Dear Friends,
We’re excited to communicate some of the many happenings in relation to the Dairy Innovation Hub at UW-Platteville. It has been less than a year since funding approval and allocation and much has been accomplished. Although this is a UW-Platteville perspective, from the beginning, a key component of Hub activities and success has been collaboration including extensive collaboration across the three Hub UW-System universities (UW-Platteville, UW-River Falls and UW-Madison) along with industry stakeholders. The glue that has helped ensure collaboration and communication are the faculty director Dr. Heather White and program manager Maria Woldt. Their engagement and work have been exemplary. To learn more about Hub activities as a whole, please refer to the updates in this newsletter.
At the UW-Platteville campus, Dr. Tera Montgomery, professor of dairy and animal science, has provided strong leadership moving the Hub forward. At the same time, Tera has had an incredible impact on the university and region outside the Hub and her accomplishments have been recognized by her receiving the 2020 Carol Sue Butts Woman of the Year Award. Congratulations to Tera, well deserved, and we’re thankful for everything she has done for the university and beyond.
For the Hub at UW-Platteville, it has been a busy few months. Through a highly successful recruitment process, we’re excited to welcome two new faculty scientists coming to campus, Dr. Joseph Sanford and Dr. Ryan Pralle. Dr. Sanford is an agricultural and biosystems engineer with expertise in agricultural wastewater management and Dr. Pralle is a dairy scientist coming to us with expertise in ruminant nutrition. UW-Platteville has also implemented a framework for short-term high impact research projects through the development of Dairy- Industry, Impact and Innovation (DI3) faculty fellowships. Approved projects are truly innovative ranging from nano-sculpted silica membranes to isolate dairy pathogens, to measuring the rheological properties of ice cream. Additionally, UW-Platteville is also working to support current research in agroecosystems and building a foundational research infrastructure through research support staff, equipment and facilities.
You can learn about all these exciting happenings, and more, in this newsletter. Additionally, you will find information about the upcoming Dairy Summit. It will be virtual this year as we work to promote safety and health during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope you find this newsletter informative and we greatly appreciate your engagement with Hub and UW-Platteville.
Sincerely,
Wayne Weber
Dean of the College of Business, Industry, Life Science and Agriculture