Moderator

Chris Kucharik, RISE-EARTH Collaboration HQ Lead, Professor of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences, UW–Madison

Chris Kucharik is a Professor of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences and the lead for the RISE-EARTH Collaboration Headquarters at UW-Madison. His research program is largely interdisciplinary, incorporating field work on cropping systems ecology and ecosystem modeling in a framework that is geared towards understanding the impacts of climate change and land management on the provisioning of ecosystems goods and services – more specifically crop and bioenergy feedstock production, water quantity and quality, carbon sequestration, and climate regulation. His field research largely takes place across Wisconsin, and he uses agroecosystem modeling tools across a continuum of spatial scales from the precision agriculture scale to the regional (e.g., Midwest USA) scale.

Panelists

Timothy Donohue

Director of Wisconsin Energy Institute and Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, UW Foundation Fetzer-Bascom Professor of Bacteriology

Wisconsin Energy Institute Director Tim Donohue is UW Foundation Chairman Fetzer-Bascom Professor of Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Donohue is an internationally recognized expert on bio-based conversion of renewable resources into valuable products. He is a former president and current secretary of the American Society for Microbiology and an honorary fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology. Since 2007, Donohue has served as principal investigator and director of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, a U.S. Department of Energy bioproducts research center based at UW–Madison.

Cynthia Czajkowski

Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Neuroscience, UW–Madison

Cynthia Czajkowski is Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She previously served as Interim Vice Chancellor for Research (2023-2024) and Associate Vice Chancellor for Research in the Biological Sciences (2018-2023). As Senior Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, she helps lead UW-Madison's $1.9 billion research enterprise, advancing research growth, faculty excellence, interdisciplinary collaboration, and strategic research infrastructure. An internationally recognized neuroscientist, her research has advanced understanding of how therapeutic drugs act in the brain, and she has served as a reviewer and advisor for major national and international research funding organizations.

Michael Corradini

Wisconsin Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Nuclear Engineering & Engineering Physics, Former Director of the Wisconsin Energy Institute

Mike Corradini, a distinguished professor emeritus in the UW–Madison College of Engineering, is a mechanical and nuclear engineer with research interests centered primarily in thermal hydraulics and multiphase flow. Corradini is widely published in areas related to vapor explosion phenomena, jet spray dynamics, and transport phenomena in multiphase systems. He is the former Director of the Wisconsin Energy Institute, former chair of the Energy Institute Executive committee, and former director of the college's Wisconsin Institute of Nuclear Systems. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Corradini has served on the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, the Institute of Nuclear POwer Operations national accreditation board, the NRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, the National Council on Radiation Protection, and the Scientific Advisory Committee to the French Atomic Energy Agency.
 

John Duncan Wiley

Former UW–Madison Chancellor, Emeritus Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery

Research physicist John Wiley served more than three decades as a professor and administrator at UW–Madison, where he was chancellor from 2001 to 2008. Wiley, who earned his PhD from UW–Madison in 1968, joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1975. His research focused on topics related to semiconductors and other materials and processes important to the electronics field. He co-founded several highly successful research centers, including the Center for X-ray Lithography and the Engineering Research Center for Plasma-Aided Manufacturing. He chaired the Materials Science Program, a graduate-level, interdepartmental-committee program for masters and doctoral degrees, and served as associate dean for research in the College of Engineering, dean of the Graduate School, and the university’s senior research officer as well as provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs.