Intel inside: SEQ 2 gives scientists and engineers a 21st century research home
Jim Plummer
BY DAWN LEVY
Creating improved materials for medical prosthetics. Developing photonic devices for better communications. Generating energy technologies with fewer greenhouse gas emissions. These are among the thorny research challenges to be addressed by the occupants of the second science and engineering quad (SEQ 2). With a common basement, shared state-of-the-art labs and above-ground architecture that encourages interaction, the quad may facilitate the unprecedented degree of collaboration required to meet challenges at the crossroads of diverse disciplines.
"The program that's going to go in each of the buildings is being thought of as a whole," said Jim Plummer, the Frederick Emmons Terman Dean of the School of Engineering. "Opportunities for sharing facilities between the buildings, for creating labs that bring people together from the various buildings and elsewhere on campus, are going to be a very important element of the overall design of these four buildings."
Here's a snapshot of what to expect in SEQ 2's four as-yet-unnamed buildings, each of which will provide resources for several hundred faculty, staff and students:
Energy and Environment Building (approximately 166,565 gross square feet). With principles of "green architecture" guiding the design, this edifice will be headquarters to the Stanford Institute for the Environment, headed by Jeff Koseff of the School of Engineering and Barton H. "Buzz" Thompson of the School of Law. The building also will house a significant fraction of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, now largely in the Terman Engineering Center, which will be razed before it succumbs to dry rot, to avoid a costly major renovation that would have been required in a few years.
The Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) also will be headquartered in this new building. "This program is supporting a wide range of innovative, long-range research projects that will provide alternative, sustainable options for energy sources in the future," Plummer said.
School of Engineering Center (approximately 126,217 gross square feet). Replacing the Terman Engineering Center as the nexus of the School of Engineering, this new building will host the Dean's Office, the Department of Management Science and Engineering and the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering. Facilities will include classrooms, auditoriums, student organization and meeting places, distance learning classrooms for professional education, a café and a library that Plummer describes as "radically different" than the current one.
"[The SEQ 2 library] provides an exciting opportunity for us to think about things like what an engineering library ought to look like in the 21st century," he said. "Obviously, it'll have much more digital content than it currently has. But we're going to hopefully be very innovative in how we think about access to information in the 21st century in creating this new library."
Ginzton Replacement (approximately 101,850 gross square feet). With a rich history of more than 50 years, the Ginzton Laboratory was the site of pioneering work that led to the 2-mile-long linear accelerator at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and the first use of an electron storage ring for X-ray spectroscopy in the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory. It is also famed for research applications of microwaves, lasers and much more.
The replacement lab will bring together creative and robust research efforts at the intersection of physics and engineering. Promising areas include quantum electronics, picosecond pulse techniques, and superconductor and semiconductor research. Electrical engineers, materials scientists and applied physicists will have access to sophisticated labs meeting stringent requirements for vibration elimination, cleanliness and lighting control. As a result, much of the program for the building is accommodated in an expanded basement.
"What they do is going to be driven by the creativity of those faculty and by the opportunities that they see," Plummer said. "Essentially, the objective is to try and provide a 21st-century facility at the intersection of engineering and physics, so the kinds of creativity that characterized the last 50 years can happen over the next 50 years."
Bioengineering/Chemical Engineering (approximately 158,271 gross square feet). This facility encourages interdisciplinary collaboration by placing two related programs, the Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering departments, side by side and near both the School of Engineering and the School of Medicine. The building features shared wet labs and a soft and hybrid materials lab.
While the Bioengineering Department is now housed in the James H. Clark Center, within a few years the size of the department will increase from about seven faculty members to 20 or more, outgrowing the available space in Clark. "The strategy for the next several years is to house new hires in bioengineering in the Clark Center," Plummer explained. "That's just a huge positive for the department that they have these spectacular facilities to house these new faculty in."
Besides accommodating the expanding bioengineering program, the new building will house the Chemical Engineering Department, now in the Keck and Stauffer chemistry buildings and geographically isolated from many of the groups with which the department collaborates. As chemical engineering also has strong overlaps with materials science, its placement directly across from where many materials science and applied physics faculty work in the Moore and McCullough buildings could prove beneficial.
"This is a major opportunity for us to bring Chemical Engineering into the geographic center of the School of Engineering and specifically to build the geographic relationship between Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering, which I think is going to be very important over the next 25 years," Plummer said.
With the site and concept approved, the next step is what Plummer calls "the detailed programming" of the buildings.
"It's absolutely critical that faculty be involved in it from the beginning to the end," Plummer said. "It's an opportunity to build something which is going to be there for 50 years, and so let's try and think creatively about how to build these things such that they're going to serve us well over that time period."
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