“To students here gathered who are thinking about a career in biology… I recommend mycology. Think of becoming a mycologist.”
E.O. Wilson, Prather Lectures in Biology
The University of Wisconsin-Madison houses an unusual concentration of fungal biologists based in at least five schools: Letters & Science (the liberal arts college), the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences (CALS), the School of Veterinary Medicine, the School of Medicine and Public Health, and the College of Engineering. We also maintain strong ties with the Forest Service and National Wildlife Heath Center. To the best of our knowledge, the expertise found in Madison exists nowhere else in the world.
Madison is where penicillin was first engineered for mass production, where the earliest fossils of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi were discovered, and where Koch’s postulates were formally used to prove Pseudogymnoascus destructans as the cause of White Nose Syndrome of bats. We house one of the world’s largest collections of microfungi, including pathogens collected by George Washington Carver. Our scientists actively work to discover new pharmaceuticals and combat fungal diseases, but are also involved in brewing North America’s first beer fermented from wild yeasts. We aim to be a leader in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research with fungi.