In February 2024, UW Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin announced the launch of the Wisconsin Research, Innovation and Scholarly Excellence Initiative (RISE). Broadly, the goal of RISE is to help address significant, complex challenges of particular importance to Wisconsin and the world. This might leave you wondering: What, specifically, does RISE entail? And what does it mean for CALS?

An answer to the first question: RISE is a strategic investment in key thematic areas, including UW’s existing strengths in sustainability, human health, and artificial intelligence (AI). Funds will bolster infrastructure, including enhanced classrooms and labs, and recruit faculty in targeted fields across campus. RISE hires are intended to build research excellence while expanding instructional and educational capacity and impact.

To achieve these goals, RISE places a strong emphasis on collaboration. This could jump-start our “big team” science approach at CALS, where groups of faculty from a variety of academic fields work together to address pressing local and global issues. In short, it’s our hope that this investment will foster more interdisciplinary work and create more opportunities for our students, all with an eye toward taking on the grand challenges facing society.

What RISE means for CALS specifically is an influx of new faculty. This is exciting because our faculty numbers have not grown for several years. Since the initiative’s targeted fields all overlap with current expertise among CALS faculty and staff, we are leveraging RISE to increase our expertise in all three areas. RISE provides university funding for new positions that are matched with positions funded through our college’s existing budget. In other words, RISE helps us build on established strengths. In spring 2024, we solicited proposals from CALS departments for RISE positions that fall within two components of the initiative.

This first component is RISE-AI, which focuses on harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to improve the human condition. This technology has the potential to touch and influence every sector of society. The second component is RISE-EARTH (Environment: Adaptation, Resilience, Technology, and Humanity), a reimagining of economic, environmental, and sustainable energy and technical systems. Think renewal of agricultural lands, clean energy, and other innovative ways to protect and improve the environment. It’s important to note that these two areas can overlap in various ways, such as research that utilizes AI to address sustainability issues.

Given the interdisciplinary nature of RISE, CALS is using a unique hiring process, similar to how we hired our first bioenergy-focused positions and our current Dairy Innovation Hub faculty. We are using four thematic areas, two centered on AI and two on sustainability.

CALS RISE Themes

Theme 1: AI to Advance Life Sciences
Theme 2: AI to Enhance Agricultural and Natural Systems
Theme 3: Furthering the Bioeconomy
Theme 4: Mitigating Climate Impacts on Agroecosystems and Communities

Committees composed of faculty from all CALS departments, centers, and institutes are reviewing more than 600 applications. You can learn about the four CALS faculty positions and search committees on the CALS RISE faculty hiring initiative page. This is also where you will find profiles of each new faculty member as they are hired.

RISE offers a significant opportunity for the college to expand multidisciplinary teams of experts in critical areas of artificial intelligence, sustainability, and health. I look forward to showcasing our new hires in future issues of Grow.