The College of Engineering’s Department of Biomedical Engineering will receive new state-of-the-art design, innovation and prototyping spaces through a complete renovation of the first floor of the Lurie Biomedical Engineering Building.
The 12,000-square-foot, $4.9 million renovation was approved Oct. 17 by the University of Michigan Board of Regents. It will reinvent and redesign the space to create future-focused collaborative design spaces to support BME students’ active, project-based, hands-on learning experiences.
“Over the past decade, based on feedback from our students, employers and other stakeholders, we’ve made many changes to our curriculum to add more experiential learning opportunities for our students,” said Jan Stegemann, professor of biomedical engineering, professor of macromolecular science and engineering, and faculty lead on the initiative.
“It became clear we needed to update our design spaces to further support this new curricular content.”
In addition to a large, flexible and reconfigurable classroom, new features include:
- A clinical simulation area, including extended reality capabilities, for surgical simulation training and usability testing.
- Video-conferencing capabilities to enable teamwork locally and remotely, to observe medical procedures or hold international workshops.
- A dedicated 3-D printing laboratory, machine shop, prototyping and fabrication spaces.
- Instrumentation, mechanical testing and cell culture labs for experiential courses and student project teams.
The project will be funded from CoE resources. Integrated Design Solutions from Troy will design the project.
The project will include architectural, electrical and mechanical work and will provide an average of six on-site construction jobs.
A phased construction schedule is planned to minimize disruption to the academic calendar with construction to be completed in the spring of 2021. There will be no impact on parking.
The regents also authorized issuing bids and awarding construction contracts for the project.
