Taking Shape: An Early Peek at the Advanced Engineering Building

Summer sees significant progress on what will soon become UNLV Engineering’s signature new facility; AEB set to open January 2024.

With 3,400 students and continual growth, UNLV's Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering will get more spaces for teaching, research, and collaborations once the new Advanced Engineering Building opens by the 2024 spring semester. (Becca Schwartz/UNLV)

Without a doubt, summer brought the heat to Vegas. It also brought a shine to UNLV’s newest, and nearly complete, addition: the Advanced Engineering Building.

“This is the time when the building really comes alive,” said Patrick Castellano, director of design and associate university architect. “This is where it gets its personality. You can see the finishes, you can see the design, you can see the vision.”

The vision is a 13-year dream-in-the-making for UNLV College of Engineering Dean Rama Venkat, who, from his office just next door in the Beam Engineering Complex, has arguably the closest seat in the house to see the building take shape in a slow-motion - or, depending on how you look at it - fast-motion timelapse.

“The last 18 months have been amazing,” he said. “The speed with which the construction has happened is simply remarkable. Every time I’ve had the opportunity to tour the building, it keeps getting better and better.”

Castellano agreed. While major milestones tend to be celebrated, like the final steel beam being installed or concrete being poured, the work that’s happening in earnest now means that the finish line is in sight.

“Now we’re seeing the parts and pieces of the building that will actually be used, the components that people will actually feel and touch,” he said. “The ceiling is going in, the glass is going in, the carpet is going in. Now is when it starts to become and look like a complete building.”

Here's a peek behind the AEB’s wall-to-wall windows at some of the unique spaces it has to offer.

For Venkat, the building’s true purpose might be best encapsulated in the synergistic nature of the open-concept labs.

"The AEB was designed to be, first and foremost, student-centered, collaborative, and a place for faculty and student researchers to invent or discover new technologies for solving community and national challenges,” he said, adding that the building will support explosive student enrollment and graduation numbers.

On the second and third floors, labs are not separated by partitions, or closed off under lock and key. Instead, an open-concept, shared design rules the day in both the dry/computational labs on level 2 and the wet labs on the building’s top floor.

“It’s unique because it encourages cross communication with each other,” Castellano said. “The labs are meant to be collision spaces, where a researcher who is working on a particular project might find it beneficial to cross collaborate with someone else who’s in a different field, or similar field.”

In just a few short months, graduate student Gabson Baguma is looking forward to how the state-of-the-art wet lab will bolster his study of disinfection byproducts and chlorination in the drinking water supply — a line of research that could have a direct impact on the indirect water reuse system in the Las Vegas Valley.

“Collaborating with colleagues from different fields brings fresh perspectives and diverse expertise, which fosters innovative thinking and problem-solving,” he said. “This dynamic environment allows us to tackle complex research questions from multiple angles, leading to more robust and comprehensive results.”

All told, the AEB will support research in water resources, environmental engineering, material engineering, biomedical engineering, advanced energy research, cybersecurity, electronics, robotics, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.

The theme of collaboration continues — or rather begins — on the first floor, where the large open space of the makerspace takes center stage.

While there are similar facilities on campus, the AEB’s makerspace will be distinguished by its ability to support larger-scale engineering projects. Accordion style doors make it easy to move projects in and out of the lab, and large student lockers line one wall to provide ample storage for those working on projects.

Capabilities include 3D printing, laser cutting, and concrete casting.

And when students are done with their projects, the adjoining makerspace showcase, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows, coupled with a large, LED display, is available to exhibit projects of significance.

Venkat envisions the makerspace as a place where UNLV engineering students can get together to work on their discipline-specific Senior Design capstone projects, as well as a place where students and faculty from across campus can work together on interdisciplinary projects.

Venkat also hopes to see the space buzzing with many K-12 STEM summer camps and other events that are part of the college's community partnerships.

Speaking of events, the flexitorium — or a flexible auditorium — is the first-of-its-kind on campus, and expands the college’s capacity to support signature activities, as well as large class sizes.

A lecture hall by day, and an event space by night, the large space features auditorium-style seating that can fold up like an accordion depending on need. It features a high-tech, full-screen LED display too - ensuring that presentations pop.

As its name suggests, flexibility is at the heart of the space, but it’s representative of Venkat’s larger vision for the AEB. From top to bottom, the AEB focuses on flexible, adaptable, modular spaces that inspire innovation, collaboration, and creativity.

“I want it to be a space where students and faculty from across campus come to collaborate, co-design and co-invent,” Venkat said.

Just around the corner, on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling windows, and several paces from a side-door entrance, there’s a structure that doesn’t yet look impressive. It requires a little imagination to guess what the open-air box will eventually support. Soon the steel structure will be topped off with a net.

This aviary — not for birds, but for drones — will support research and advanced study in autonomous aerial system development. According to Woosoon Yim, a mechanical engineering professor at UNLV and an unmanned aerial systems expert, the outdoor flightspace can be useful for developing formation control of small multiple drones as well as for basic drone technology training for incoming or current engineering students.

Another team of students, as part of a new autonomous racing class debuting this fall, will eventually use the aviary to test autonomous grounded racing vehicles to compete in the F1TENTH competitions. As the name suggests, the competition encourages student teams to build self-driving cars that are one-tenth the size of a regular vehicle.

The aviary — in addition to being really cool — represents another highlight of AEB: its functionality. No space is wasted, even in the outdoors.

“I might be biased, but it’s the best-looking building on campus,” Venkat said. “It's beautiful inside and out. And more importantly, not a single square foot of AEB is wasted. Everything is going to be utilized. I can’t wait to see the building brimming with activity and students.

The use of the cadaveric dissection lab complements the virtual anatomy instruction by offering a more hands-on learning experience for students.

The school's many medical residents, faculty physicians, students, and fellows are finding innovative ways to help provide health care resources to Nevada's communities.

This fall, Academic Impressions will be bringing even more personal, professional, and leadership education resources to UNLV faculty.