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A New Facility - the Millennium Science Complex

Penn State’s showplace research building for 21st century science broke ground during fall 2008 in the heart of the University Park campus.  The Millennium Science Complex will provide a central location for faculty and students involved in materials research to collaborate across departmental boundaries in a state-of-the-art research facility.

Designed by the internationally renowned firm of Rafael Viñoly Architects, this 275,000 square foot building will bring together both materials researchers and life scientists from the Materials Research Institute and the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences. Through this interface, the Millennium Science Complex will foster collaborations in the developing convergence of materials and biomedical engineering.

The materials research program will provide 10,000 square feet of clean room space, with another 6,000 square feet of clean room support space.  Total user facilities will occupy 50,000 net square feet with several state-of-the-art characterization and fabrication tools housed in a specialized quiet space with low acoustic and electromagnetic noise suitable for future generations of image analysis instruments.  Characterization tools will be placed in approximately 10,000 net square feet of high caliber space, much of which will have separate isolated slab flooring.  Another 10,000 square feet are set aside for other characterization tools.

Along with providing central user facilities and flexible desk and meeting space for faculty and students from across campus, the materials building will be home to a number of materials faculty groups, along with 30 full-time technical staff.  Research areas will include electronic materials and devices, nano and micro fabrication and thin films, optics and biophotonics, surface science, functional polymers, complex oxides, and NEMS and MEMS.

The Millennium Science Complex will build on Penn State’s number one ranking nationally in materials research expenditures and its top three ranking in funding by industry.  According to Carlo Pantano, distinguished professor of materials science and engineering and director of the Materials Research Institute, “These facilities are intended to enable and catalyze cross-campus interdisciplinary research activities in the physical and engineering sciences, and especially at the interface with life science and biomedical engineering.”

The Millennium Science Complex is scheduled for a summer 2011 opening.

Floor Plans: (click image to enlarge)