The ribbon cutting has taken place and the doors of Engineering 6 are now officially open. The celebration of Waterloo Engineering’s newest building place took place this morning hosted by university president Feridun Hamdullahpur and dean of engineering Adel Sedra. On hand to mark the opening were faculty, staff, students and others including donors, owners and employees of Diamond and Schmitt Architects, the architects of the building, and federal and provincial government officials.
“Our spectacular new Engineering 6 building enables us to continue our innovative chemical engineering research and provides our students with leading-edge facilities for an exceptional educational experience,” said Sedra. “We’re now well positioned to becoming one of the top chemical engineering departments in the world.”
The 115,000-square-foot building provides space for student projects, office space for faculty, graduate students and administrative staff, as well as lecture and seminar rooms. It features 48 state-of the-art research labs for faculty and graduate students working in areas that include plastics and polymer science and engineering, biochemical and biomedical engineering, green reaction engineering, advanced materials engineering and process systems engineering. The new facilities in Engineering 6 support the development of advanced technologies as well as the training of high-quality personnel to transfer new discoveries into Canadian industry.
Sedra acknowledged the financial support of the provincial and federal government, as well as the Woodbridge Group and Woodbridge Foundation, for which the atrium in Engineering 6 has been named in recognition of their support. He also thanked alumnus Norm Lockington for leading his 1973 chemical engineering class in raising funds to name the second floor undergraduate seminar room in honour of Professor Jim Ford. Ford served as a chemical engineering faculty member for many years and was the department’s associate chair of undergraduate studies for a significant portion of that time.
Engineering 6 is the second new engineering building in two years – Engineering 5, the home to the systems design engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical and mechatronics engineering, as well as the faculty’s student design centre, opened just over a year ago.
Chemical engineering was the first department in the Faculty of Engineering and one of two founding departments at the university along with the department of chemistry in the Faculty of Science. The two departments provided the cornerstone on which the rest of the University of Waterloo was built.
Chemical engineering will continue to occupy A and B wings in the Douglas Wright Engineering (DWE) building until the planned Engineering 7 is built to house the rest of the department. Renovations to the now vacant C-Wing of DWE, the original building on Waterloo’s campus, begins in November. Once refurbished, the C-Wing will provide space for the civil and environmental engineering department.