The UW-Madison Office of News and Public Affairs recently published a booklet describing 150 ways the university has affected the world through teaching, research and public service. Here are some excerpts that pertain to the College of Engineering. To view all of the entries in "150 Ways," go to http://www.uw150.wisc.edu/150ways/.

TAKING IT TO THE STREETS

In 1889, when civil engineer C.D. Marx took to the road to teach Racine factory workers the finer points of mechanics, a UW tradition of exporting training to the workplace began. UW engineers left the classroom in the early 1900s to help factories clean the smoke-filled Lake Michigan shoreline air, and thousands of GIs took advantage of UW correspondence courses during the two world wars. Today, UW offers about 400 professionally focused courses in engineering alone, and similar training in fields such as agriculture and education enriches the careers of thousands.

TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTIONARIES

Two alumni of UW's electrical and computer engineering department found themselves leading the technological revolution in post-World War II America. John Bardeen, who in 1947 invented the transistor, and Jack St. Clair Kilby, who in 1958 invented the integrated circuit, created the pieces that made the computer age possible, ultimately affecting the lives of anyone who operates a computer, drives a car or uses an electronic appliance. Bardeen, whose transistor won him the Nobel Prize in 1956, became the second person to win the award twice for science when his superconductivity work was honored in 1972.

ROBOT MOTION

Into the boxy world of robotics, John G. Bollinger tossed a curve. In 1963, he designed a robotics device that could trace contours with deadly accuracy. The device, the first robot welder that could control motion in five directions, helped Milwaukee's A.O. Smith Company automate its welding process and revolutionize the manufacturing of automobile frames.

LET IT SNOW

Any skier who's schussed through fresh powder can appreciate Marv Woerpel. The 1943 UW chemical engineering graduate found a better way to make snow when Mother Nature falls short. In the 1970s, Woerpel, a longtime Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation employee, created snow in warm weather by "seeding" water with harmless bacteria. Patent royalties returned more than $120,000 to UW's chemical engineering department, seeding a new generation of inventions.

MOTORHEAD

Don't sneeze in Henry Guckel's lab -- gears and pistons might skitter across the room. In 1991, the founder of the Wisconsin Center for Applied Microelectronics made the world's first working metal micromotor, no bigger than the width of three human hairs. Why is smaller better? Precision. Guckel's tiny machines can produce new medical tools and aviation controls and can improve computing power. Archival website (4 MB PDF)

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A TUBER

We can put a man on the moon, but can we feed him curly fries? In 1996, the university's space-engineering experts made a giant leap in that direction when they grew potatoes aboard the NASA space shuttle, marking the first time a food was grown successfully in space. Using a pint-size plant growth chamber, the study demonstrated that plants can grow in near-zero gravity, which may promise a way for astronauts to grow food on long-term space missions or in space stations.

UNDERMINING ALZHEIMER'S

A finding by two faculty members in 1997 has opened the window to a possible treatment for Alzheimer's disease. Chemical engineer Regina M. Murphy and chemist Laura Kiessling have found a way to disrupt the proteins that form poisonous deposits in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Murphy and Kiessling have designed "inhibitor molecules" that interfere with the poisonous clumping of otherwise harmless proteins, giving promise to a future treatment for a disease that now has none.

VIRTUAL JOYRIDING

Somewhere around the bend, auto engineers may be strapping on goggles and gloves for a different kind of wild ride. Mechanical engineering professor Rajit Gadh is using virtual reality to help engineers visualize and design the next generation of cars. His research will soon give industry a faster, more-versatile way to design products than offered by often-complicated computer-aided design systems. Companies such as Ford, Pratt & Whitney, Boeing and Caterpillar are lining up to give virtual design a test ride.

SPIRIT OF MADISON?

Lucky Lindy -- Charles A. Lindbergh -- jumped from UW dropout to international celebrity in five years. A UW engineering student from 1920 to 1922, Lindbergh completed the first solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927. He finally received a UW degree -- an honorary one -- in 1928.

TWO TERMINALS, NO WAITING

In the late 1950s, two electrical engineers built a massive, room-size computer for use by engineering faculty and students. A tad sluggish by today's standards, the machine created a sensation, prompting the college to purchase a pair of bulky IBM 1620 computers and open the first campus computing laboratory. The lab offered free training, a foreshadowing of today's wired campus with more than 15,000 computers.

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