Berry’s lab has made a molecule that gains magnetic strength through an unusual way of controlling those spins.

When Dan Ludois was growing up near Beloit, Wis., he drew extension cords for fun. As a graduate student, he daydreamed about power conversion.

By intensively breeding for high yield, say, in Wisconsin, those plants might lose the flexibility to respond to environments that are very different from Wisconsin growing conditions. To test this idea, de Leon and her colleagues at 12 agricultural universities in the U.S.

At a ceremony honoring several of the year’s most outstanding inventions, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) announced that it has granted the university $61.9 million for the 2017-18 academic year.

Conventional alloys, Parkin says, are made up mostly of one material such as aluminum or iron. “The idea is if you design an alloy and then you hit it with a bunch of radiation, it’s just going to scramble everything up,” he explains.