Collaboration is nothing new for Drexel College of Engineering professors Kapil Dandekar, Adam Fontecchio and Timothy Kurzweg. The three have been working together on engineering projects for years and even hold some joint patents together.
What is new, however, is where they work: bright, customized new labs and offices at 3101 Market St. that Fontecchio calls “a dream three years in the making.”
“I am very hopeful that this space will showcase the full potential of Drexel’s Schuylkill Yards,” says engineering professor Kapil Dandekar.
For the past 10 years, they’ve shuttled back and forth between rooms located on different floors of the Bossone Research Enterprise Center — but now no longer. The new lab space gives them easy access to each other and to other professors doing innovative work — in particular Youngmoo Kim, an engineering professor and director of the Expressive and Creative Interactive Technologies (ExCITe) Center, and Gary Friedman, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. And the space includes loads of tools and equipment, like a materials printer for making polymers, an optics lab for light-sensitive work and for testing vibrations, a wet lab, machine shop, and a unique dual-reverberation chamber to simulate wireless environments.
The space is the fruit of Drexel’s long-term renovations of its core research laboratories. Initiated in 2014, Drexel’s Research Laboratory Plan is investing approximately $49 million to create and update core research facilities. To date, the plan has delivered approximately 40,000 square feet of new and improved research laboratory space equipped with more than 30 new chemical fume hoods. The completed and planned renovations provide much-needed upgrades to research space for several colleges and schools, with interdisciplinary research in mind. The University has also been working with private companies interested in donating equipment and embedding their personnel alongside faculty and students to help commercialize technology.
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DESIGN LAB — Undergraduates now have new design labs at 3101 Market St. Students also have a new lounge featuring wooden walls that double as white boards and nearby tables and workstations with pop-up power capabilities, USB ports and screens to practice presentations on. |
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DRAGON’S DEN — An open communal work area called “the dragon’s den” is tall enough to fly drones, wide enough to have robots zoom around, and also houses a new Internet of Things testbed for research and education with functional fabrics, real-time localization and software- defined radio. |
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DUAL-REVERBERATION CHAMBER — This chamber was built to simulate different types of wireless environments to test electromagnetic capability and radios. Previously, researchers had to travel outside Philadelphia to access such an unusual site. |
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CONFERENCE ROOM — A glass-walled conference room is stationed in the middle of the room, while professors’ glassed offices line the perimeter. |