Billions of grant dollars from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation have fueled great tides of research and innovation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for the past century, but this year, even that critical funding won’t be able to remedy what federal cuts have wrought.
The cuts are “jeopardizing the pace and status of innovation,” said Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska, UW-Madison’s vice chancellor for research. “I just need to be blunt because this is what’s happening. This funding is crucial to the United States maintaining leadership, and for us working hand-in-hand with WARF.”
Grejner-Brzezinska said that for the last 75 years, the federal government and academia in the U.S. have worked cooperatively to support research as “a well-oiled machine,” yielding groundbreaking discoveries and addressing global needs.
But this year will be different. From stop-work orders to the rescission of crucial dollars from the National Institutes of Health, the university has a number of new obstacles to contend with. Some innovation will slow, and some may not happen at all.
Against this rather bleak backdrop, the annual gift from WARF, the university’s technology transfer office — the organization that facilitates commercialization of academic research for the public’s benefit — will at least provide some insulation. While the funding won’t be sufficient to fill the federal gap, it may offer a bridge of sorts to some research areas and help others to wind down operations gracefully.
“WARF support is as important as ever,” Grejner-Brzezinska said. “Right now, it’s the time for us to work even closer… to make sure that UW-Madison remains a research powerhouse, as we have been for 175 years.”
Each year, university leadership works with the WARF board of trustees to determine the amount of the annual grant. When WARF provides an approximate value, the university can then propose how it would be spent.
Over the past century, WARF has invested $4.5 billion in annual research grants to UW-Madison and the Morgridge Institute for Research, according to Grejner-Brzezinska, and $220 million of that amount went directly back to the inventors.
The money benefits not only academia, but supports discoveries that often translate to technologies that can be commercialized to bolster industry and global advancement.
Last year’s “base grant” for research was $68.8 million, and it was accompanied by grants to the university and the Morgridge Institute, for a total of $159.8 million.
The WARF grant consists of various “buckets,” Grejner-Brzezinska said. These buckets fund everything from faculty recruitment and retention, to the Fall Research Competition among faculty and junior faculty, graduate student support, faculty fellowships, matching grants, library collection support, industry collaboration and more.
“As you can see, we really look into how we can maximize the impact of the gift,” Grejner-Brzezinska said. “We want to do basic research, we want to also do applied research and collaboration with industry, and of course WARF ends up — at that stage of research — translating new startup companies or facilitating industry partnerships.
“Sometimes people think, oh, you spend money on the research, people finish the research, and you just move on. That’s not how we spend this WARF money. We are really looking into a return on this investment — this is what I report to the WARF board twice a year. They need to know what the return is, and how we, so-to-speak, magnify or multiply the money we get from them.”
Between 2016 and 2020, UW-Madison invested $37 million in WARF funding in 95 research programs or projects, Grejner-Brzezinska said, and as of 2024, those awards generated 185 extramural (outside the university) projects which yielded $300 million — an eightfold return on the initial investment.
“This is precisely why we work very closely … to understand what the priorities are at the national level,” she said. “What are the strengths of UW-Madison? What are the … needs of the state of Wisconsin and the city of Madison?”
‘A very shaky situation’
This year, funds will be distributed even more broadly across UW research to facilitate creative solutions in areas that are threatened.
“Some innovation is not going to happen if we’re going to get cuts,” Grejner-Brzezinska said.
“Health innovation is going to slow down. This will impact, very significantly, clinical studies, which oftentimes are the last resort for life saving. So this is extremely important.”
She also emphasized that cuts to research diminish the number of graduate students UW-Madison can support, ultimately reducing the advanced workforce in areas like health and STEM.
The university’s plan going forward is to work strategically with WARF to determine how funds can best be distributed to preserve the most crucial research and wind down what cannot be salvaged.
This year’s meeting with the WARF board of trustees took place in June. Grejner-Brzezinska presented UW-Madison’s proposal and is currently awaiting WARF’s approval of the final number and distribution. The announcement is scheduled to take place in September and will bring a more precise understanding of the grant’s potential impact across university operations.
“I reviewed this internally with my colleagues, with a number of faculty experts, how we would like to potentially reallocate certain funding and focus on potentially bridging the research… which suffered from the cuts,” Grejner-Brzezinska said. “I presented this to the WARF board and we are waiting for their response, but we expect that it should be OK.”
While WARF funding certainly cannot replace federal funding, it could be a valuable resource in the interim.
“It’s not a disaster yet,” said Grejner-Brzezinska, “but we are really looking into options to make sure that we are covered in terms of a strategic plan. … But it’s a very shaky situation right now.
“It’s important to also understand that more than ever, the university needs advocacy, and not just from our colleagues in academia,” she said. “This partnership with WARF helps us build trust within the society. … They see the clear benefit of why we do research.”
