FRI AM News: WisBusiness: the Podcast with Jeanine Burmania, WARF; Opioid overdose deaths declining as settlement funds reach state

February 28, 2025

— This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Jeanine Burmania, senior director of intellectual property and licensing for WARF.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which handles patenting and licensing for UW-Madison research, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Burmania discusses the organization’s efforts to identify “the great innovations” being developed on campus with prospects for commercialization.

WARF’s six-person licensing team assesses the market potential for these new technologies and conducts outreach to companies in hopes of identifying commercial partners to develop the inventions further and bring them to market.

“The work we do really has an impact on providing additional resources for funding research on campus,” Burmania said. “But what also we see is new products that are created because of the work that happens on campus … at any given time, there’s probably hundreds of millions of dollars of products that are sold each year globally that are under WARF license agreements.”

She notes more than 400 licensees around the world are using UW-Madison inventions through agreements with WARF, including about 75 companies in Wisconsin alone.

“Some of the big companies in the state still look to WARF and UW as a resource for new innovation,” Burmania said.

The conversation highlights the “necessary” role that scientists play in this process, as they help facilitate the transfer of knowledge from the lab bench to industry, as well as the impact of startup companies formed as campus spin-offs.

“When there’s a successful company, then the people from that company then have gone on to do other things, and we’ve seen multiple other startup companies formed … so those are really great examples of the benefits that we see from helping start new companies, and then feed into the ecosystem,” she said.

Burmania also spotlights some of the most promising technologies coming out of the university, ranging from breaking down harmful PFAS chemicals to advanced materials for aviation and much more.

Listen to the podcast and see the full list of WisBusiness.com podcasts.

Check out an earlier podcast with WARF CEO Erik Iverson.

— In a “promising sign” for the fight against the opioid epidemic, overdose deaths in Wisconsin are on the decline as hundreds of millions of dollars in settlement funds flow into the state.

That’s according to the latest report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum. It shows opioid overdose deaths in the state in June 2024 had dropped to their lowest level since early 2020, with 1,075 deaths occurring over the 12-month period ending in June.

Report authors note the total deaths “remain daunting and could still be revised,” as the figure is based on provisional federal data. Plus, deaths in Milwaukee County haven’t seen as much of a decline as the rest of the state.

“If they hold, however, they would indicate a continued downward trend in opioid deaths that started toward the end of 2023 — not just in Wisconsin, but nationwide,” they wrote.

This trend is taking place as the state and local governments have received $208 million of the $780 million coming to Wisconsin through 2038 from opioid settlements, the report shows. At the end of last year, the state had gotten $75.3 million and allocated $64.4 million of that total, with $15.4 million having been spent. And local governments had gotten about $123 million by the end of 2024.

Opioid settlement spending data isn’t yet available for most local government recipients in Wisconsin, the report shows. But the Department of Health Services has directed state-level funds toward expanding treatment facilities, tribal government efforts, expanding an overdose reversal program, providing fentanyl test strips, and helping to cover room and board costs for residential opioid treatment.

WPF says the downward trend for opioid deaths is “welcome news” after decades of increases, but adds policymakers are now faced with the difficult task of figuring out which approaches are having the greatest impact. The group points to research that suggests the national decline “might be more attributable” to changes in the fentanyl supply that have reduced its potency and availability.

“The nature of illicit opioids — what form they come in, what non-opioid substances are mixed in, and more — changes over time, and this can impact outcomes and programming such as the number of overdoses, efficacy of certain treatments, and more,” authors wrote.

See the report.

— U.S. Rep. Tony Wied, R-De Pere, has introduced a bill to repeal funding for electric vehicle charging station programs implemented by former President Joe Biden.

Wied introduced the Unplug the Electric Vehicles Charging Stations Programs Act, criticizing Biden for his “failed” infrastructure program investing.

Wied claimed that the Biden administration produced only 59 stations nationwide, with a $7.5 billion budget. He said it is the “exact reason why the American people overwhelmingly support President Trump in reducing waste and inefficiencies in our government.”

Congress had approved $7.5 billion to build EV chargers over a five-year period, but not all of that money had been spent. Referencing a Federal Highway Administration spokesperson, as of Dec. 9, federal dollars had been used to build 226 charging ports at 37 stations across the nation, with 24,000 ports in progress, FactCheck.org said.

“As a small business owner, I could have built 1,500 more gas stations with that kind of money. It is time to repeal this funding and put an end to President Biden’s wasteful vanity project,” Wied said.

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, introduced a similar bill in the Senate.

See more from the WisPolitics DC Wrap.

— Racine-based manufacturer Modine says it’s received $180 million in orders for its data center cooling machinery from a leading developer of AI infrastructure.

The company yesterday announced the orders for its Airedale systems, which will be built at factories in Virginia and Mississippi and delivered throughout this year and the first half of 2026.

Yesterday’s announcement doesn’t name the customer, but executive Eric McGinnis says the initial orders underscore the company’s “strategic advantage” in this market. Modine has been involved in the information technology cooling industry since the 1970s, though its cooling machinery is also used in health care and pharmaceutical sectors.

McGinnis, the company’s president of climate solutions, says Modine expects “this to be a long-term partnership as we support their significant growth objectives to develop some of the largest, high-performance computing clusters in the world.”

Neil Brinker, Modine’s CEO and president, says the company’s current order intake, development pipeline and “this new business win” supports expectations for “delivering organic growth in excess of 30% in our next fiscal year.”

See the release and get more information on the company’s latest fiscal performance.

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FOOD & BEVERAGE

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HEALTH CARE