reoffending rates?

Using Milwaukee County sentencing data from 2009, we found that young, black males were significantly less likely to receive a sentence of probation, as opposed to jail, than all other groups. There is a racial disparity.

Young, black men are given jail instead of probation.

They actually receive shorter jail sentences than other groups. Still, even though it’s a short sentence, they are more likely to be incarcerated, which can affect employment stability, family stability, community ties.

Those things, we know, are related to recidivism. I’m working with the Milwaukee County Office on African American Affairs to build a comprehensive database.

We’ll be able to examine whether there are racial disparities in recidivism rates after they leave the House of Correction.

What’s the importance of all these projects?

To really get an idea if we are operating in a fair and effective way. If people are being punished differently based on extralegal factors, then the court is not really functioning as effectively as it could. Criminal justice is an applied discipline. It’s not uncommon for somebody’s research to be heavily applied to the discipline, like mine is. I find it incredibly rewarding. I learn a lot working with agencies. The community partners I have are truly incredible. They are really interested in making the system better.

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An elite research institution UWM is proud to be a Research 1 university, recognized for “highest research activity” by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. It’s a leader in fields across the academic spectrum, from energy to health care, freshwater to entrepreneurship.

UWM leverages its world-class research into valuable partnerships with industry leaders, part of its $1.5 billion impact on Wisconsin’s economy. Building upon that legacy, construction has begun on a new facility for the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center. The 24,000-square-foot building will feature classrooms, workshops and labs for prototyping products and software. It will be a hub for students and faculty to collaborate on projects with businesses and entrepreneurs.

ONE OF AMERICA’S

TOP RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES

More than 700 UWM faculty members bring their expertise to 190-plus academic programs. That includes nearly 100 master’s and doctoral programs serving more than 4,600 graduate students. And undergraduate researchers can choose from more than 750 research opportunities. Together, we are turning powerful ideas into proven results.

2017 Total Awards NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS

$5 million

2017 Awards by Sponsor

BUSINESS & INDUSTRY

Energy $1.9 million

$2.5 million

Other $1.4 million

NON-FEDERAL GOVERNMENTS

$51

$5.9 million

MILLION

Education $5 million

FEDERAL

$26.2 million

HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

NIH $5 million

HHS $1.2 million ONDCP $915,000 USDA $390,000 CDC $295,000 Defense $281,000

$26.2 M ILLION

NSF $9.8 million

$7.3 million FOUNDATIONS & GIFTS

$4.1 million

UWM Research Foundation Founded: 2006

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PATENTS

49 Pending Patent Applications 70 Licensing/Option Agreements 14 Related Faculty Startups

Source: UWM Office of Research

Entrepreneurial Training

310 S T U D E N T I D E A S submitted through Student Startup Challenge in 5 years

2,100 participants

73

in Fresh Ideas workshops (Fall 2017)

I-Corps teams trained

Source: Lubar Entrepreneurship Center

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uwm.edu/uwmresearch