The full-length feature was shot last summer in Madison, with some of the action filmed in UW–Madison locations such as Lathrop Hall and the Office of the Registrar. In the director’s chair was UW communication arts professor Aaron Greer.

Greer has more than a dozen documentary and feature films to his credit. He wrote the screenplay, is producing, and will edit Morning Moon.

“I’ve always been interested in character-driven films,” he says. “I was influenced by films that came out of Europe and South America in the ’60s and ’70s, with real people, real places, a little less of the gloss and glamour of Hollywood.” The filming of Morning Moon came after a year of painstaking planning. The fictional story centers on a 22-year-old Minnesota college student named Selena who journeys to Madison — and the UW campus — in search of clues to her mother’s past. Through a strange turn of events, she becomes a fixture in the lives of Avi and Nya, a longtime Madison couple on an emotional journey of their own as they try to start a family.

While union actors from Chicago won the roles of Selena, Avi, and Nya, UW students and faculty help fill out the cast. Theater student Jenny Duarte Castillo x’28, for example, is playing a key role, as is African American studies professor emerita Sandra Adell MA’86, PhD’89.

A number of alumni — now professionals in the film and video world — served on the film crew. C Kessler ’24 did costumes, hair, and makeup, and Alejandro Dominguez ’24 is the sound mixer. Both took a senior-year capstone filmmaking course with Greer and his UW–Madison colleague Erik Gunneson ’89, who is the movie’s assistant director and coproducer. They each credit the skills and friendships from that experience, along with other coursework, for leading them to professional opportunities after graduation.

Crew member Kyla Pollard ’24 is a communication arts graduate now pursuing a master’s degree in filmmaking at New York University. Greer had taught one of Pollard’s favorite undergrad classes — screenwriting — and wrote her a letter of recommendation for graduate school.

“It’s nice to be on set with a director who really cares,” she says, “and who has a clear vision.” “I’ve been part of the group of folks lobbying for film and television tax incentives to return to the state,” he says. “We encourage some of our students to try to stick around and work in Wisconsin. If we’re going to have an ecosystem for that, I have to film in the state myself.”

Greer also wants to demonstrate to his students that they have all the filmmaking resources they need at hand. “They’re able to make really moving films with the amazing equipment that we have here at Vilas Hall,” he says. “It’s stuff they can put in the back of a car or minivan. You don’t have to have huge trucks of equipment to make a film look good and sound good.” https://vimeo.com/1216163349 Funding for the film has come primarily from grants, including a Creative Arts Award Greer received from the university’s Division of the Arts. He plans to edit the film while on sabbatical this fall and submit it to film festivals next year.

Beyond their paychecks, many on the film crew are earning valuable experience. For Gunneson, coordinator of the university’s digital cinema production certificate, it’s gratifying to see former students return to campus as professionals.

“I always tell my students that one of my favorite places on earth is a film set,” he says. “Here I am, in one of my favorite places.” Gayle Worland is a writer with UW–Madison’s Office of Strategic Communication.

Published in the Winter 2026 issue.

Frans Post is believed to be one of the first European artists to go to the Americas and paint landscapes for wealthy collectors. Although Village of Olinda, Brazil has been in the Chazen’s holdings since 1913, it never quite fit into any of the existing galleries — not really Baroque or contemporary European — and so it spent much of its life out of view.

Now, the painting is on prominent display because of an innovative reinstallation project several years in the making, one that transformed the entire museum. The Chazen no longer organizes its collection by time period, media type, or geography, but instead anchors each new gallery space with a focus object surrounded by thematically connected constellation objects.

Village of Olinda, Brazil is now surrounded by artworks that add depth and context.

“To me, this painting was just screaming to be a focus object,” says former Chazen curator Janine Yorimoto Boldt, who recognized that it pleasantly depicted a handful of laborers tending the idyllic sugarcane fields in the Americas — but neglected to show the brutal infrastructure of Brazil’s thriving sugar trade, dependent on forced labor by hundreds of thousands of enslaved Afro-Brazilians. The painting is now surrounded by artworks that add depth and context, like an 18th-century porcelain sweetmeat stand that speaks to themes of labor and luxury. In this way, curators can launch powerful conversations.

Village of Olinda, Brazil is a focus object in Gallery XIII, one of 24 new gallery spaces reinstalled across the Chazen’s two buildings. Nearly a quarter of the artworks haven’t been on display since at least 1997, and 16 percent are newly acquired since 2021. In addition to revealing deeply researched, newly discovered connections throughout the entire collection, the reinstallation project debuts bold new paint colors and other design elements customized for each gallery space; explanatory wall texts aimed at making the collection more engaging and accessible; and a new Bloomberg Connects digital guide that offers maps, audio artwork descriptions for low-vision visitors, self-guided tours, and exclusive audio features, including contributions from UW professors.

“From the start,” says Kate Wanberg ’10, exhibition and collection project manager, “the entire team recognized that if we were going to do this, we had to go big.”

An Epiphany

Chazen director Amy Gilman had wanted a reinstallation since taking the helm in 2017, but she just couldn’t decide on the right model. Nothing precisely fit the Chazen’s collection, which has a lot of breadth but not necessarily depth. About 70 percent of artists are represented by only one work, for example, and holdings heavily favor the 19th and 20th centuries. Organized in the traditional way, this rich collection could sometimes appear thin. Additionally, museums all over the country were rethinking their collections, particularly in the wake of 2020’s wave of racial reckoning. They grappled with things like statue removal and how art is acquired, exhibited, and contextualized.

Then, in 2023, two critical things happened: the landmark re:mancipation exhibition and the epiphany that followed.

re:mancipation began with a polarizing 1873 sculpture in the Chazen’s holdings, Thomas Ball’s The Emancipation Group, which depicts Abraham Lincoln towering benevolently over a kneeling, newly freed enslaved person. Rather than simply removing the sculpture, Gilman commissioned New York artist Sanford Biggers and the MASK Consortium to offer an interpretation. The project took two years and evolved into a 3,367-square-foot installation of 42 new, borrowed, and existing artworks that, taken together, recontextualized Ball’s piece. Each new object essentially orbited the original, encouraging viewers to rethink instead of erase.

Recontextualizing Thomas Ball’s polarizing sculpture The Emancipation Group inspired the Chazen’s new approach. Chazen Museum of Art

A few weeks after the exhibition closed, inspiration struck chief curator Katherine Alcauskas.

“I thought, what if we reorganized the entire collection in the spirit and style of re:mancipation? What if each gallery had a single focus object surrounded by thematically connected constellation objects that together told a deeper story?”

Gilman and the staff were immediately on board. Now they could pull from all areas of the collection, regardless of period or place. They could think outside every box and flip challenges into strengths.

“To me, in that moment was this incredible feeling of joy,” Gilman says, “knowing that we were going to do something that I was already pretty sure had not been done.” Over the next three years, the staff formed work groups, built mood boards, and embarked on visual mapping exercises. They dove headlong into research, enlisting campus experts and conducting community workshops, particularly around culturally sensitive holdings. And they drafted and revised 24 gallery concepts, refining right down to the precise shade of paint.

It was a big idea, and it fell to Wanberg to execute the nuts and bolts. Over the years, she’d navigated substantial changes at the Chazen, including the museum’s 2011 expansion, but nothing of this scope. Staff members were used to producing two big exhibitions and three smaller exhibitions each year in about 8,000 square feet of space, but now they were tasked with the equivalent of planning 24 simultaneous exhibitions across 50,000 square feet. Wanberg worked to carry out the curators’ visions while managing the deadlines for each gallery, from mood board to final reveal.

An Accident

Throughout the newly reinstalled museum are examples of unfamiliar artworks brought into the light, or of familiar artworks shown in a new light.

Take the 1831 Lady Caroline Montagu portrait, long a guest favorite. For the past 20 years, curators believed the aristocratic Lady Caroline was dressed up in costume as the character Haidée, a Greek pirate’s daughter in Lord Byron’s poem Don Juan. But during the research process, they consulted Nancy Rose Marshall, a UW professor of 19th-century art and visual culture. And then there’s the two-piece walnut Renaissance cabinet, ornately carved with classical European figures. Probably built in France in the 1500s, acquired by Jewish collector Oscar Bondy in 1910, and seized by the Nazis in Vienna in 1938, it had been restituted to the Bondy family before the Chazen purchased it in 1969. For years it was housed with other furniture lining the hallway on the lowest level of the Elvehjem building. But when staff members pulled it from its glass casing, they discovered the Nazi inventory number scrawled on the back — and curator James Wehn realized they’d accidentally found the perfect focus object.

“This was an object that could do so many things,” Wehn says.

The Renaissance cabinet now tells a deeper story. Visitors can see the Nazi inventory number scrawled on the back.

Today the cabinet — shown in the round — anchors Gallery XIV, surrounded by constellation artworks that connect some of the Chazen’s strongest holdings, like Wiener Werkstätte decorative art related to the Vienna Secession, German Expressionist prints, and a trove of historical medals tracing events and politics from World War I through the rise of the Nazi Party. The cabinet also bears traditional symbols of abundance and power, as do some of the German medals, including those used as Nazi propaganda. To responsibly tell this larger story of art, theft, and fascism, Wehn consulted campus experts from both Jewish and German studies.

“We want to help people understand how images can be adapted and turned into new forms of meaning,” Wehn says.

A Revelation

Gilman had never been particularly attracted to the Chazen’s collection of Chinese export porcelain, which used to be tucked behind glass in one of the Elvehjem building’s pass-through niche spaces. They now hang prominently on the wall in Gallery XII, artfully arranged as they would have been in 17th-century palaces and surrounded by objects that add intriguing context. “Now they are deeply fascinating to look at,” Gilman says. “We’ve done that in several of the galleries where you can actually see things that are not typically revealed about the objects. It’s been a revelation to me, and I think it will be for a lot of visitors.”

Gilman hopes that these revelations continue well into the future. This is, after all, a university museum, and college campuses are ripe for experimentation. The Chazen’s reinstallation project has been a teachable moment unto itself. https://vimeo.com/1239520180

Video: Jason Weiss

Maggie Ginsberg ’97 is the writer for UW–Madison’s Division of the Arts.

Published in the Winter 2026 issue.

UW researchers have discovered that microbes in the intestines of Alzheimer’s disease patients differ from those of healthy people. Danielle Lawry

A compound produced by bacteria in most people’s digestive tracts increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and speeds up cognitive decline in dementia patients, according to a new study.

Nearly 10 years ago, researchers led by UW–Madison professors Barbara Bendlin and Federico Rey discovered that microbes in the intestines of Alzheimer’s disease patients differ from those of healthy people.

“Since then, we’ve been trying to figure out how this difference in the gut perhaps leads to changes in the brain,” says Bendlin, a professor of gerontology in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

In a recent study, the researchers found that a compound called imidazole propionate (ImP) — produced in the gut by some types of bacteria — plays an important role in brain changes that result in Alzheimer’s disease and related cases of dementia.

“ImP-producing bacteria are present in a large fraction of people, but they’re not very abundant in most people,” says Rey, a UW–Madison professor of bacteriology. “But something we have learned over the years is that a microbe doesn’t have to be abundant to have an impact on the host.”

ImP can spread from the gut to other parts of the body, where it has been implicated in type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease. The researchers showed that ImP that reaches the brain in mice increases the buildup of clumps of two abnormal proteins.

“That process eventually results in the death of neurons, and in humans is a key feature of Alzheimer’s disease,” Rey says.

By looking at ImP in the blood of almost 1,200 people who have participated in the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention and studies at the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, the researchers found that people with high ImP levels were far more likely to also show markers of dementia-related protein and neuron dysfunction. They identified a genetic variation, present in about 43 percent of the people in the study, linked to accumulating much higher levels of ImP in the blood.

“This genetic variation has been associated with increased Alzheimer’s risk in large genetic studies before, and now we may understand why it’s connected,” Rey says.

Further studies could reveal whether targeting ImP might be an effective treatment to reduce Alzheimer’s risk.

The press gives students a rare opportunity to connect design, history, and contemporary artistic practice in meaningful ways. Courtesy of UW–Madison Libraries

After a decade on loan at the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, UW–Madison’s Silver Buckle Press is returning to campus.

The return marks the next chapter in Silver Buckle’s more than 50-year history at the university. The press, which supports instruction in printing, typography, book arts, and related disciplines, was acquired by the UW–Madison Libraries in 1973 from the estate of hobby printer and Ford Motor Company art director Robert Shaftoe at the urging of UW art professor Walter Hamady. For decades, it served as a working letterpress resource, producing fine press books, broadsides, exhibitions, and educational programs, while introducing generations of students to the history and craft of printing. The press will be transported back to campus before the spring 2027 semester under the new ownership of the UW Art Department.

“Silver Buckle Press is an extraordinary addition to the department of art’s teaching resources,” says Leslie Smith III, department chair and professor. “Having students learn by working with a historic printing collection gives them a rare opportunity to connect craft, design, history, and contemporary artistic practice in meaningful ways.”

The return reflects the UW’s continued commitment to preserving cultural heritage while ensuring that historic collections remain active resources for teaching, research, and creative practice. By bringing Silver Buckle Press back to campus, the university expands opportunities for faculty and students to engage with the art, history, and techniques of letterpress printing in an instructional setting.

Eichorst, who started as UW–Madison’s new athletic director in July, has all the credentials of a true Wisconsinite. He grew up in the small village of Lone Rock, played college football at UW–Whitewater, earned his law degree at Marquette, and climbed the administrative ranks at Wisconsin Athletics under Barry Alvarez from 2006 to 2011.

“I know what this university means to people across the state because it has meant so much to me and my family,” he says.

Eichorst’s homecoming follows stops as athletic director at Miami and Nebraska and an eight-year run at Texas, where he served as deputy athletic director and chief operating officer for a department that won the Learfield Directors’ Cup for the overall success of its teams in five of the last six years.

Eichorst will draw on that deep experience and a legal background as he guides UW–Madison through a new era of college athletics, which includes direct revenue sharing and third-party NIL (name, image, likeness) deals for student-athletes; a largely unfettered transfer portal; and ongoing questions around player eligibility.

In a conversation just weeks into the job, an even-keeled Eichorst shared why he believes “Wisconsin has a chance not only to navigate that change, but to be one of the institutions that helps lead through it.”

How does your personal history shape your belief in college athletics?

Growing up down the road in Lone Rock, and as a first-generation college student, I couldn’t have imagined as a young person that these opportunities could be available to someone like me. When I was competing in athletics, education always mattered the most. You took care of your schoolwork for the privilege to compete in athletics, and that led me to the path of being a lifelong learner. Athletics was just the key to unlock the box of opportunity. I always say it to our student-athletes — coming here is a decision they’re making for the next 50 to 60 years, not for one to four years.

You’ve talked about recentering the value of a UW education when it comes to the student-athlete experience. What does that look like?

We absolutely have to be competitive in NIL and in the benefits we provide student-athletes. That is part of college athletics today. But I never want us to undersell the rest of the Wisconsin opportunity. You can come here, compete at the highest level, receive a world-class education, build lifelong relationships, and become part of an alumni network that can change your life long after your playing days are over. That complete experience is incredibly powerful. So we want to lead with the academic piece and articulate how valuable of a decision and investment is being made by the young person, then counterbalance that with the benefits that come behind it.

What did you learn at Texas about sustaining an elite, broad-based program? 

The biggest lesson was that excellence can become contagious. You’d see it when athletes from various sports would come together on the training table or at lunch. It was a flywheel of competitiveness and high standards. When people see programs across the department competing for championships, it raises everybody’s expectations. It also reinforced how important alignment is. Great coaches and student-athletes matter most, but they need strong support around them — sports medicine, performance development, academics, facilities, fundraising, and administration. When all of those pieces are working together, special things can happen.

In this new era, what changes do you think are necessary for college athletics?  

Some stability would be a very good start. There are different state laws, ongoing litigation, and rules that continue to change. It’s difficult for student-athletes, coaches, and institutions when the framework keeps moving. I’d like to see clearer national standards that protect student-athlete opportunities, allow institutions to compete fairly, and preserve what is special about college athletics. We need a model people can understand and that can actually endure.

You practiced law for a number of years. How has that background helped you?

It taught me how to think through complicated issues, ask questions, and understand risk. That certainly helps in college athletics today because there are legal issues almost everywhere you turn. But the longer I’ve been in leadership, the more I’ve learned that the answer usually isn’t just legal. It’s about people, judgment, relationships, and understanding what is best for the institution.

What will success look like to you in this role three to five years from now? 

I’d love for people to look at Wisconsin Athletics and see a department that is competing for championships across the board, providing an extraordinary experience for student-athletes, and making the university and state proud. I also want our student-athletes, coaches, staff, campus, alumni, and fans to feel that we’re building something together. I really believe that when Wisconsin is united — when we all pull in the same direction — there is no limit to what we can accomplish.

Our Fall 2026 issue mourned the closing of Porta Bella, the beloved campus-area Italian restaurant. Readers responded with their own memories of first dates, marriage proposals, and extravagant meals in Porta Bella’s romantic booths.

We got engaged at Porta Bella! As my (now husband) made his way around the booth to get down on one knee, I famously asked him, “What are you doing?” As I could not think of why he was walking around the booth. The ambiance was perfect.

—Jamie White MS’09 

I was on campus (1969–73) when Porta Bella was likely at its peak as a local attraction. Memories? A bunch of ’em.

At one point, the chief bartender was a guy named Terrence. He had a pronounced English accent (maybe genuine) and an irritating habit. If you sat at the bar with a date, he refused to acknowledge her and spoke only to you. My girlfriend (later wife) finally refused to let us order from him.

Lowenbrau beer (the real German stuff) was served in large clay mugs. I think they finally had to change to glassware because too many of the mugs were walking out the door.

During one of the campus riots, we took refuge from the disorder inside Porta Bella. What we failed to note was the kitchen intake fans pulling the outside tear gas into the public area. You don’t really appreciate its effect until you experience it inside.

—David McGuire ’65, ’73 

I worked at Porta Bella from 1982 to 1987. I lived across the street on Hawthorne Court above the Cardinal Beauty Salon and didn’t have a phone (too expensive). If they found themselves short-staffed, Mike McCormick, the original owner’s son, would run across the street and ring my doorbell. Still have good friends from my Porta Bella days over 40 years ago — great memories!

—Lorraine Downes ’86

When we visited Madison last spring, it was with great sadness that we found our favorite campus restaurant had closed. My wife, Dee (’78) and I (’78) spent many memorable evenings there over the years. We shall never forget the great food, Porta Salads, and dark wooden private booths that created the warm ambiance that we irreverently described as “early bordello.” My first evening in Madison in 1972 as an industrial engineering student included dinner there. I reflected on that moment just last weekend while in town for the game and saw the construction on Frances Street — probably soon to be another glass and steel monolith like so many others. While much of the old charm of State Street and surrounding areas has yielded to progress, we still have some great Mad City memories. RIP Porta Bella — you sure had style!

It was an excellent article.

—William Bozeman ’78

Thank you for honoring a favorite UW and Madison institution! A couple memories to share: to impress (hopefully) my new fiancée Joanne, I took her to Porta Bella to celebrate her 21st birthday. We had a wonderful meal. Before the check, something else arrived instead — Portal Bella’s signature colorful multilayer after-dinner drink, ON THE HOUSE! I’m not sure if Joanne or I was more impressed. Mission accomplished.

Jumping way forward to a couple years ago, Joanne and I took our grandson Eli (a two-year Grandparents University alum!) to lunch at Porta Bella. This was a bit of UW nostalgia we wanted to share with him. While he enjoyed his lunch, he had one complaint — it was way too dark. So much for romantic nostalgia. Oh well, at least they still had the multilayered after-dinner drink on the menu!

—Stephen Greger

It was the fall of 1972, our first “formal date” after meeting briefly for coffee in the Rathskeller several evenings before. We had dinner at Porta Bella; I was a 25-year-old medical intern, she a 23-year-old graduate student in the German department. We talked and talked and talked, our disparate backgrounds notwithstanding. Several months later we moved in together, and this Christmas season we will be celebrating our 53rd anniversary.

Yes, our vivid memories of that first dinner together in cozy, romantic Porta Bella are an integral part of who we are today. Thank you for helping to make all that possible.

—Alan and Martha Marks

My dismay at reading of the closing of Porta Bella gave way to a wave of nostalgia, and then delight at the invitation to share a favorite memory of the restaurant.

My connection to Porta Bella goes back to Paisan’s in that 1960s-style shopping mall across from Humanities. I arrived in Madison in 1977 to begin the PhD program in History. My dissertation director was Professor Theodore Hamerow. At least once a semester (in addition to the weekly seminar, of course) we would meet over lunch at Paisan’s, where he would unfailingly order a Garibaldi sandwich and a beer. These regular meetings continued after I graduated and took a faculty position at UW-Parkside. We now met at Porta Bell. Professor Hamerow had by then retired, but his choice of the Garibaldi sandwich and beer remained unchanged, as did our easy flow of conversation.

Professor Hamerow, one of the grand old men of the profession, passed away in 2013. I am now retired from UW–Parkside, but the memories of those lunches, and of Porta Bella, even as it too passes into history, remain ever young.

—Laura Gellott MA’82

Porta Bella birthday drink: free. It came in a test-tube-shaped glass with shots of different color liquors making stripes like a rainbow.

And, what was that egg/cheese crumble on top of a porta salad?

 —Ellyn McKenzie ’70, who liked both sweet and hot peppers on her Garibaldi

I was grieved to read of the closing of Porta Bella, one of my favorite retreats for a fine Italian meal. Now I am bereft of the last of the “Three P’s” from my Madison days: Paisan’s (closed 2022), Porta Bella, and Paul’s Bookstore (closed earlier this year). These three sustained my tummy and brain while I wrote my dissertation, and now I feel impoverished. But I shall keep the happy memories of my departed friends!

—Byron Nelson PhD’85

I had my first drink at Porta Bella on September 9, 1975. I just turned 18. I was a freshman, and my boyfriend took me there for an ice cream drink. It was delicious. Such a special celebration. I’ve always hoped to take my husband there when I’d one day show him Madison. I’m sorry for the missed opportunity.

—Marcia Tatz Wollner ’79

Our three children attended UW. One of our traditions was to go out to eat at Porta Bella after a football game. The quiet atmosphere even on gameday was a nice reprieve from the crowds on State Street. The booth-like atmosphere allowed for easy conversation and no outside distractions. The combination of excellent Italian food and relaxing atmosphere made for one of our favorite family memories in Madison.

—Robert Mead

My wife and I met on campus. One of our favorite places for a date was Porta Bella. On the first day of summer in 1988 we got engaged at Porta Bella in the fountain room! We had many celebrations there, including our daughter’s grad parties from high school and college. We celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary at Porta Bella!

We were so lucky to eat at Porta Bella in February, to have one last meal there with our good friends. Thank you for the article and pictures!

—Patrick Jost

We lived in The Frances, the brown brick building on the corner of University and Frances next door to Grimm’s Book Bindery and Cecil’s Sandals, which was next door to Porta Bella in 1971. My husband was a law student at UW then. Walking into that garden and having dinner there was nothing less than magical, with great ambiance and wonderful food.

Great article and good memories.

—Jodeen Hosmanek ’87

As a UW graduate school student, Porta Bella was for special occasions! A favorite boyfriend (chemical Engineering, UW) took me there to celebrate my graduation. I’ll never forget how special that night was. Thank you for the beautiful article.

—Cheryl Stallworth MBA ’81 (Craig Gay was my date, RIP)

The asparagus that came with one of the dinners. I will miss them forever. I’m now 73, and my first trip there was at 17.

—Peg Hanson

“This is a celebration of a very unusual project,” says Halzen. “It is difficult to imagine that we could have pulled this off anywhere but at UW–Madison, with its unique research infrastructure. The success of this project involved some luck, and I was fortunate to be at UW, where unconventional ideas can thrive and where I had the support of a remarkable community, from talented engineers at the Physical Sciences Laboratory to longtime colleagues on the faculty and supportive administrators.”

Halzen is the principal investigator of the NSF IceCube Neutrino Observatory, the world’s largest — and perhaps strangest — telescope. The U.S. National Science Foundation–funded observatory is operated by an international collaboration of scientists led by the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center based at UW–Madison.

Embedded in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, IceCube uses thousands of light sensors to survey the universe for neutrinos, nearly massless particles that rarely interact with other matter. Neutrinos provide information about the workings of black holes, galaxies, and other objects in the cosmos.

Along with observations by other telescopes, the neutrino first detected by IceCube provided the earliest evidence of a source of high-energy cosmic rays, whose origins have been notoriously difficult to pinpoint since their discovery more than 100 years ago.

In 2013, IceCube announced the first detection of high-energy neutrinos from outside the solar system. The discovery won the 2013 Physics World Breakthrough of the Year Award.

Four years later, IceCube detected a high-energy neutrino from a supermassive black hole at the center of a distant galaxy in the direction of the constellation Orion. Since then, it has provided the first evidence of high-energy neutrino emission from an active galaxy 47 million light-years away, and also from the Milky Way.

This is the 23rd Nobel Prize tied to UW–Madison, in a legacy that spans medicine, chemistry, economics, engineering, and physics.

Jake Piper

In August, the UW Marching Band held a five-day training program for returning and prospective band members, called Registration (or Reg) Week. The prospectives rehearse the band’s music, learn the distinctive marching style, and, at the end of the week, audition for a spot. Returning members lighten the mood by wearing silly costumes. The tradition serves a not-so-silly purpose: creating a community that will bring joy to the Badger faithful.

Photos: Tom Ziemer

Jack Stonecipher PhDx’28 grew up on the shore of Minnesota’s Light Foot Lake, hooking bluegill and smallmouth bass. These days, he’s building robotic fish as a UW–Madison mechanical engineering student. Stonecipher and Wei Wang, a UW mechanical engineering assistant professor, have devised a unique mechanical version whose body stiffness can be adjusted, allowing it to better mimic the swimming mechanics of real fish.

“There are a lot of different stiffnesses in different kinds of fish, and it can be a big indicator of how they move. But it’s very difficult to actually measure,” says Stonecipher. “Using robotic systems, we can get a better gauge of how much they’re stiffening and why they would want to do this.”

In nature, fish activate muscles, increasing the stiffness in their bodies and allowing them to accelerate. Conversely, they can also maintain efficiency in their locomotion while moving at slower speeds when their muscles are slack. Those biological machinations could hold important lessons for designing watercraft.

“Most of our current boats or underwater vehicles can only maintain a high efficiency within a very narrow speed profile,” says Wang, whose lab develops physical prototypes of aquatic robots as well as the control and sensing systems necessary to operate them. “But fish can maintain a very high efficiency over a very wide speed profile.”

Stonecipher and Wang reveal new insights about aquatic animal movement.

Stonecipher, Wang, and former undergraduate researcher Allen Gao ’26 built their bluegill-inspired robot with a lentil-filled polymer body that can stiffen on command without significantly changing its shape or size, thanks to a vacuum pump. The fish can freely swim, allowing the researchers to test the effects of altering the body stiffness in a realistic environment.

Beyond informing watercraft design, Wang and Stonecipher see bioinspired aquatic robots as tools for ecological monitoring, where they’re able to blend in among animals and better capture photos and other data without disrupting the natural environment. They could also reveal new insights about aquatic animal movement, since it’s not possible to force a fish to selectively tense its muscles and then study the effects.

“I like this idea that robotics is spurred on by biological research, and then robotics can be used to inform biological research,” says Stonecipher.