“Fourth Industrial Revolution” buildings blur the lines between physical and digital disciplines to equip graduates to collaboratively solve complex real-world problems. Led Klosky highlights strategies for early project coalition-building that create a physical an organizational environment for cross-disciplinary cooperation, and he profiles the results: the 136,000 gsf Cyber Engineering and Academic Center that will future-proof West Point’s academic programs. He scopes out configurations for a wide array of lab, classrooms, and activity spaces designed for hands-on, project-based learning in engineering, cybertechnology, biomechanics, cybersecurity and network development, advanced electronics, alternative energy, robotics, systems design, supply chain, cost analysis, and more. 

Maximizing science program productivity in a new facility starts with establishing rigorous standards, guidelines, and expectations for researcher participation and space assignments from the outset. Dennis Cuddy profiles the pioneering teaching and research models that University of Maryland, Baltimore County has developed to recruit and retain faculty, improve student success, and pack the most relevant programs into available building footprints. He illustrates how new occupancy models reframed design decisions for UMBC’s recently-completed Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building in terms of programming, shared resources, advanced technology core facilities, and flexibility.

The new LEED Gold Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building on University of Colorado’s Boulder campus delivers leading-edge space solutions for advancing interdisciplinary aerospace teaching and research.  Wayne Northcutt details unique undergrad and graduate-level laboratory facility features, collaborative “research clusters,” workshops and makerspaces, and immersive education space all designed to successfully compete for grants, talent, and students. He illustrates layout, flexibility, and programming decisions that balance office/lab proximity with informal gathering and learning spaces for hands-on practical skills development, and deliver workforce-ready students that are equipped with skills for the design and application of novel sensors, aircraft, and spacecraft systems.

Franklin Antonio Hall brings together engineering and computational research, active learning, and technology transfer in a highly collaborative, cross-pollinating, and flexible environment. Mark Rowland illustrates how building on the “collaboratory” concept has transformed tenant selection, group adjacency planning, and space customization processes. He details space and infrastructure standards employed to maximize simplicity and reduce cost in adding, removing, and connecting to building services for initial and future research programs, and he examines decisions on power, air, data, water, furniture, core facilities, and shared areas.

This end-of-day session is where key ideas, new developments, and findings that have been revealed over the course of the entire two-day conference (including sessions you may have missed) get clarified, expanded upon, and affirmed or debated. This is also the opportunity to get answers from industry leaders and the entire audience to specific questions on key and challenging issues.  

Mounting pressure on construction costs will impact all science facility projects on the drawing boards, both new construction and renovations. Attend this session to get better pricing and more accurate budget figures, and better understand construction cost drivers for different academic science programs. Session leaders deliver up-to-date construction cost forecasts based on the latest employment data, government spending trends, commodity prices, and cost data from more than 100 projects. Using analyses of equities, GDP, and construction labor markets, they illustrate regional construction pricing targets for the next two years and demonstrate bid and purchasing strategies that lock in costs and reduce risk.

As institutions aggressively compete for leadership positions in data science and artificial intelligence, there is a pressing need for data to shape workplace designs specifically supporting the unique program requirements. Session leaders share recent experiences using social data to implement flexible work environments in private and public sectors, with findings that should inform new space plans and designs for emerging high-technology programs. They identify alternative methods of gathering data, analytical tools, and decision-making processes, and highlight recent successes in applying these practices to data science and artificial intelligence research space initiatives. 

A plethora of new science and technology capital projects have just come online, and this session delivers lessons learned that should reshape plans for upcoming construction and modernization initiatives. The Stantec team digs into post occupancy evaluations for recently completed science, technology, and engineering spaces and extract data on what is working, what’s not, and why. They re-examine initial project target metrics and goals and evaluate project outcomes performance. They chart utilization numbers for collaboration spaces, configurations for experiential/active learning and team-based education, and successful features for maker spaces, project labs, and shared design studios.

The success of your students and innovative research programs depends on STEM facility project outcomes meeting or exceeding institutional aspirations. Don’t assume that will happen; make it happen by setting demanding standards for programming, conceptual and schematic design tailored to your unique needs. Session leaders chart a collaborative process for nailing down design team deliverables including program documentation, modular planning, space lists, narratives, room data, neighborhood and test fit plans, and massing and stacking ideas. They detail conceptual and schematic design documentation to require, site specific options, test fit and schematic floor plans, 3-D views and video walk-throughs, exterior images, and more.

Highly competitive STEM programs are pushing to attract students, increase capacity, and improve student outcomes while looking to develop next generation entrepreneurs. Key strategies that help meet these goals include cross-disciplinary convergence, experiential learning, collaborative learning and leveraging of the entire building as learning and maker space. In this session, RFD charts emerging trends, metrics, and designs for world-class STEM facilities, and describes the facility features that balance complex infrastructure requirements with environments for learning and discovery. They identify must-have program-enabling facility elements and profile emerging projects from across the US, highlighting design and layout strategies while noting pitfalls to avoid.

The mission of today’s science, technology, and engineering space initiatives: Attract people, engage them, and leave them longing to come back. The key ingredient in your plans should be sticky spaces: Informal and social learning places students seek out, make their own, and populate around the clock. Using data, lessons learned, and student feedback from recent projects, session leaders deliver best practices for programming sticky spaces, and key functional and psychological design elements for individual learners and small groups. They examine the effects of visibility, transparency, circulation patterns, privacy, and group dynamics, and the amenities that keep student spaces populated and active.

Here you’ll see how dynamic growth in energy, health, life sciences, quantum sciences, electronics, and manufacturing fields is spurring leading institutions to invest in nanotechnology space -- cleanrooms, imaging, prototyping, and more. Speakers set out the academic vision and campus benefits, and dive into specific program-enabling feature sets and space configurations to look for. They profile recent nanotech capital initiatives at Harvard, MIT, Vanderbilt, and other institutions, identify desirable collaboration features, programmatic makeup, environmental controls, and high-performance infrastructure. They deliver decision making criteria for scope, site selection, interconnection of nano space with neighboring buildings, and solutions for challenging infrastructure requirements.

Evolving research processes, increasing space requirements, high construction costs, and outdated buildings are pressuring higher education organizations to find innovative space solutions. In this session, Jay Hallinan and Wan Leung call upon case studies of recently completed high-tech renovations and examine the feasibility of adapting existing urban facilities to modern science. They illustrate new design standards, space utilization strategies, and ways to accommodate the latest scientific equipment and technology. They identify trends in health sciences and related research programs, the new “high bar” for productivity and occupant expectations, and features that maximize future adaptability. 

The convergence of science, engineering, and technology has transformed healthcare delivery and increased the demand for a multi-skilled workforce – and this is reshaping the mix and design of higher education learning and research spaces. Session leaders demonstrate new space planning strategies for simulation- and project-based learning and examine two state-of-the-art health education facilities that are breaking down traditional academic silos to train the next generation of caregivers. They detail the integration of engineering with medical education spaces to train future "physicianeers,” the maker spaces that promote creativity and collaborative work, and they demonstrate facility strategies for program synergy and strategic overlap.  

The latest models for centrally programmed institute-like and entrepreneurial research and teaching facilities can accelerate recruitment and discovery goals and take STEM education programs to the next level. Session leaders contrast departmental, institutional, and entrepreneurial space occupancy models, examine how four higher ed institutions have incorporated blended teaching and research hubs into their campuses, the occupancy and space management models employed, and the STEM and recruitment benefits realized. They identify key success factors for teaching, research and scientific core spaces, scope out how to leverage more traditional facilities, and profile campus community impacts.

Next generation filtered fume hoods not only have the potential to reduce first costs, operating costs, and emissions for new lab buildings, but also relieve the pressure for temporary swing space prior to new building occupancy. Melissa Burns and Ken Crooks identify features and capabilities of filtered fume hoods, and they examine appropriate scenarios for ducted vs. filtered fume hoods vs. combinations of both in research and teaching environments. They demonstrate how swing space can be used to curb the impact of construction and renovation of labs, detail costs of implementation, and safety precautions that are required. 

Increasing demand for research capacity and throughput has collided with recruitment needs and strained budgets to create a perfect storm; it's time to bring all the technology tools to bear to raise laboratory facility performance and meet the challenge. Session leaders provide a holistic overview of products and technologies entering the market just in time to deliver on today's critical energy management, asset tracking and space utilization, user experience, health, and security demands. They examine how IoT is being employed in research facilities to unlock new data insights, raise operating efficiency, and enhance the relationship between the built environment and facility users.

New ideas, breakthroughs, and innovations targeting global human challenges are best nucleated by in-person, human collisions which the state-of-the-art Ginsburg Hall computer science building at USC is designed to deliver. Session leaders illustrate decision making criteria for flexible laboratories, extensive space for fabrication and development of drones, haptic devices and wearable devices, and other advanced technologies. They detail lessons learned from a challenging design process, and the solutions achieved that reconcile the needs of program growth, sustainability, neurodiverse populations, health, well-being, students, and faculty in a human-centric way.