Spaces

With our interdisciplinary research, Mechanical Engineering has a range of facilities at UBC’s vibrant Vancouver campus.
Mech facilities are primarily centered around three buildings managed jointly with another department, CEME Building, CEME Labs, and the Fred Kaiser Building, and we have research labs in buildings throughout the engineering and health science district, as well as at UBC facilities at Vancouver General Hospital. Despite this, Mech has retained a strong sense of community and gatherings around the coffee machine in the break room are common.

The Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering (CEME) building and the CEME Laboratories building (commonly referred to as the Rusty Hut) are home to administrative offices, teaching spaces, student services, and laboratories for both departments.

We share the Fred Kaiser building (KAIS) with Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Office of the Dean of Applied Science. Our spaces here include research labs, machine and electronics shops, as well as our reconfigurable undergraduate lab, which can be transformed from teaching space, to technical workspace, to an arena for our dynamic second-year design competition.

Additional facilities are dispersed across several different buildings, often in conjunction with interdisciplinary centers, with notable concentrations in the Institute for Computing, Information, and Cognitive Systems (ICICS) and the Clean Energy Research Centre (CERC).

 

Experimental research spaces are generally larger shared facilities, allowing for cross-pollination of ideas, techniques, and the sharing of major infrastructure and equipment. Compatible projects are put together, and care is taken to encourage communication and cooperation.  This also allows the natural ebb and flow of projects to average out to maximize space utilization.  MASc and PhD students also have access to either a dedicated desk (computational students who mostly work in the office) or shared hotdesk spaces (students who plan to use their desk less frequently).

Faculty and students also have access to several technical facilities:

  • Teaching / drop-in student use machine shop (during shop hours)
  • Research support machining, by our machinists (partial cost recovery)
  • Makerspace providing 24-hour access, seven days a week:
    • Hand tools and basic powered tools
    • Waterjet cutter (4’ x 6’ bed)
    • Print Shop (3D printing of PLA, Rapidia metal and ceramic printing)
  • Instrumentation lab (24 hour access if no class in session);
  • Research support electronics, by our electrical engineers and instrumentation technologists (partial cost recovery)
  • Parkinson wind tunnel (by booking)

UBC is a beautiful campus, set away from the city, and filled with green spaces, public art, and inspiration.  More than just a place of learning, teaching and discovery, the campus itself is a living laboratory.