Event Schedule

What you will learn: This course covers the basic elements of planning and design of labs and facilities for teaching and research – upfront planning and programming, teaching lab designs, active learning space designs, informal learning space designs, research lab designs, building design, and planning for mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and lighting systems components. Participants will come away with a basic understanding of the terminology, concepts, processes, standards, numbers, and types of labs, scientific equipment, and furniture (as applicable) involved in teaching and research facility planning and design. The course also serves as primer for the two-day conference that follows and will be highly interactive with Q&A throughout.

Who should attend: This one-day course is open to all who have interest in lab planning and design: project managers, facility planners and managers, lab managers, architects, engineers, construction engineers, faculty, researchers, and scientists employed at colleges and universities, and A/E/C firms.

Space is limited and enrollment is subject to approval.

Cost:
$1,375 Fundamentals Course only
$1,100 with registration to two-day conference immediately following

(Fees include course materials, continental breakfast, refreshment breaks, lunch)

Join us for a hosted beer and wine bar along with light snacks.

Attendees may sign-in and pick up their registration materials here, or the next morning at the conference ballroom foyer.

Guests welcome.

See the full list of participating exhibitors and event hosts.

Many research institutions face the gap between laboratory discovery and commercial-scale adoption in advanced manufacturing, energy storage, and polymers. Bret Cummock draws on NLR's Energy Materials and Processing at Scale (EMAPS) facility —a 127,000-square-foot, $224 million flagship building now under construction—to share design evolutions and infrastructure decisions behind a next-generation scale-up research environment. He describes the flexible configurations supporting rapid reconfiguration and industry collaboration, how pilot-scale processing bridges bench research to commercial production, and how electrification and reclaimed water systems advance decarbonization targets. He highlights a range of best-in-class features to inform emerging science capital initiatives at any scale.

As computing and engineering curricula converge, universities face mounting pressure to create facilities that seamlessly integrate software development, robotics, data science, embedded systems, and advanced manufacturing, often within a single building or floor plate. This session presents a curriculum-driven, metrics-based planning framework for designing academic environments that unite computing-centered spaces with hardware-intensive labs. Stantec planners draw on quantitative and qualitative metrics covering space allocation, adjacencies, infrastructure capacity, utilization, and flexibility to translate academic requirements into actionable facility decisions. Through project case studies, they evaluate and contrast renovation-versus-new-construction tradeoffs, risk management strategies, and design approaches that future-proof computing and engineering education facilities.

As quantum information science emerges as a defining research frontier, universities are reimagining engineering facilities to support both established and emerging disciplines within unified, flexible environments. This session presents Cornell University’s Duffield Hall Expansion, which transforms two existing buildings into a cohesive complex housing the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, a state-of-the-art Quantum Information Science Technology (QIST) research facility, and strong programmatic connections to Cornell’s NanoScale Facility and Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. Presenters explore design strategies for flexible shared quantum labs, adaptable instructional spaces, and spatial connections that reinforce interdisciplinary collaboration across one of the nation’s leading engineering programs. 

Hosted by Vacuubrand

To attract high-caliber talent, institutions are reimagining the campus experience to bridge the gap between recruitment and enhanced learning outcomes. Critical to these efforts are cross-discipline convergence, student-centered experiential learning, and enabling collaboration. In this session, RFD presents trends, planning solutions and benchmarking studies for next generation science and engineering facilities, including design considerations for biophilic laboratory spaces. They outline key decisions to make to best leverage complex systems inherent to laboratory focused facilities, and review valuable “lessons learned”. They will also detail examples from recently completed and ‘on-the-boards’ projects from across the United States, and highlight design strategies for planning successful laboratory facilities that provide active and collaborative environments for learning and discovery.

Funding agencies mandate interdisciplinary collaboration, institutional commitments require aggressive decarbonization, and researchers demand adaptable spaces that keep pace with rapidly evolving science. This session reveals how the Resnick Sustainability Center addresses all three imperatives through integrated design-build execution, mass timber innovation, and flexible lab typologies that dismantle disciplinary silos. Presenters map actionable strategies for achieving measurable embodied carbon reductions, designing adaptable research modules that respond to evolving science, and creating transparent, collaborative environments that accelerate discovery-to-impact timelines. They chart new metrics for space utilization and collaboration effectiveness, demonstrate how progressive sustainability targets drive operational excellence, and provide a replicable blueprint for institutions pursuing convergent research models. They distill lessons learned on aligning stakeholder vision with performance outcomes and illustrate how strategic facility investments generate campus-wide ripple effects—empowering attendees to champion next-generation research environments.

What does it take to deliver a major research facility when funding gaps, a global pandemic, and institutional uncertainty stretch a project timeline over a decade? This session traces Florida State University’s Interdisciplinary Research and Commercialization Building from concept in 2013 to construction completion, examining the leadership and persistence required to maintain momentum. Perspectives from FSU’s project management team, HGA architects, and Whiting-Turner reveal how the project accommodated evolving user needs including a late-added Quantum Sciences program, and how a complex, technically demanding research facility was successfully delivered in a smaller regional market with limited specialized trade resources. 

Research institutions face mounting pressure to expand STEM research capacity as capital budgets shrink and deferred maintenance backlogs grow. Bruce Molino draws on experience leading facility planning at Syracuse University and in private practice to present the 80/20 lab renovation model, a proven framework that standardizes lab infrastructure decisions to shorten planning and delivery timelines. He shares how the process structures faculty engagement, minimizes custom design iterations, and maximizes adaptability within existing buildings. He describes implementation strategies and principles that balance institutional standards with research flexibility. He delivers key distinguishing characteristics and strategies for other institutions expanding research capacity through targeted renovation.

Hosted by Siemens (Guests welcome)

Courtesy of Tradeline

Research facilities rank among the most energy-intensive building types, making them critical proving grounds for sustainable design innovation. This session presents the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy as a case study in integrating hybrid mass timber construction with advanced energy systems to achieve ambitious carbon and performance goals. Session leaders demonstrate how defining clear project drivers, including operational and embodied carbon reduction, user wellbeing, constructability, and cost, enabled systematic data-driven evaluation of every design decision. They examine results of a facility life-cycle assessment: A 40 percent reduction in embodied carbon through the timber structural strategy, while optimized facade design, heat recovery, chilled beams, and high-efficiency laboratory ventilation delivered substantial operational energy savings. 

At many research universities, activities connecting faculty hiring, lab development, research operations, and equipment planning span multiple units yet lack integrated governance, creating gaps that delay projects, strain capital resources, and misalign facilities with institutional priorities. This interactive, facilitated session invites participants to map their coordination processes, surface common challenges, and collectively build a shared model for how research facilities are planned and delivered. Drawing on a proven workshop framework and an implemented institutional example, Bruce Molino guides attendees in identifying actionable opportunities to improve alignment, clarify governance structures, and make more effective use of capital resources in support of institutional research priorities. 

As computing and engineering curricula converge, universities face mounting pressure to create facilities that seamlessly integrate software development, robotics, data science, embedded systems, and advanced manufacturing, often within a single building or floor plate. This session presents a curriculum-driven, metrics-based planning framework for designing academic environments that unite computing-centered spaces with hardware-intensive labs. Stantec planners draw on quantitative and qualitative metrics covering space allocation, adjacencies, infrastructure capacity, utilization, and flexibility to translate academic requirements into actionable facility decisions. Through project case studies, they evaluate and contrast renovation-versus-new-construction tradeoffs, risk management strategies, and design approaches that future-proof computing and engineering education facilities.

The University of Arkansas’s Multi-User Silicon Carbide Research and Fabrication Laboratory is a landmark achievement in national semiconductor strategy, the only openly accessible silicon carbide fabrication facility in the United States. This session presents the collaborative design process behind this 22,000 sq. ft. facility, exploring how the architect, engineer, and university team balanced industrial-grade cleanroom requirements with an academic campus context and a commitment to educational transparency. Presenters illustrate how 6,500 sq. ft. of cleanroom processing space was integrated alongside open-access prototyping areas, how safety and security requirements were reconciled with visibility, and how flexible design features accommodate diverse semiconductor fabrication workflows.

To attract high-caliber talent, institutions are reimagining the campus experience to bridge the gap between recruitment and enhanced learning outcomes. Critical to these efforts are cross-discipline convergence, student-centered experiential learning, and enabling collaboration. In this session, RFD presents trends, planning solutions and benchmarking studies for next generation science and engineering facilities, including design considerations for biophilic laboratory spaces. They outline key decisions to make to best leverage complex systems inherent to laboratory focused facilities, and review valuable “lessons learned”. They will also detail examples from recently completed and ‘on-the-boards’ projects from across the United States, and highlight design strategies for planning successful laboratory facilities that provide active and collaborative environments for learning and discovery.

USC’s Ginsburg Human-Centered Computation Hall redefines what an AI and computing research facility can deliver functionally and programmatically, and this session draws out best practices to inform similar initiatives. Presenters examine the LEED Platinum Living Lab pairing purpose-built spaces and immersive environments across multiple disciplines — an indoor drone aviary, advanced robotics labs, and fabrication studios — with a passive-first, net-zero-ready envelope. They illustrate the use of a digital twin platform to transform building systems into active research and teaching instruments. They demonstrate how data-driven stakeholder programming unified the Department of Computer Science and the School of Advanced Computing, rounding out USC’s engineering district cluster in strategic interdisciplinary interactive spaces.