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E.A. Fernandez IDEA Factory will inspire innovation, entrepreneurship and world-class research with its design promoting collaboration across disciplines
COLLEGE PARK, Md. , May 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The University of Maryland today dedicated the new E.A. Fernandez IDEA (Innovate, Design and Engineer for America) Factory. Designed to foster technology innovations and advances through collaboration across engineering, the arts, business and science, the A. James Clark School of Engineering's new 60,000-square-foot building is the university's only facility funded entirely by private philanthropy.
"The IDEA Factory is a spectacular addition to UMD's robust and growing innovation ecosystem," said University of Maryland President Darryll J. Pines . "Its world-class facilities for education, innovation, research and product development in robotics, quantum, engineering, transportation and manufacturing will be transformative. Inspired by a namesake who brought pioneering ideas to market, our community will conceive ideas, create designs, build prototypes, develop business plans and bring to market products that will spur economic prosperity in the region, state and nation."
Located next to the university's Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building, the IDEA Factory features key research and student programs and activities including:
The IDEA Factory's movable walls and shared spaces will promote dialogue between students, entrepreneurs and faculty who are working in diverse fields such as multimedia, robotics, rotorcraft and quantum engineering. Particularly striking is a façade dominated by an enormous window—made from laminated glass treated with a film that creates radiant color shifts in transmitted and reflected light—based on the angles at which light hits the window and on where viewers are standing.
"Engineering brings together great minds—people with different backgrounds and perspectives, looking at the same challenge in different ways—to collaborate on solutions that serve humanity. The IDEA Factory will catalyze those collaborations," said Clark School of Engineering Dean Samuel Graham, Jr. "When the world looks for solutions, it comes to Maryland Engineering. We are incredibly appreciative of our supporters for giving our students, faculty and staff a new place to do cutting-edge work."
The building is named for Emilio Fernandez '69, a Maryland engineering alum, entrepreneur and inventor who holds dozens of patents, including one which defined e-reading devices and is the most-cited U.S. patent ever issued. Many of these patents were co-invented with his friend, business partner and fellow Terp Angel Bezos '69. Their inventions and their company, Pulse Electronics, transformed railroad operations. The building's cornerstone gift came from the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation's Building Together: An Investment for Maryland in 2017.
Fernandez said he hopes the IDEA Factory will accelerate the inclusive collaboration that our society needs in order to solve its grand challenges. "Today's problems are complex, and they require interdisciplinary solutions," he said. "We have to combine our specialties so that our knowledge evolves into products and services that help humanity."
Innovative Infrastructure to Power UMD's Innovation Ecosystem The new IDEA Factory is the latest infrastructure addition to UMD's vibrant innovation ecosystem. This ecosystem includes UMD's Discovery District, as well as other recent UMD buildings that feature fearlessly forward design and engineering; collaborative, open spaces; and leading-edge facilities.
The IDEA Factory joins recent UMD buildings such as the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering (2019), a hub for technology, collaboration and discovery; A. James Clark Hall (2017), designed to foster development of transformative engineering and biomedical technologies to advance human health; and the Physical Sciences Complex (2013), created to provide ideal conditions for scientific collaboration, research and innovation with partners across campus and at local federal agencies like the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NASA Goddard and the National Institutes of Health.
All are designed to inspire, educate, foster and support the innovators, entrepreneurs, builders, thinkers, healers and leaders who will create transformational ideas, actions and technologies to expand prosperity and address the grand challenges facing our nation and world.
About the University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park is the state's flagship university and one of the nation's preeminent public research universities. A global leader in research, entrepreneurship and innovation, the university is home to more than 40,000 students, 10,000 faculty and staff, and 300 academic programs. As one of the nation's top producers of Fulbright scholars, its faculty includes two Nobel laureates, six Pulitzer Prize winners and 58 members of the national academies. The institution has a $2.3 billion operating budget and secures more than $1.3 billion annually in research funding together with the University of Maryland, Baltimore . For more information about the University of Maryland, College Park , visit www.umd.edu.
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