MIT's latest laboratory along the Infinite Corridor will be the focus of attention on Tuesday, Sept. 2 with a ribbon-cutting to celebrate its completion.
The new Undergraduate Teaching Laboratory for the Department of Materials Science and Engineering is in Building 8, across the hall from DMSE's Nanomechanical Technology Laboratory (itself only a year old). The teaching lab ushers in a DMSE undergraduate curriculum "with a new set of integrated core subjects that will provide a fresh, exciting experience for our students," said Subra Suresh, head of the department and the Ford Professor of Engineering.
Students will also have a much broader lab experience, with lab subjects closely tied to the lecture subjects. To that end, the new lab contains facilities for biomaterials investigation, chemical synthesis, and processing of materials. It also holds equipment for the characterization of electronic materials, an optical bench and a scanning electron microscope. "Interest in the new curriculum is high," said Suresh. More than 40 sophomores have designated materials science and engineering as their major.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on August 27, 2003.
