Quick Takes: Summer 2011

UW professor Jamie Thomson, the first researcher to isolate and grow human embryonic stem cells, received the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research. The award carries a $500,000 prize, the largest financial award in the U.S. for medical and science research.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from the UW regarding whether the university may deny funding to religious groups. The UW had argued that, as a state university, it could not provide funds from student fees to Badger Catholic, a student group that offered religious activities in its programming. A federal appellate court ruled that the UW violated the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court allowed that ruling to stand.

In May, the UW hosted the National Science Olympiad, one of the country’s most prestigious contests in science, technology, engineering, and math. Some 120 teams from middle and high schools around the country competed during the event.

Big Red is the most green, according to TheDailyGreen.com. The site gave the UW its Editor’s Pick as Greenest University due to projects that have seen a 16 percent drop in greenhouse gas emissions and a 29 percent drop in per capita water use since 2005.

UW limnologist Stephen Carpenter won the 2011 Stockholm Prize, the world’s most prestigious honor for water-related science. Carpenter directs the university’s Center for Limnology, and he’s a leading authority on lake food-web dynamics and long-term ecological change. He’ll receive the honor in August, from the hands of Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf.

Kathleen Gallagher ’81 of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was part of a team of reporters who won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in April.

Karen Holden, a professor emerita of consumer science, served as an adviser for Sesame Street in creating its financial education initiative, For Me, for You, for Later.

Published in the Summer 2011 issue