MON AM News: Madison chamber forming future-focused work group; Madison ranked among top 25 metros for life sciences

April 29, 2024

— The Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce is forming a new future-looking work group called N2, which stands for the Next Normal.

In a recent interview, Chamber President Zach Brandon noted “the pandemic dust hasn’t settled yet” and underlined persistent economic uncertainty.

“We just don’t know where things are going to land, but can we be the place that’s asking the ‘what if’ for the future?” he said. “So what is the future of downtowns, what is the future of remote work, what is the future of how you tackle housing and transportation issues? How will AI and automation impact the type of jobs that we have in Madison?”

This work group will be meeting over the course of the year, creating a guide for corporate and public policy decisionmaking, Brandon said.

He said the latest numbers on Madison’s economic trajectory show at least 200,000 people moving to Dane County in the next 25 years or so. While he said that’s “probably too conservative” an estimate, he added it’s useful for planning economic development efforts.

“And these things have a tendency to compound themselves, right? The more visible your city becomes, the more people see it, the more people notice it, the faster the acceleration is,” he said, pointing to Austin as an example.

He noted the Texas city’s “most ambitious projections” around population growth failed to predict just how quickly expansion would occur as its tech sector grew by leaps and bounds.

“If that is what the future likely holds for Madison and this region … How do you house another 250,000 people? How do you build the right roads and infrastructure? How do you have the right types of jobs, and what it means to have an economy that has elasticity to it?” he said. “And then what are the jobs of the future? And where will those jobs be?”

See more from the interview here.

— Madison has been ranked among the top 25 metro areas in the country for life sciences by CommercialCafe, a national real estate research and listing platform.

The state’s capital city was ranked 17th on the list, reflecting the local talent pool, life science ecosystem and the relevant segment of the local office market. The ranking notes nearly 10% of Madison’s office space is dedicated to life sciences — the fourth-highest percentage among metros included in the analysis.

Meanwhile, 26% of Madison residents ages 25 and older have at least a bachelor’s degree in an industry-related field, which is the fifth-highest percentage in the report.

“The Madison metro area has a long history of leading discoveries in biotechnology,” report authors wrote. “From the discovery of vitamins to the first lab-grown stem cells, Madison innovation has been at the forefront of breakthroughs in life sciences.”

Boston was the No. 1 ranked city, and Chicago was the only Midwest city to be ranked above Madison, coming in at No. 10. The Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington metro area was ranked 23rd.

See the release and the full rankings.

— Wisconsin home buyers aren’t the only ones feeling the squeeze of high housing costs, according to a recent Rent.com analysis.

The report shows median rent in the state jumped 6.43% to just over $1,600 from March 2023 to March of this year, the ninth-highest increase among the states. That includes 6.39% in Milwaukee, where rent is $1,835 a month — the 10th highest increase among metro regions.

The new analysis comes as other reports have found home prices in the state are rising faster than incomes — largely due to a lack of housing stock.

A report last year found the state would need to build at least 140,000 housing units by 2030 just to keep pace with current demand. To grow its working-age population, the state would need another 227,000 units.

By one estimate, Wisconsin is short by some 124,000 rental homes that are affordable for low-income renters.

See more from the WisPolitics Friday Report.

— Madison-based Fetch has obtained a patent for its AI-based digital advertising technology, the company announced.

Fetch’s BrandChoice Tech relies on machine learning software for automating testing and optimization of advertising campaigns, according to the release. The technology uses purchasing data and predictive modeling to route online traffic toward the top-performing versions of ads.

CEO and founder Wes Schroll says building strong relationships with consumers “has always been the goal” for brand marketers.

“And right now, it’s harder than ever to make these connections,” he said in a statement. “This formal recognition reinforces what we already knew, which is that we’re building a platform like none other – a universal rewards app that acts as a full-funnel adtech solution to help brands create lifelong customers.”

Advertisers on the Fetch platform can also use the technology to evaluate ad elements including creative assets, the release shows.

The company last year launched a proprietary receipt-reading technology, and yesterday’s announcement says that application “serves as the foundation” for the newly patented system as it collects data from 80 million receipts each week. The Fetch platform currently has 11 million weekly active users, according to the release.

See the release and listen to an earlier podcast with Schroll.

— A Marquette University researcher is getting nearly $600,000 in federal funding to develop a “growing heart valve” as an alternative to existing prosthetics.

Brandon Tefft is an assistant professor in the Marquette University and Medical College of Wisconsin Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering. The university recently announced the National Science Foundation CAREER award for Tefft’s project.

“Children born with congenital heart defects often require repeat valve replacement over a lifetime, as the original valve replacement does not grow over time with the size of the heart of its host,” he said in a statement. “Our aim with this award is to use a novel origami-inspired approach to engineer a degradable scaffold for generating living heart valve replacements.”

That scaffold is populated with cells derived from umbilical cord blood that are directed to develop into the types of cells that make up human heart valves, according to the release.

“We hope to produce a growing heart valve solution superior to current prostheses in structure and function, thereby reducing the need for repeat surgery as the patient grows,” Tefft said.

The NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development, or CAREER, Program, is meant to support the work of early-career faculty at academic institutions.

See the release.

Top headlines from the Health Care Report…

— State health officials are investigating possible instances of measles virus exposure after a Dane County resident was found to have the disease.

For more of the most relevant health care news, reports on groundbreaking research in Wisconsin, links to top stories and more, sign up today for the free daily Health Care Report from WisPolitics and WisBusiness.com.

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