Focus Areas

The Office of Business Engagement connects industry with the research, talent and solutions of UW–Madison, one of the world’s top universities. We help companies achieve their goals, build relationships and make an impact across the institution—sciences, engineering, medicine, business, education, social sciences, arts, and humanities. A few key areas of focus include:

Man working in a robotics lab: robot arm in foreground, man in background slightly out of focus

Artificial Intelligence

Through the RISE initiative, UW–Madison addresses significant, complex challenges through accelerated and strategic faculty hiring, research infrastructure enhancement, interdisciplinary collaboration and increased student and educational opportunities. Currently, Wisconsin RISE stands to more than double UW–Madison's investment in AI and related fields.

Bundles of orange data cables connect arrays of computer servers in the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) Data Center at the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences (AOSS) Building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Dec. 4, 2014. (Photo by Jeff Miller/UW-Madison)

Data Science

If you are looking for an effective solution to deal with big data sets or complex data problems, OBE can help you engage with resources across UW–Madison. The Data Science Institute, Powered by American Family Insurance connects you with faculty from across campus with experience working on data science questions from the humanities, social science, engineering and medicine to help you take your enterprise to the next level.

John Armstrong, a project manager with Madison Gas and Electric and 2012 alumnus of UW-Madison, stands as the sun shines down on a silhouetted row of solar panels at Madison Gas and Electric’s (MGE) O’Brien Solar Fields in Fitchburg, Wis., during summer on July 27, 2021. The 140-acre solar field includes 60,318 bifacial panels capable of generating approximately 20 megawatts of renewable electricity. The project is a collaborative partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a range of businesses and agencies under the aegis of MGE’s Renewable Energy Rider. (Photo by Jeff Miller/UW-Madison)

Sustainability

We help business and industry leverage UW–Madison’s expertise and innovation to create more sustainable, environmentally sound processes and products. In addition, in partnership with UW–Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, OBE is teaming up with prominent businesses to ignite important conversations in the environmental sustainability space. The Business Sustainability Leadership Forum (BSLF) aims to gain important insight from key university-industry partnerships on the most pressing sustainability challenges we are facing collectively.