Explore the Fitzpatrick Center
The Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences (FCIEMAS) is designed to position the Pratt School and its partners to make major advancements in the fields of bioengineering, photonics, communications, and materials science and materials engineering. It will support specialized initiatives that drive interdisciplinary activities, and encourage the creative interactions essential for making significant progress in these fields. Students working in the Fitzpatrick Center will learn that major advances occur at the boundaries between disciplines.
This comprehensive facility provides extensive wet bench laboratories, departmental offices, teaching labs, and other lab support spaces, and provide direct access to the cafe. A highlight will be a state-of-the-art cleanroom for nanotechnology research. The center's carefully designed interaction spaces and proximity to the Medical Center and colleagues in photonics and materials engineering foster highly productive collaborative projects.
History of the Building
Former Duke President Nannerl O. Keohane signs beam for the Fitzpatrick Center in 2003.
The Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences opened on schedule in August, more than doubling the Pratt School of Engineering’s teaching and research space. The four-building 322,000-square-foot complex is more than bricks and mortar. It represents a fundamental shift from a traditional academic departmental focus by bringing together faculty from across scientific disciplines working in four research initiatives: biology, photonics, materials and integrated sensors.
The Fitzpatrick Center, under construction since May 2002, features undergraduate teaching and project labs, state-of-the-art research facilities and “intellectual collision spaces” where faculty, staff and students can work together. The $97 million complex was designed by the architectural firm Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership, and built by Skanska. The Fitzpatrick Center complex is also one of Duke University's first facilities to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) building standards [read more].
The Fitzpatrick Center supports teaching and research efforts in bioengineering; photonics and communications systems; integrated environmental sensing and simulation; and biologically inspired materials sciences and materials engineering. It also expands the Pratt School of Engineering’s partnership with the School of Medicine, providing laboratories for collaborative research in healthcare, genomics and biotechnology. In 2005 it will bring on-line a nanofabrication facility to support Pratt’s collaborations with the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. The Fitzpatrick Center also houses Pratt’s professional masters degree program in engineering management and entrepreneurship in collaboration with the School of Law and the Fuqua School of Business.
The first class taught in the Fitzpatrick Center was by BME Professor, Nenad Bursac.
The Fitzpatrick Center consists of a west and an east complex, each with two buildings. A courtyard leading to a landscaped pedestrian corridor to the south links the Fitzpatrick Center to the historic core of the university’s West academic campus. To the north is a new Engineering Quadrangle leading to Hudson Hall, the original West Campus engineering building, and the Nello L. Teer Library Building, and Vesic Library for Engineering, Mathematics and Physics.
The west complex has two buildings named after Michael J. and Patricia W. Fitzpatrick in honor of their most generous gift in founding the Fitzpatrick Center for Photonics and Communications. The east complex has a biomed building and a connected building named for Jeffrey N. Vinik, and will support the Duke Bioengineering Initiative.
Throughout the Fitzpatrick Center, Duke has integrated science and engineering into the aesthetics of the building design. All the women's restrooms in the complex feature a tile pattern that recreates one of the BRCA1 breast cancer genes. In the men's restrooms, the tile pattern recreates the Bone Morphogenic Protein (BMP1) that controls the formation of cartilage in vivo. Additionally, the windows in the Fitzpatrick Center feature etched patterns called "frit." The Pratt School held a competition in which many ideas for simple, repeatable engineering symbols nominated and then voted on. Ultimately two finalists were chosen. The Fitzpatrick buildings feature a reproduction of Leonardo daVinci’s "Spectra," and the CIEMAS North and Vinik Buildings feature Adrian Bejan's "constructal tree" - a symbol of the union between engineering and living systems.
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The Duke Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility
The first floor of the Fitzpatrick Building contains the Duke Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility, a visualization studio and the Dickinson Arcade. The Shared Instrumentation Facility, to open in 2005, will have a Class 100-1000 characterization and testing facility to enable the study, creation and manipulation of biological, chemical, photonic and mechanical materials at the nanoscale, one billionth of a meter. It is a joint venture of the Pratt School of Engineering and the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences.
The Visualization Studio and Dickinson Arcade
The Elizabeth and Gary Dickinson Arcade contains a studio with a variety of sensors, and six-sided 3-D Visroom taking data from those sensors and delivering back-projected virtual reality images on each room surface. A unique facility, it will be used to visualize three-dimensional data, and explore human perception.
Fitzpatrick South
The south building of the west complex is has a state-of-the-art electronic auditorium, undergraduate laboratories and the school’s Integrated Sensors and Simulators initiative.
On the first floor is the 206-seat Kenneth T. Schiciano Auditorium reflecting the latest multi-media technologies and design. It is the primary setting for everything from major symposia to academic instruction. The Fitzpatrick Center donors are honored on a Wall of Recognition in the auditorium prefunction space which faces the new Engineering Quad.
Next to the lobby is the Lenihan Learning Center, an extensive facility where undergraduate students design, build and test prototype components and systems.
The 2nd floor and 3rd floors of the south building is devoted to the Pratt’s Integrated Sensors and Simulators Initiative. This effort, drawing on expertise from the departments of civil and environmental engineering and electrical and computer engineering, seeks innovative approaches to emerging problem areas such as shifting climate patterns detection. The 2nd floor supports the initiative’s hydrology and fluid dynamics groups.
The 3rd floor includes the Applied Remote Sensing Center, which is leading a four-university effort to develop techniques to direct sensors seeking hidden war targets.
Our Smart Bridges
Linking the east and west complexes are twin two-story bridges. Serving as thoroughfares between the 2nd and 3rd floors of the southern buildings of both complexes, the bridges also provide inviting places for faculty and students to interact.
Beneath the bridges is a paved courtyard serving as a continuation of the pedestrian walkway leading to the Engineering Quadrangle to the north and central West Campus to the south.
Smart Camera
Under each specially marked tile along one side of the main hallway floor are special actuators that directly contact Optical Fiber Bragg Grating sensors. These sensors are embedded in a fiver array that runs the length of the hallway.
Upon stepping or tapping on one of these designated floor tiles, the small change in reflected wavelength from the associated optical sensor is detected by the optical interrogator equipment in the control room, and the software instructs a video camera to pan, zoom, and tilt to the location of the disturbed tile.
The live image from the video camera is broadcast via a wireless connection. With a laptop computer and a wireless connection, people stepping on the tile will be able to see themselves in real time on their PC screen. And as they continue to walk down the hallway to another marked tile, the camera will pan zoom and tilt to th eir new location.
To view the live image on a laptop with a 802.11b wireless card, logon to the available FCIEMAS wireless LAN and enter the following address in the web browser: http://192.168.1.90. Internet Explorer on PC Only: A small active-x application for video feed may need to be downloaded also. Hit yes if/when prompted.
Smart Bridge
Embedded beneath the tiles of the bridge is an optical fiber sensors array comprised of 15 Optical Fiber Bragg Grating sensors, spaced approximately every meter. The sensors are capable of detecting dimensional changes in the surrounding structure on the order of 1/10,000th of a percent (or on the order of a micro-strain).
The sensors, along with a high speed swept-laser interrogator, and software system comprise a true, real time structural monitoring system that provides stress, strain and temperature information about the bridge connecting the buildings.
The display monitor indicates instantaneous changes in the stress at each sensor along the bridge, and updates at 60 times per second. The stress history for each sensor is averaged and displayed on the right hand-side graph, so that the effects wind, load, and temperature-induced stresses, for example, can be monitored, recorded, and analyzed. Special mounting techniques are utilized for the stress sensors to ensure intimate contact with the surrounding structure, whereas, the temperature sensors are physically isolated from the surrounding concrete.
These smart camera and smart bridge systems were provided by Chandler Innovations Inc. and Keehi Technologies, Inc.
The Fitzpatrick Center North
Overlooking the courtyard and a paved terrace on the quad is Twinnie’s Cafe, located in the northwest corner of the 1st floor of the north building. Twinnie's is the lifelong nickname of former Dean Kristina Johnson's mother, Kathleen B. Johnson, who was a twin. The café is a natural gathering place for faculty, staff, students and visitors, serving coffee, teas and a variety of light fare.
The rest of the 1st floor of the biomed and Vinik buildings is devoted to bioengineering. The Pratt Bioengineering Initiative builds on the Department of Biomedical Engineering’s close relationship with the School of Medicine. It aims to improve human health, from insights into cell behavior to devices that regulate the rhythms and chemical tides of the body. Key programs on the 1st floor include neuroengineering, tissue engineering, genomic technology and the Center for Biomolecular and Tissue Engineering, a multi-disciplinary center focusing on protein engineering, cellular engineering and tissue engineering.
Most of the 2nd floor of the biomed building is dedicated to faculty of the School of Medicine, including cardiology, anesthesiology and orthopedics. The Jim Wyngaarden Hall of Honor is also on the second floor. Wyngaarden was chairman of medicine at Duke and chief of staff of Duke Hospital before being appointed director of the National Institutes of Health in 1982.
The 3rd floor of the east complex houses the Master of Engineering Management Program and the Biologically Inspired Materials research initiative. The Master of Engineering Management Program is located in the northwest corner of the 3rd floor of the biomed building. This program integrates engineering and business principles to develop future leaders of technology-based organizations. Facilities include administrative offices, a student gathering space/conference room, student lockers and a student computer laboratory.
The Vinik Building
Bioengineering labs and offices are on the first floor, and the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy (IGSP) occupies the 2nd floor. IGSP represents Duke’s campus-wide response to the broad challenges of the Genome Revolution. The institute is organized into five centers and the offices and labs of the Center for Genomic Medicine and the Center for Genome Technology are located on the 2nd floor. There also is lab space for IGSP computational research, a conference center and administrative offices.
The Center for Biologically Inspired Materials and Materials Systems occupies the Vinik 3rd floor. Taking their inspiration from the “soft and wet’” natural world, engineers, chemists, biologists and physicists are asking whether humans can mechanistically dissect some of nature’s ideas in order to borrow from them in fashioning future products. The goal is to use millions of years of evolutionary progress to understand and discover new materials, products and processes for the betterment of society.
