Sixty Strut Tensegrity Sphere, a soaring 9-foot-wide stainless steel and wire sculpture by R. Buckminster Fuller, was installed Aug. 6, 2002, in the Engineering Centers Building atrium.
7 photos - August 2002

Engineers' Day 2002 will be a celebration of both past achievements and visions for the future. This year's annual alumni event includes the formal dedication of the Engineering Centers Building on Friday morning, Oct. 18. Over two years of construction and many years of planning have resulted in an exciting new facility that will make tremendous contributions to the college's research and education missions. The dedication will be a festive commemoration of the public-private partnership — the state of Wisconsin and the college's alumni and friends — that made the building possible.
17 photos - August 2002

Floors are made for walking. But in the case of the new Engineering Centers Building, its floor is made for gazing, as well. Artist Scott Parsons has designed an 11,000-square-foot terrazzo floor in the ECB. Parsons. The floor represents a unique take on the College of Engineering's widely admired art program — a functional (and heavily trafficked) floor as a piece of art. The terrazzo floor reflects images — such as circuits, CAT scans, and crystals — found in engineering research.
9 photos - July 2002

RELATED LINKS Innovation Day Schoofs Prize for Creativity Tong Prototype Prize

Look around. Opportunities to improve or invent exist everywhere — atop a house, in the shop, at a hospital, in the lab — and often are born of necessity. Such is the case with many of the student projects you see here. "Someone ought to build something like that," said mechanical engineering student Tom Johnson about his pneumatic shingle stripper, a creation that stemmed from his back-breaking day on the roof. Responding to a need, others devised such solutions as a safer suture needle, a bike helmet lighting system, or a fishing pole for quadriplegics.

This exhibit showcases just a few of the inventions and ideas UW-Madison undergraduate students have displayed at the annual Innovation Day competition sponsored by the College of Engineering. All entrants are eligible to compete for awards in the Schoofs Prize for Creativity and those who build prototypes are considered for the Tong Prototype Prize. Though their solutions vary wildly, these student inventors share a creative, entrepreneurial spirit and the drive to make their world a better place in which to live.

View "Student Innovation" virtually here, or check it out on campus in the Engineering Hall(way) Gallery, near Room 1712 Engineering Hall.
10 photos - July 2002

Engineers drive the technological advancements in biotechnology. UW-Madison engineers are doing these things and more. This exhibit showcases the ways in which some them are developing biotechnological solutions to natural-world problems.
12 photos - December 2000