Georgia Southern Opens New Engineering and Research Building

Georgia Southern University’s new $60 million Engineering and Research Building is officially open on the Statesboro Campus. The building is home to the manufacturing engineering program and for use by other engineering disciplines in the University’s Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing.

The facility will serve as the epicenter for engineering excellence and innovation in southeast Georgia. The ribbon-cutting ceremony featured University President Kyle Marrero, Regents C. Everett Kennedy III and Don Waters, Georgia Southern student and ROTC cadet James Miles, Georgia House Majority Leader Jon Burns and Georgia Power President Chris Womack. A robot delivered scissors to the president to use in the ribbon-cutting, then another robot programmed by students and faculty of the manufacturing engineering department helped to cut the ribbon.

“The Engineering and Research Building will greatly enhance our research capabilities as well as opportunities for our faculty to engage students in hands-on research and teaching projects,” said Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing Dean Mohammad S. Davoud, Ph.D. “It will also increase our faculty’s ability to develop collaborative research projects with local industry and
agency partners.”

The three-story building has 21 research spaces, classrooms, four conference rooms (one of which is sponsored by Georgia Power), 27 offices and a 1,500-square-foot colloquium space with a 500-square-foot balcony. This meeting space with sweeping views of campus is a flexible space for industry gatherings. Other features in the 140,625-square-foot facility include robotics and automated manufacturing labs, an industrial instrumentation and controls lab, a joining and welding lab and a renewable energy roof deck for solar, wind and weather projects. It also boasts of one of the Southeast’s only class 3 cleanrooms. The cleanroom, valued at $700,000, is used for manufacturing or scientific research that requires an environment with very low levels of pollutants such as dust, microbes, vapors or
aerosol particles.

The building is located at the corner of Akins Boulevard and Forest Drive on the Statesboro Campus.