The George Washington University Opens Science and Engineering Hall, Largest Building of Its Kind in D.C.

WASHINGTON, March 4, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The George Washington University on Wednesday formally opened its new Science and Engineering Hall, a $275 million, 500,000-square-foot building with state-of-the-art research facilities and programs that will educate the next generation of innovators and support faculty as they develop knowledge that will solve global problems and help improve the lives of millions worldwide.

"I can't imagine a stronger statement about the importance of science and engineering to America's future than the placement of this extraordinary facility right in the heart of the nation's capital," said GW President Steven Knapp.

In opening the hall—the largest academic building dedicated to science and engineering in the nation's capital—the university also announced an in-kind grant of software licenses, with a commercial value of $30 million, from Siemens to enhance programs in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and strengthen a long-standing partnership between the technology company and the university.  

During the last decade, GW's research funding has grown 80 percent, increasing the need for modern labs to further faculty members' cutting-edge experiments. Inside SEH, a nanofabrication lab allows researchers to build and work with devices that measure billionths of a meter in an intensely clean environment that ensures the room is free of contaminants as seemingly harmless as dust. An imaging suite shows researchers samples, such as minuscule cells, magnified by 1 million times, and can create 3-D reconstructions of them. And at three stories tall, a "high bay" provides enough height and concrete strength to test large structures and inform how buildings and bridges can be built to be more earthquake resistant.

SEH doubles the existing space for science and engineering disciplines on the university's Foggy Bottom Campus, and is now home to thousands of students and roughly 140 faculty members.

Researchers at GW also have the advantage of working closely with other partners at influential organizations in the Washington, D.C., region, including the National Institutes of Health, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and Smithsonian Institution. As GW's faculty members look for ways to improve everything from tissue regeneration and drug delivery to robotics and sustainable ecosystems, the work researchers conduct at SEH will have an impact beyond its walls.

Among the spaces in the building is a "teaching tower," made up of 1,000-square-foot teaching labs that are stacked at the center of the building from the third to eighth floors. Enclosed by glass on three sides, the tower includes labs for software engineering, circuitry and robotics. A career center housed within SEAS on SEH's second floor ensures that over the next decade, as STEM-related careers increase by 9 million, GW students are well positioned to be leaders in their fields.

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SOURCE George Washington University

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