Six Engineering Moonshots, one direction

Universities are places of boundless exploration—where discovery multiplies and new ideas take root. Yet the challenges reshaping our world are not waiting for us to simply explore. We need progress. And progress requires choice: the discipline to focus on a few challenges so consequential—and so complex—that solving them demands exceptional collaboration, sustained investment and a clear definition of success.

That is the intent behind our College of Engineering Moonshots: six bold, defining transdisciplinary efforts that set our direction and concentrate our strengths on the challenges engineering plus other disciplines can deliver meaningful impact for people and society.

• Limitless distributed power: Fusion-driven energy with transport at terawatt scale. There is exciting momentum here: Building on decades of fusion leadership, we’re advancing a fast-growing Midwest-led fusion ecosystem that is expanding nationally and convening partners across industry, government and academia—exemplified by more than 350 participants in this year’s Great Lakes Fusion Energy Summit. And Grainger Professor of Nuclear Engineering Paul Wilson is leading an energy siting study in Wisconsin commissioned in 2025 by Gov. Tony Evers.
• Engineering tomorrow’s cures: AI-powered precision health and therapeutics.
• Embodied AI: Engineering autonomous systems to enhance human capability and quality of life.
• Making quantum practical: Engineering the manufacturing backbone to take quantum technology from lab to world.
• Securing critical resources: Engineering access to clean water, rare minerals and sustainable chemicals.
• Feeding the planet: Engineering food production systems and their nutritional quality.

Together, these Engineering Moonshots create a shared framework—one that connects the exceptional work already happening across our college to a set of transformational ambitions. They draw on the breadth of fundamental and applied discovery that has long defined our college. They bring our strengths into focus, align our efforts and pursue impact at a scale no one discipline—or one institution—can achieve alone.

Importantly, in a reflection of our Wisconsin Idea, the Engineering Moonshots are designed to extend our strengths outward. They align with UW-Madison’s strategic priorities and intersect meaningfully with partners across campus—bringing disciplines together around shared goals.

Over the coming months, we will begin to move our Engineering Moonshots from concept to execution, identifying engineering leads—as well as co-leads from across or beyond campus—for each one. From the beginning, we’ll ensure each effort is shaped by collaboration and informed by perspectives that extend beyond any one field.

Over the past three years, UW-Madison has invested significant resources in its RISE initiative, hiring exciting new faculty across the university. Our college has hired several faculty with RISE funding. With campus as a partner, we will continue to build momentum, including additional targeted faculty hiring—because progress at this scale requires not only shared purpose, but also people and capacity. We will expand opportunities for graduate students to pursue mission-driven research, and for undergraduates to engage directly with real-world challenges. We will also seek collaborators from far beyond our campus: universities, industry, national laboratories and others ready to engage in work of this scope.

Across all six Engineering Moonshots, we will look for pathways that translate discovery into solutions that benefit people and communities. We’ll leverage UW-Madison’s Wisconsin Entrepreneurship Hub, announced in 2025 as a founder-first ecosystem, and its first spoke: our own Badger Tech Foundry, launched in 2025 to develop entrepreneurial talent and launch ideas from the lab to people’s lives.

In some of my recent conversations with members of our College Advisory Board, one message came through clearly: alignment matters—and so does intention.

Great universities can do many things. They also know when to concentrate effort on the work that will define the next decade. For our College of Engineering, that is what these Engineering Moonshots represent: not just ambition, but direction. Not just ideas, but a commitment to act—together.

The challenges are too large—and the opportunities too important—to pursue alone. If you’re ready to build what none of us can build by ourselves, I invite you to join us.