| ICAR
Update
First Contract Awarded for Clemson Automotive
Research Campus
 Clemson
University has awarded two contracts related to development of its
International Center for Automotive Research in Greenville, and
work is well underway on the first facility on campus.
Harper
Corporation of Greenville is the general contractor for the Information
Technology Research Center. The 80,000-square-foot facility will
be owned by Clemson and occupied by BMW Manufacturing, which plans
to partner with IBM and Microsoft on research that focuses on improving
automotive software systems and software/hardware compatibility
for BMW products. The building is expected to be completed by June
2005.
Clemson
also has selected Facility Design Group, Inc., Architects and Engineers
of Atlanta to design its Carroll A. Campbell Jr. Graduate Engineering
Center, which should be under construction in the first quarter
of 2005. The center will house the university’s new graduate
programs in automotive engineering, which will focus on product
realization and automotive systems integration -- the interface
of manufacturing and design.
Clemson
will recruit at least 10 new faculty (4 endowed chairs and 6 junior
faculty) for the graduate center. They will join a core group of
researchers at the university’s main campus who have been
active in automotive and motor sports research and education for
15 years. Clemson’s mechanical engineering department, with
30 faculty and more than 100 graduate students, is a national leader
in automotive research. The Clemson research campus has generated
more than $115 million in public and private funding commitments
to date.
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