The McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science will begin work on a five-story addition to the Technological Institute in June 2009.
The purpose of the space is to “look at departments across the school who are engaged in biologically-related research,” said Gina Myerson, McCormick’s marketing director.
Tech will add several labs and offices for departments related to life sciences, but not any classrooms, Myerson said. Because many undergraduate students work with professors outside the classroom or in labs, the addition should benefit both graduate and undergraduate students, she said.
The facility will add a total of 54,000 square feet and is slated for completion in 2011. The five-story addition will be a “fill-in,” Myerson said, meaning it will take up the open space – currently a parking lot – between two existing wings.
“We’re capturing additional space by taking what is just used by a few cars and putting in several stories,” Myerson said. University President Henry Bienen and Provost Daniel Linzer approved the new addition to Tech in response to the engineering school’s need for more space.
Due to the numerous overlaps between engineering and biology, the existing space “has fallen beyond our needs,” McCormick Dean Julio Ottino said.
“It didn’t take a lot of effort for me to convince the president and the provost that this was a real opportunity for us to do what we do in a better way,” he said.
Within the eight engineering departments, “literally all of them have some biological stuff going on,” Ottino said.
The most interaction between biology and engineering occurs within three departments: chemical and biological engineering, civil and environmental engineering, and biomedical engineering. Collaboration between medicine and engineering is also comMonday, especially with robotics and the rehabilitation of amputees with prosthetic limbs.
Many advances in medicine are prompted by advances in engineering, Ottino said. “(Engineers are) looking at nature and biology, and finding inspiration in nature,” he said.
For example, by looking at the ways in which rats sense their environment with their whiskers, engineers can investigate how many different animals sense the environment and brainstorm new types of sensors based on those concepts, Ottino said.McCormick is becoming increasingly collaborative, Ottino said, and there are many links between the medical school and the engineering school, in addition to all of the engineering departments. Ottino said this idea of “cross-linkage” also extends to relations with Kellogg School of Management, as well as the School of Communication.
Both Myerson and Ottino said the departments and offices that will be moved to the new facility have not been determined. They added that the decisions will not be made until the architectural plans for the building have been finalized.
