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With state-of-the-art teaching labs and fabrication facilities, George Mason University's Life Sciences and Engineering Building (LSEB) lets students and faculty get their hands dirty in this brand-new multiuse active learning space. The ribbon cutting didn’t officially happen until March 27, but LSEB already experienced a housewarming.
The students started arriving just after the winter break, when the building opened on January 21, 2025. One of the first groups to take up residence was Patriot Motorsports, a club for any students (not just mechanical engineers!) who want to explore the inner workings of automotive vehicles. Over the past two months, mechanical engineering seniors have revved it up a notch with their capstone project designing a control system for the club’s Formula SAE race car.
Race cars aren’t the only vehicles in the building...there’s also room for robotics and autonomous vehicles. This new space boasts a high-bay, multistory aviary laboratory where students can test blimps, drones, and anything else that needs extra airspace to move around. One capstone project taking advantage of the lab is an Autonomous Flapping Wing Lighter-than-Air Vehicle developed by Assistant Professor Daigo Shishika’s students.
“Our capstone teams are also using the prototyping space in room 2100 to meet and jointly work on their projects,” said Charles White, assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “So far this has been through team meetings and collaboration. Once the first-floor machine shop is complete, this space will also be used for staging and constructing physical prototypes.”
One of the building’s unique features is the seamless blending of laboratory and teaching spaces. All of the mechanical engineering labs, including the first-floor advanced manufacturing and wind tunnel labs, contain student desks and IT lecture setups so that seminars can turn into hands-on demonstrations and practice in real time.
And these areas barely scrape the surface of what the building has to offer. For mechanical engineers, in addition to the wind tunnel and advanced manufacturing labs, machine shop, robotics lab, and prototype studio, there is a 3D print studio, a materials characterization lab, a sustainable energy and photonics area, and a thermofluids lab. For civil engineers, a dedicated space for their ASCE concrete canoe competitions. Bioengineers have cutting-edge studios as well, including a tissue engineering lab.
The LSEB is still warming up and getting ready for new student cohorts, but one thing is sure: This building will produce brilliant engineers and scientists for generations to come.