August 30th, 2002, 9:00am to 3:00pm, EMCB/MEB Presented by the College of Engineering and Microsoft http://www.engineeringday.com/

Tours run from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. All tours should last about 15-20 minutes. Some labs have capicity restrictions so there will be a sign-up sheet for each tour at the Tour Table starting at 9 am. The Tour Table will be located right outside of the south west corner of MEB.

If you are signed up for a tour, please be at the Tour Table 5 minutes before your tour should start. We will have tour guides to take you to the various labs.

Below is a tentative Lab Tour schedule. It may change from now until Friday. Below the schedule is a general description of some of the labs.

Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute (SCI)

The overarching goals of the SCI Institute's scientific computing research are to create new techniques, tools, and systems, by which scientists may solve problems affecting various aspects of human life. We believe that to advance the state-of-the-art and create meaningful computational solutions for such complex systems, one needs to advance research in a number of areas within scientific computing, including: visualization, simulation, and modeling. Furthermore, to enable such new algorithms and software research to have real impact outside of scientific computing and computer science, these components must be integrated with data and application specific knowledge within intuitive software systems, problem solving environments (PSEs) or "computational workbenches."

For more information, visit www.sci.utah.edu

Nuclear Reactor

The primary areas of research for the laboratory are plutonium chemistry, bioassay, dose reconstruction, fission track analysis, reactor physics, environmental radiochemistry, and transport risk assessment. The laboratory includes radiation measurement devices for alpha, beta and gamma decays. Additionally the laboratory also has activation and environmental level radiochemistry facilities. Housed within the facility is 90 kW pool-type TRIGA Nuclear Reactor.

Fluid Mechanics

HEDCO Microfabrication Lab

Fire Combustion

Materials Characterization Facility

Our lab is called the Materials Characterization Facility. We house an x-ray diffractometer, a scanning electron microscope and a transmission electron microscope. We provide these services to U researchers and local businesses. The tour would focus on the SEM where we can get good magnification 1000 times or greater on some interesting samples.

Pharmaceutical and Vaccine Research Center

The Laboratory has 2000 sq feet of BSL-2 laboratory space in EMRL. Segregated labs are used to culture HEK293 cells and purify and analyze Ad5 samples. To contain Ad5 samples, each lab has a HEPA-filtered biosafety cabinet, restricted access, and personal protective equipment. Undergraduate and graduate lab researchers are trained in aseptic technique and pathogen handling. Two adjacent shared laboratories, 201 and 217 EMRL, are equipped with preparative equipment (autoclave, balance, freezer, refrigerator) and analytical instruments (inverted microscope, microplate reader, BioLC).

Immersive Environments

Our research focuses on increasing the effectiveness of computer graphics in conveying information about the three-dimensional world. This is an interdisciplinary effort involving computer graphics, perceptual psychology, and computational vision. We are interested in better understanding the spatial information potentially available in computer generated (CG) imagery, determining what spatial cues are actually used when CG imagery is viewed, and using this information to inform the development of improved rendering algorithms.

The tour of the Immersive Environments Lab, will show an example of a locomotion device, similar to a treadmill, which allows a user to walk in a relatively normal manner without significant change in actual location. Our research deals with combining more sophisticated locomotion devices with visual displays in order to construct true locomotion interfaces allowing a user to interact with a virtual world by walking through that world.

Manufacturing Lab

Thermodynamics Lab

Heat Transfer Lab