Campus Connection

Gov. Jim Doyle signed a bill Monday that will provide $400,000 to the UW-L for an emerging technology center. Funds from the Wisconsin Connecting Opportunity Research and Entrepreneurship Jobs Act will add research technicians and lab equipment in the Health Science Center to help develop drugs from mushrooms and medicinal plants. "This is a powerful validation of the outstanding research being done by UW-L faculty, staff and students," said UW-L Chancellor Joe Gow. "People don't think of our university as being a research powerhouse because teaching is our number one priority. Here is an instance where the research is so powerful that the state wants to invest in it because they think it has potential." The CORE Jobs Act will help take ideas and inventions from Wisconsin labs to the global marketplace, Doyle said in a news release. UW-L professors founded Mycophyte Discovery LLC with the goal of bringing new medicines to the market. "The Mycophyte project has incredible potential, and thanks to this very generous state appropriation, our people will be able to continue moving this project along," Gow said. Doyle will sign 12 more bills, many related to health care, at 10:15 a.m. today at the Overholt Auditorium at the Gundersen Lutheran campus in La Crosse. La Crosse Tribune May 11, 2010, article by KJ Lang. For more on Science and Health at UW-L, visit http://www.uwlax.edu/sah/.