Admit Weekend Engineering Tours

Stanford’s School of Engineering is pleased to invite you and your family members to tour some of our advanced teaching and research facilities, to meet faculty and engineering students, and to learn about some of the path-breaking innovations in technology that are shaping our lives in the 21st century.

You’ll discover the astonishing range of activities that make Stanford the leader in so many areas. Learn about the world on the scale of billionths of a meter, and visit our labs on nanomaterials and nanofabrication. See one of our most striking and important new facilities, the Clark Center housing the interdisciplinary efforts in biology, medicine and engineering. Visit the Mechanical Engineering Labs on advanced energy and computer controlled automobiles. See the new home of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and learn about new efforts in sustainability.

Everything happens on Friday, April 25 from 1:00 – 3:00. Here’s how it works:

An introduction.

After your lunch, please head over to the Hewlett Teaching Center Room 200 at 1:00 for a brief introduction to Engineering at Stanford and to the Engineering events to follow.

The events.

The faculty have arranged for six presentations, described below. Each presentation will be given twice, from 1:30 – 2:10 and from 2:20 – 3:00, so, with transit time, you can attend two presentations.

Space is limited so you should get a “ticket” for each of the events you’re interested in at the Admit Weekend Check-in booth. (The tickets are letter-sized sheets with a description of the event and a map.)

Getting Around.

Undergraduates from Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honor society, will guide groups to the tours. While you’re walking, this is a good chance to chat with our engineering students.

The Events

The Clark Center and Bioengineering The recently completed Clark Center is the centerpiece of Stanford University's Bio-X program - an innovative campus-wide initiative designed to bridge the worlds of biology, medicine, engineering and the physical sciences. The tour will showcase the cutting edge facilities of the Clark Center and highlight applications of science and engineering to problems in medicine and the biology. [15 people per tour]

Electrical Engineering – Tour of the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility, Center for Integrated Systems Some of the most important advances in technology are happening at the scale of billionths of a meter. The Nanofabrication Facility houses research in a wide variety of disciplines, including optics, MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems), biology, and chemistry. [40 people per tour]

Materials Science and Engineering – Tour of the Stanford Nanocharacterization Lab, Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials How can we understand and work with materials on such a small scale? See the electron, ion, x-ray and probe instruments that we use to characterize materials down to the atomic scale. [20 people per tour]

Mechanical Engineering  -- Advanced Energy Systems Lab, Mechanical Engineering Research Laboratory The laboratory is a joint teaching and research laboratory where undergraduates learn about energy and propulsion systems like gas turbines, fuel cells, and rocket motors, and graduate students study advanced chemical energy conversion processes.  The laboratory also hosts a number of piston engines used for our undergraduate course in IC Engines and for research on next-generation engine combustion processes. [10 tickets per tour]

Mechanical Engineering – Dynamic Design Lab, Mechanical Engineering Research Laboratory See how students and faculty are helping to design advanced automotive systems that feature new and efficient engines and can “drive by wire”, where automated control systems keep the car in its lane and prevent rollover. The work on the vehicle is a great combination of hands-on engineering and mathematical analysis. [20 people per tour]