07 Aug After a century investing in innovation, WARF looks to the future
Erik Iverson, CEO of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Photo: Tim Fitch of Kingdom Filmworks
When biochemistry professor Harry Steenbock filed to patent a groundbreaking vitamin D-fortification process in 1924, he also sparked the creation of an organization primed to bolster innovation for the next century.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison professor’s achievement increased the accessibility of vitamin D and its health benefits to the general population. At the same time, it created a new approach to bringing life-changing research to market, supporting the university’s work in the process.
Such is the origin story of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), a technology transfer office which, in the past 100 years, has quietly funded, supported and invested in the pioneering work coming out of the UW to benefit the public.
“There’s a story you can tell, that (Steenbock) is this singular hero, a kind of genius, Thomas Edison type,” said Kevin Walters, WARF’s public affairs associate and resident historian. “But I think the more interesting story is that he needed a lot of help, and it brought together different strands of UW-Madison, and Wisconsin and the people around it.”
To capitalize on his discovery, Steenbock needed business expertise. He teamed up with Graduate Dean Charles Schlicter to recruit alumni to negotiate contracts with companies interested in applying the vitamin D-fortification process to their products — among them Quaker Oats, which is still well-known today.
“Steenbock had the science and the original motivation” to protect the dairy industry, which had long drawn state support to UW-Madison, said Walters, “but he needed administrators to figure out how to make that work in an organizational way, and then he needed alumni and business acumen to figure out how to turn that into a successful business.”
For a century, WARF has retained that successful formula to keep UW-Madison research and innovation on the bleeding edge, and the organization’s ability to adapt and sustain itself amid uncertainty — economic and otherwise — may be more important now than ever before.
Erik Iverson, WARF’s CEO, is shepherding the organization into its next century, when inventions center on sectors like biotechnology and fusion.
“It’s an honor to be at WARF after 100 years,” Iverson said, “being an institution that is globally known for what it does, and associated with one of the world’s great research institutions.”