The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation has launched two fall challenges. One features technologies and applications that promote mental health or wellness, or detect, prevent or treat mental health disorders. The other focuses on technologies for processing and handling large amounts of data.

Principal Investigators (PIs) and their teams are invited to submit a brief disclosure form and questionnaire by December 15, 2022.

Learn more and submit to the Mental Health Challenge Grant or the Big Data Challenge Grant.

For the first challenge, projects that focus on mental health will be considered, including: technologies for diagnosing or treating mental illness, technologies for identifying or mitigating mental wellness issues, using technology to predict and prevent mental illness, digital health tools and more.

WARF is looking for projects that target any aspect of big data for the second challenge, including: data engineering, data science and modeling, data analytics, hardware and specialized architecture, machine learning and more.

Proposed research should be completed within a year. Even if your idea is early stage, interested UW faculty, staff or students are encouraged to submit an application to WARF by December 15.

Criteria include:

• Project team must include a PI at UW-Madison or Morgridge Institute for Research
• Concepts must be new (not something previously disclosed to WARF)
• Technical readiness
• Commercial potential

“We’re excited to support a new generation of technologies focused on our emotional, psychological and social well-being, as well as technologies that help turn data into actionable information,” said Erik Iverson, CEO of WARF. “We look forward to seeing how UW-Madison researchers take on these challenges.”

“These are critical areas of research aimed at some of society’s biggest challenges,” says Steve Ackerman, vice chancellor for research and graduate education. “Mental health is a topic often not discussed in our personal or work lives, and yet mental health disorders affect millions of Americans. Data science research is a priority for campus and this grant complements our efforts in that area. We are looking forward to the advancements that UW-Madison researchers can make to help move the needle on these topics and are grateful for WARF’s support.”

For questions contact Victoria Sutton, IP manager, at VSutton@warf.org, or Leah Haman, IP manager, at LHaman@warf.org.