Carney and Nelson, both of whom earned their undergraduate degrees at UW-Eau Claire, talked about how their paths crossed nearly a decade ago and what the future holds for both UW-Eau Claire and HeartWorks.
Host Jerry Kuehl, a senior vice president at Northwestern Bank, who graduated from UW-Eau Claire in 1986 with a business economics degree, invited Carney and Nelson to discuss research collaborations. The podcast episode, “Banker with a Beer: Building Hearts and Liquid Death,” was created by Eau Claire Hometown Media and presented by Northwestern Bank.
“Tim and I got connected seven or eight years ago when we were asked to come together and develop a partnership between UW-Eau Claire and Mayo Clinic,” Chancellor Carney says during the 30-minute podcast. “I think we were thrown together, and we didn’t know exactly if we would get along, but we have gotten along I would say incredibly well.”
Carney and Nelson came together to help build the connective tissue that was formed by the master collaborative research agreement UW-Eau Claire signed with Mayo Clinic Health System in 2017. Nelson, who left Mayo Clinic to devote 100% of his time to HeartWorks, says on the podcast that he chose to move the nonprofit’s headquarters to Eau Claire in fall 2025 because he sees a bright future working with faculty, staff and students from UW-Eau Claire.
“Mike and I developed a really, really fond partnership/friendship,” Nelson says. “We are continuing to build and grow things because of the university, because of the people, the faculty, the students. The workforce being developed here in the Chippewa Valley because of the university is remarkable.”
Building hearts
During the podcast, Nelson offered a brief overview of exactly what happens within the walls of HeartWorks.
“We literally build heart muscle to remuscularize, rebuild, restrengthen the hearts of kids born with missing heart parts,” Nelson says. “It’s a bioengineering process that converts your skin cells into your beating, contracting heart muscle cells. We are talking about converting your skin cells into your heart muscle cells.
“We inject those cells into your heart muscle and use the scaffold of your heart to rebuild it from the inside out. That’s what disruptive innovation leads us to.”
Rare opportunity
Carney says Blugolds are awestruck by the disruptive innovation taking place at HeartWorks, and says faculty, staff and students have one-of-a-kind opportunities to learn and grow thanks to the collaboration between the nonprofit and the university.
“That’s what we can talk about when we say if you come to UW-Eau Claire you would have this type of opportunity. We can’t guarantee it for everybody, but if you have an interest in doing this and it sort of lights your fire and sparks your interest, we can make it happen for you,” Carney says.
“There are no other opportunities like this, because there is no other HeartWorks out there, and it just so happens that it’s now in Eau Claire.”
Nelson agreed and described the power of working together to achieve great things.
“People are coming here not only because of HeartWorks but because of the university’s proximity to this, and it’s an ecosystem of motivated partners that are together, doing what none of us can do on our own.”
