As tens of thousands of visitors each day walk across a new flooring installation in UW-Madison’s Union South in fall 2017, they might not realize they’re participating in what could very well represent a leap into the future of renewable energy production.

Tim Donohue, director of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) and UW Foundation Chairman Fetzer-Bascom Professor in bacteriology, will serve as the new interim director of the Wisconsin Energy Institute (WEI).

In 2015, University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-e) program to develop 3D-printed heat exchangers for power plants.

A study by La Follette School Associate Professor Greg Nemet and European colleagues shows that in 2050, the percentage of solar energy worldwide could be three times higher than previously projected.

The WEI community's efforts in sustainability and renewable energy have given the media quite a bit to cover this month. Below are the highlights of media coverage in August.

Famously, the use of caged birds to alert miners to the invisible dangers of gases such as carbon monoxide gave rise to the cautionary metaphor “canary in a coal mine.”

Garret Suen, an assistant professor in the Department of Bacteriology and an Alfred Toepfer Faculty Fellow, focuses on microbiomes and how microbes convert biomass into nutrients. “Microbiome” has become a more common word in the public consciousness in recent years.