In her second address before the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024, Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin outlined several areas of emphasis for the year ahead, including the new Wisconsin Research, Innovation and Scholarly Excellence (RISE) Initiative.
The RISE Initiative is designed to help address significant, complex challenges of particular importance to Wisconsin and the world, through accelerated and strategic faculty hiring, research infrastructure enhancement, interdisciplinary collaboration and increased student and educational opportunities.
RISE will choose focus areas anchored in fields in which UW–Madison has established, top-flight innovators and research centers. Through strategic additions of people and resources, RISE will build collaborative networks of faculty to tap high-priority research and development funding, make transformative discoveries with real-world impact, and equip students with the knowledge and skills to extend that impact into their careers. RISE will focus first on artificial intelligence.
UW–Madison labs have already employed AI’s talent for making short work of the analysis of enormous volumes of data to improve the diagnosis of genetic disorders, head off the spread of crop disease, and predict new materials based on the properties that would be most useful. At the same time, UW–Madison computer scientists and communications and philosophy researchers are working to establish terms for human-AI interactions that ensure safe and ethical outcomes.
Read more about the RISE Initiative.