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 Return to: School of Engineering and Applied Science
The School of Engineering and Applied Science is located in a complex of buildings, the main one being Thornton Hall, named after the first dean of engineering. Thornton Hall houses the school’s administrative offices, the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Engineering and Society; and assorted research laboratories. South of Thornton Hall is Olsson Hall, which houses the Department of Systems and Information Engineering. The Department of Computer Science is located in our newest showcase building: Rice Hall. Adjacent to these buildings are three buildings housing the Departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Chemical Engineering. West of these is Wilsdorf Hall, housing nanotechnology research, which opened in 2006. The Department of Biomedical Engineering is located in MR-5, which is part of the Health Sciences Center. The Aerospace Research Laboratory is located on Mount Jefferson.
The Charles L. Brown Science and Engineering Library is located in Clark Hall. It includes books and bound journals, current scientific periodicals and technical serials, and files of graduate and undergraduate theses and dissertations. Reference service is available to all parts of the University, to other educational institutions, and to industry by the library staff and, occasionally, by others on the professional staff of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Close cooperation is maintained with the other University libraries, whose total resources of more than four million volumes are open to engineering students and faculty members.
The Center for Diversity in Engineering, established in the School of Engineering and Applied Science in 1986, is available to help our diverse student body by providing academic support, motivational activities, and financial assistance. The office provides counseling and other special services for both undergraduate and graduate students.
The Center for Engineering Career Development is available to help engineering students establish their career goals and develop strategies to achieve those objectives. The office provides resource material on career fields, job search strategies, interviewing techniques, and employment opportunities. It also coordinates on-Grounds interviews in conjunction with University Career Services, manages the Co-operative Education Program, and develops a broad range of summer job opportunities.
Computers The University computing environment consists of resources funded and maintained by the University’s central information technology organization - Information Technology Services (ITS), the Vice President for Information Technology, the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS), the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, the School of Medicine, the University Library System, individual departments, research labs and centers, and students.
The ITS organization focuses its efforts on key elements that are available to the University at large. They include the network backbone and telephone infrastructure, broadband cable and IP video, centralized data systems, high-performance research facilities, networked services including e-mail, central file storage, wired and wireless Internet access, web publishing, front-line Help Desk support, training, R&D, computer-equipped classrooms, and specialized consulting.
Engineering School resources include departmental computing labs and classrooms, the support of discipline specific software packages, school-wide and department computing support staff including full-time, part-time and graduate teaching assistants.
Engineering School departments and research groups deploy workstations, peripherals such as high-speed printers, scanners and plotters, several clusters and workgroup servers featuring specialized, discipline-specific software, and the Rapid Prototyping Lab. Access to this equipment and software is provided to students enrolled in the Engineering School’s courses and research programs. Our students use these facilities for a variety of computing activities including course work, projects, capstone design, and senior thesis and graduate-level research.
Some classrooms at the Engineering School have computers at students’ desks. These computers permit students to learn by working a problem in the classroom, individually or as part of a team, and facilitate interaction between faculty and students.
ITS also provides a 1 TB allocation of disk space per student on UVa Box, a cloud-based storage and collaboration service. Access to UVA-licensed engineering, math and science software is made available via virtual machines to students’ laptops http://its.virginia.edu/hive/. A Microsoft Campus Agreement provides the Office Suite and Windows upgrades http://its.virginia.edu/software/studentoffice. Some departments are members of the Microsoft Imagine Program which makes additional Microsoft software available for their courses http://imagine.microsoft.com. ITS distributes a variety of application software for students, faculty, and staff, ranging from antivirus to research software http://its.virginia.edu/software. The Responsible Computing Handbook for Students covers training on IT policies, copyrights and security http://its.virginia.edu/pubs/docs/RespComp/rchandbook.html.
UVa spaces including classrooms, labs, study rooms, and dormitories have wireless Ethernet coverage. A distributed set of high-speed, B&W and color printers with page print charges are also available that can be wirelessly accessed.
Students also have on-grounds access to an authorized repair center for leading brands of computers and printers through UVa’s computer reseller, Cavalier Computers.
Direct support of students, faculty and research professionals in engineering and science for education, outreach, and curriculum development is provided through the UVa Advanced Research Computing Services http://arcs.virginia.edu/ and the UVa Sciences, Humanities, and Arts Network of Technological Initiatives (SHANTI) http://shanti.virginia.edu/.
ARCS supports research computing across disciplines. It facilitates training in computational science and high-performance computing (HPC) and works with researchers to boost their computations to the next level. SHANTI promotes innovation in the humanities, social sciences and arts through supporting the application of advanced technologies in research, teaching, publication and engagement across the entire community.
A centralized Linux cluster and mounted software are available on a shared-access basis. Rivanna hosts over 6,300 cores and over a Petabyte of short-term working storage dedicated to computational research. Long-term storage is available on a yearly lease basis for use with Rivanna as well as with individual researcher systems. Rivanna supports a wide variety of research-oriented software packages. For researchers who need more HPC resources than UVA can provide, assistance with getting started using the national supercomputing centers is available.
Specialized facilities include the ARCS VizLab containing a Viz Wall, graphics processors and software http://arcs.virginia.edu/viz-lab. The VizLab is also a resource for users who need Windows systems with higher performance than the typical desktop can provide. The Scholars’ Lab in the Alderman Library supports the digital research and scholarly analysis needs of faculty and advanced students in humanities and social sciences http://scholarslab.org/; the UVa Library also offers the Robertson Media Center, the Digital Media Lab, GIS and mapping services, and Makerspace which focus on the creation of digital media, digital imaging, audiovisual production and post-production, physical interactivity, 2D/3D animation, mobile technologies, visualization, the delivery of media content, desktop fabrication, and augmented reality. Each of these facilities has expert support staff.
The UVa Help Desk is available 24x7 and provides support by telephone: 434-924-4357 or toll-free at 866-469-4866 and by e-mail: 4help@virginia.edu The Help Desk can be also be reached on the web at: http://its.virginia.edu/helpdesk/.
The Engineering School also provides students with central, shared access technology-equipped collaboration rooms throughout Rice Hall (the Information Technology Engineering Building), CAD-workstations in Lacy Hall (Experiential Center) and desktop workstations and equipped conference spaces in Thornton Hall (The James H. Aylor Collaboration Center).
Research and Development The School of Engineering and Applied Science currently conducts a thriving and diversified $50 million annual research program under the sponsorship of various federal agencies and private companies. Over 450 active research projects support faculty, professional researchers, and students. These projects span a variety of engineering disciplines and include biotechnology and nanotechnology microelectronics, advanced materials, biomedical engineering, information technology and environmental engineering. These programs provide an excellent opportunity for undergraduate and graduate training. More information on specific research activities can be found by browsing through the web sites of the engineering school (www.seas.virginia.edu), its departments, and its individual faculty members.
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