By Lily Mashayek

Staff writer

University Receives Recognition

Several University faculty members received awards this year: professor of physics Mats Selen was awarded with the national Professor of the Year Award, six University faculty members were chosen as Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the University received a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to encourage women and minority start-ups.

Research Park partners with Capital One

A Fortune 500 company now occupies 4,000 square feet of the University’s Research Park. Capital One opened a new digital lab — its first on a university campus — and began employing undergraduate students in October.

The company hopes to create a hybrid model that will employ full-time and part-time students at the lab. The lab plans to hire more students in 2016, in addition to interns who are currently working there.

Grainger Renovations

Grainger Library underwent a $680,000 renovation to create collaborative spaces for students and faculty.

The library’s lower west and center wings were transformed into office spaces, collaboration tables and a visualization center. The goal of the renovation was that, starting January, students would be able to work on their designs and ideas at the library, and then move on to creating their projects at one of the labs on campus.

The University aims for the library to serve as a place for students to brainstorm their ideas, and provide spaces and resources, such as a 3-D printer, to do so.

New Design Center Announcement

The building of a new campus-wide Design Center was also announced earlier this year.

The 59,300-square-foot Design Center will be located between Fourth and Sixth streets, next to the Krannert Art Museum. With spaces for “virtual and immersive learning”, the center will offer students a place to work on projects that might be harder to work on at some of the smaller labs on campus, or that simply do not have any space to work on their projects at all.

Since the center is not owned by one specific college, it will be open to all students to use — including students who are not an engineering or science major.

Network of Innovation Hubs Across Campus

The University will lead one of four Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs, announced the National Science Foundation in early November.

The hubs in the Northeast, South, Midwest and West aim to improve the storage, access and sharing of data.

The University will lead the Midwestern Hub, which will include 12 total states. The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the University of North Dakota, Iowa State University and Indiana University will be partners of the Midwestern Hub.

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