September 1, 2002
The 322,000-square-foot Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences is now more than 3 months in the making. Pratt School officials say the $97 million West Campus building complex is on-time and on-budget.
"Favorable local building economics and weather have assisted in keeping the project on budget and on time for its scheduled August 15, 2004, completion," said John Ferguson, associate dean for finance and administration at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering.
Groundbreaking began on CIEMAS in May. During the summer, teams cleared the site and used dynamite to blast rock in the way of excavation. On August 16, members of Pratt's Board of Visitors' Building Committee visited the construction site. During the meeting, the committee and Pratt Dean Kristina Johnson looked at a mockup of the potential brick pattern to be used with the Duke Stone.
The two-building complex will provide a wealth of undergraduate teaching and project labs; a variety of spaces for formal and informal student-faculty interaction; a 250-seat auditorium; atrium space for our students and a new cafe. And CIEMAS will foster further development of a culture of cross-discipline research and collaboration, particularly with the School of Medicine and Trinity College of Arts and Sciences.
The complex's west wing will house the Pratt School's new Fitzpatrick Center for Photonics and Communications Systems, and the larger east wing will house new interdisciplinary initiatives in biomedical engineering and materials sciences.