Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Prescott Campus – STEM Facility

As a national leader in aviation, aerospace, and STEM education, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) was seeing tremendous student growth on campus and needed new STEM environments to support various growing fields in robotics, space, forensics, and wildlife research. LEO A DALY was hired to plan, program, and design a new 50,000-SF STEM building that delivers the next generation of robotic teaching & research laboratories for undergraduate education, research, and economic development within the state and country.

At the core of the facility is a two-story atrium that reinforces the University’s culture, showcasing a multipurpose space for public lectures, fundraising events, and community events. As you explore deeper within the building, students and faculty step foot into a one-of-a-kind STEM-centered, technology-rich facility that combines robust learning environments with industry grade laboratories, workshops, and studios worthy of the brilliant scholars who would use them. Some of the state-of-the-art environments include:

Planetarium: capable of seating 116 students and visitors, showing them the cosmos in 360-degree, 4k resolution.

Cavendish Lab: Provides immersive environments to research and experiment with exotic propulsion systems.

Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Optics Lab: Creating spaces where students can investigate and identify the ‘physics reach’ of Gravitational Waves.

Robotics Lab: A indoor and outdoor teaching and research space that supports and enables the development of stationary, mobile, and aerial robotic systems.

Energy and Thermo-Fluids Lab: Environments that provide experience with standard and green energy experiments.

Engineering Design Studio: Spaces that support mechanical engineering and multi-disciplinary design courses.

Space Grant Lab: Provides a flexible environment where students’ can work on group projects including payloads from cube satellites and high-altitude scientific ballooning missions.

Forensic Lab: Provides spaces for industry-grade forensic biology equipment where students can study an analyze everything from DNA evidence and blood types, environmental contaminants, to microbial identification.

Wildlife Science Lab: Environments that encourages hands-on learning to study ecology, ornithology, mammalogy, and plant identification courses.