Partners
Partnership Is the Point
WINS exists to connect UW–Madison with the partners who need its research — and to make working with a great university simple. Whatever your mission or your organization, WINS is one front door: we listen to the challenge, find the Wisconsin expertise it requires, and help structure the engagement that fits.
Our Research
Twelve domains of national security research, from quantum and fusion to cybersecurity, autonomy, and food security, each mapped to the federal priorities it supports and the campus anchors behind it.
Who We Work With
Government & Mission Partners
Defense, energy, intelligence, homeland security, health, and agriculture — WINS works across the federal mission space, and with the state and local agencies whose security work touches Wisconsin.
Industry
From large corporations to small businesses, WINS helps companies find research collaborators, facilities, and talent at UW–Madison — and helps Wisconsin manufacturers connect their capabilities to national security markets.
Academic & National Partners
UW–Madison collaborates across higher education and the national laboratories, building the coalitions that big challenges require.
Partners & Collaborations
A sampling of UW–Madison’s active national security partnerships and collaborations — each with examples of work to show for it.
- Office of Naval Research — PANTHER, a global leader in traumatic brain injury detection and prevention · leading the search for how pulsed microwaves affect the brain · industry partnerships to bring innovations from the lab to the user
- DARPA — UW–Madison leads a $5 million TRACTOR program team building tools that translate legacy C code into memory-safe Rust, and holds two 2025 DARPA Young Faculty Awards, in diamond semiconductors and advanced metals
- National Security Agency — National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Research designation
- U.S. Cyber Command — founding member of the Academic Engagement Network · Cyber Research Forum
- INSURE — founding member of the academic consortium of the University of Maryland’s Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS), the university-affiliated research center for the human domain: includes AI research for the defense intelligence enterprise and RISC internships engaging students with DoD and IC challenges
- Sandia National Laboratories — expanded strategic partnership
- Argonne National Laboratory — decades of semiconductor collaboration
- Fermilab — years of collaboration on neutrinos, dark energy, collider physics, and quantum sensing
- U.S. Department of Energy Genesis Mission — Genesis Mission Consortium · 5 lead Genesis awards
- National Nuclear Security Administration — faculty investigators in three nonproliferation consortia · NSSC · DNN TECH · ETI 2.0
- DoD Microelectronics Commons — Wisconsin CHIPS is a member of the Southwest Advanced Prototyping Hub, part of the national effort to restore domestic chip fabrication
- Joint Directed Energy Consortium (JDEC) — focused on scaling high-energy lasers and microwave technologies to provide low-cost, high-impact solutions against emerging threats
- Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium — member of the biomedical OTA consortium moving medical technologies from lab to fielding with agencies across the Department of Defense and beyond
- Wisconsin Quantum Alliance — launched by the Wisconsin Technology Council to marshal the state’s quantum resources and expertise
- Wisconsin Security Research Consortium — a non-profit corporation led by the Wisconsin Technology Council, the science and technology advisor to the Governor and Legislature, which enables sensitive national security research and meets industry needs
- DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory — $11.4 million for multi-fuel hybrid-electric engine research · 2026 follow-on award and the Altitude and Climatic Testing Laboratory, through ARL Central
- Army Research Office — the Army’s front door to universities, funding UW–Madison research from materials for military vehicles to the simulation science behind Project Chrono
- Laboratory for Physical Sciences — UW–Madison quantum computing partnerships with Intel and HRL Laboratories through the NSA laboratory’s LPS Qubit Collaboratory, a DoD Quantum Information Science Research Center
- U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center — strategic education partnership · advancing historic preservation with the National Park Service
- U.S. Army AI Integration Center (AI2C) — advanced data engineering training for Army scholars
- U.S. Army Civil Affairs & Psychological Operations Command — partnership on environmental issues · Civil Affairs environmental training, under a signed memorandum of understanding between UW–Madison and the U.S. Department of Defense
- Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency — the UW MIA Recovery and Identification Project · using science and history to bring MIA soldiers home
- U.S. Department of Agriculture — the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center, a USDA research center headquartered on campus, expanding through a $55 million new facility
- Wisconsin National Guard — partners in the Cyber Badger exercise series alongside the 176th Cyber Protection Team, and home of ForwardWERX, the Guard’s innovation incubator
- IAE Academic Consortium — member of the university consortium of the University of South Florida’s Institute of Applied Engineering, connecting researchers and students with U.S. Special Operations Command to solve significant national challenges
- TitletownTech — an innovation and investment firm formed by the Green Bay Packers and Microsoft, which invests in Wisconsin startups with dual-use technologies like RAIC Labs and Dirac Labs
- Midwest Defense Forum — convenes Midwest and national industry leaders and policymakers in Wisconsin to enable and accelerate tech-enabled national security solutions
- Autonomous Heartland — Wisconsin and the Great Lakes are a natural home for autonomous and maritime systems research, development, testing, evaluation, and manufacturing, pairing the state’s shipbuilding and manufacturing base with its research strength and test assets
Ways to Engage
Sponsored Research & Agreements
Grants, contracts, cooperative agreements, Education Partner Agreements (EPAs), Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs), consortium memberships, and other transaction mechanisms — WINS helps partners and researchers find the right vehicle and navigate it.
Talent & Workforce
Internships, capstone projects, fellowships, and hiring pipelines connect mission partners with Wisconsin students — and connect students with consequential careers.
Philanthropy & Strategic Gifts
Donors who want to advance national security research at UW–Madison can give through the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association (WFAA); WINS works with WFAA to match philanthropic vision with research opportunity.
Start the conversation
Tell us your challenge. We’ll find the Wisconsin expertise it needs.