Renovated physics labs to enhance research
[The Pitt News, Nov 2, 2012, pg. 1 print edition]
Visions of microscopic computers and soon-to-be-discovered forms of matter inspired a group of faculty and administrators on Tuesday when they met to celebrate an important milestone in Pitt’s experimental physics research.
After investing 15,000 man hours to move six to 10 tons of concrete and install a menagerie of modern laboratory features, Pitt has completed its first phase of the midcampus renovation project.
A massive coordination between the University, contractors and federal stimulus dollars, the project provides the Department of Physics and Astronomy with state-of-the-art laboratory space in Old Engineering Hall and the Pittsburgh Nuclear Physics Laboratory. Additional renovations to Allen Hall, Thaw Hall and the Space Research Coordination Center are expected to be completed by August 2013.
“It’s marvelous. Wall-to-wall infrastructure,” said former Pitt Vice Provost for Research George Klinzing in reference to the sophisticated orchestration of building design, materials and machinery that keeps the new labs running. “This wasn’t something that happened overnight.”
It also wasn’t something that happened for free.
A beneficiary of the early Obama administration’s efforts to stimulate the sinking economy — as manifested in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — Pitt received $15 million in January 2010 from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to help realize its “shovel-ready” dream of midcampus renovations. Pitt also contributed $17 million of its own funds toward the project.
“Another part of the [Recovery Act] was reinvestment, a firm belief that the economic prosperity of the country in the long term is built on a foundation of knowledge and innovation,” said NIST director and former Pitt physics graduate student Patrick Gallagher. “This is going to be an investment that pays off for years and years to come.”
But “years” might overshoot the time it takes to see certain forms of return on the investment. For Vladimir Savinov, an associate professor at Pitt and a particle physicist, the spacious and configurable nature of the new laboratories will allow him and his colleagues to successfully compete with outside scientists for rights to construct parts of multi-institutional, collaborative research projects.
He’s talking about decades-long projects like the Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile loop of high-tech tunnels beneath France and Switzerland that smashes elementary particles together at tremendous speeds.
“If you don’t have an area, if you only have the corner of an office, then no one will allow you to build anything at all,” Savinov said.
Graduate student Feng Bi, who studies quantum computing materials, offers more day-to-day reasons to admire the new accommodations. “I think it’s great. It’s much bigger than my previous lab, and you can control the humidity.”
The renovated spaces will house a broad range of physics research groups that study topics including the turbulent nature of fluid flow, the constitution of the early universe and, of course, the development of a new generation of tiny but powerful computers.
Visions of microscopic computers and soon-to-be-discovered forms of matter inspired a group of faculty and administrators on Tuesday when they met to celebrate an important milestone in Pitt’s experimental physics research.
After investing 15,000 man hours to move six to 10 tons of concrete and install a menagerie of modern laboratory features, Pitt has completed its first phase of the midcampus renovation project.
A massive coordination between the University, contractors and federal stimulus dollars, the project provides the Department of Physics and Astronomy with state-of-the-art laboratory space in Old Engineering Hall and the Pittsburgh Nuclear Physics Laboratory. Additional renovations to Allen Hall, Thaw Hall and the Space Research Coordination Center are expected to be completed by August 2013.
“It’s marvelous. Wall-to-wall infrastructure,” said former Pitt Vice Provost for Research George Klinzing in reference to the sophisticated orchestration of building design, materials and machinery that keeps the new labs running. “This wasn’t something that happened overnight.”
It also wasn’t something that happened for free.
A beneficiary of the early Obama administration’s efforts to stimulate the sinking economy — as manifested in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — Pitt received $15 million in January 2010 from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to help realize its “shovel-ready” dream of midcampus renovations. Pitt also contributed $17 million of its own funds toward the project.
“Another part of the [Recovery Act] was reinvestment, a firm belief that the economic prosperity of the country in the long term is built on a foundation of knowledge and innovation,” said NIST director and former Pitt physics graduate student Patrick Gallagher. “This is going to be an investment that pays off for years and years to come.”
But “years” might overshoot the time it takes to see certain forms of return on the investment. For Vladimir Savinov, an associate professor at Pitt and a particle physicist, the spacious and configurable nature of the new laboratories will allow him and his colleagues to successfully compete with outside scientists for rights to construct parts of multi-institutional, collaborative research projects.
He’s talking about decades-long projects like the Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile loop of high-tech tunnels beneath France and Switzerland that smashes elementary particles together at tremendous speeds.
“If you don’t have an area, if you only have the corner of an office, then no one will allow you to build anything at all,” Savinov said.
Graduate student Feng Bi, who studies quantum computing materials, offers more day-to-day reasons to admire the new accommodations. “I think it’s great. It’s much bigger than my previous lab, and you can control the humidity.”
The renovated spaces will house a broad range of physics research groups that study topics including the turbulent nature of fluid flow, the constitution of the early universe and, of course, the development of a new generation of tiny but powerful computers.
