New lab, equipment offerings planned at Auburn will advance technology, space upgrades

Plans are underway for several new lab and equipment offerings at Auburn University that will advance technology and space upgrades for a wide array of students. 

In the Harbert College of Business, the effort to best prepare elite students for careers on Wall Street continues with the recent creation of a Financial Leadership Collaborative, or FLC, that is designed to provide the needed resources to represent and market the strength of the college’s Department of Finance and its students. Set to launch this fall, the physical component of the FLC will focus on expanding, redesigning and updating the Harbert College of Business’ TIGER Lab located on the ground floor of Lowder Hall. The programmatic aspect of the FLC will focus on providing scholarships, experiential learning opportunities and investment training.

The collaborative will be home to the Integrated Financial Leadership Program, providing a much-needed space for students working on a myriad of collaborative projects such as financial modeling, Training the Street courses, asset management allocation and case studies. The space will generate a collaborative area and expand the existing TIGER Lab, creating a one-of-a-kind investment trading floor that will include an instructional lab space with enhanced data and technical capabilities, housing space for the FMA and Auburn Student Investment Fund classes and related activities, Bloomberg terminals in a central location and greater space for more collaboration in financial leadership activities.

“We are excited to begin the next step in this program with a new Financial Leadership Collaborative that will not only provide resources for students in our Financial Management Association and Auburn Student Investment Fund, but will also adequately represent and market the strength of the finance program and all of our outstanding Harbert College students,” said Tracy Richard, director of the Integrated Financial Leadership Program.

Meanwhile, in the realm of hospitality management, nearly every aspect of the new Tony and Libba Rane Culinary Science Center is a hands-on learning and teaching environment. Slated to open this fall, the center will house the College of Human Sciences’ Hospitality Management Program and will feature several spaces for theory and laboratory practice. The most notable areas are 1856—the teaching restaurant featuring chefs-in-residence working side-by-side with culinary science instructors and students—and The Laurel—the luxury boutique hotel that will provide hospitality management students practical experience working with guests from the moment of arrival to departure.

Additional intimate and larger event spaces will allow event management and culinary students to practice their craft, including:

The Hey Day Market: a food hall featuring a variety of food vendors and one space for a food incubator, allowing hospitality management/culinary science graduates to begin and grow their own restaurant. 

A Wine Appreciation Laboratory: where a master sommelier or a certified wine educator will assist faculty in teaching classes in the program.

The Distilled Spirits Laboratory: its micro distillery will provide a place for research and teaching students the distillation process.

The Microbrewery and Tasting Room: for brewing science and hospitality management students to learn all aspects of commercial beer production.

The Culinary Exhibition Lab: an exhibition kitchen to showcase best practices to students and the community. 

The Food and Beverage Media Studio: for teaching food and beverage photography and videography, helping to prepare future chefs, bar operators and restaurateurs to be media savvy.

In aerospace engineering, a new Extended Reality Flight Simulation and Control Lab has recently launched under the direction of Assistant Professor Umberto Saetti, with two motion-base virtual reality simulators that replicate multiple forms of rotorcraft and fixed-wing aircraft. They will be used for immersive simulations that make use of extended reality to study human-machine interaction, advanced flight control laws and innovative pilot cueing methods.

“To my best knowledge, very few academic institutions have the capability of one single motion-base simulator that can be used for rotorcraft, general aviation and fighter jet simulations. At the same time, probably even less, if any, institutions have two of them,” said Saetti, a recent Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award recipient whose research focuses on modeling, simulation, order reduction and control of high-order models of the coupled flight dynamics, aerodynamics and aerocoustics of aircraft, rotorcraft and biologically inspired flying vehicles.

The College of Nursing will soon utilize two new birthing simulators and three medication dispensing systems following its most ambitious Tiger Giving Day campaign to date. The opportunities for nursing students to participate in birthing are limited these days, with fewer clinical sites available and COVID-19 prohibiting access. Faculty sought to acquire the birthing simulators to ensure students meet learning outcomes, particularly in specialty areas like labor and delivery. 

Simulation experiences in other areas have provided nursing faculty and students with viable and affective alternatives to clinical sites. Auburn’s simulation suite includes seven individual rooms designed to represent inpatient care areas, such as intensive care, pediatrics and labor and delivery, and one community room representing a patient’s home environment. This space has allowed nursing students to take what they learn in class and apply it in realistic scenarios. With the addition of two birthing simulators, nursing faculty can run multiple scenarios at one time, doubling the number of students who can attend each session.

The birthing simulators will even allow the college to partner with health care agencies to host competency training and validation for their employees. The simulators may also be used to support additional interprofessional education offerings with other disciplines on campus. Faculty will integrate the new medical dispensing systems into simulation experiences, allowing students to practice administering medications and create a foundation of safe patient care.

Auburn’s College of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences likewise is looking forward to some major upcoming technology upgrades made possible thanks to Michael R. Delaney, an alumnus from the college who helped facilitate a gift from Delaney Development Inc. That gift included funding to assist in upgrading the college’s technology for summer camps, including global positioning system, or GPS, units that will be used for surveying and other related programs.

“We have always been interested in supporting the school,” said Delaney. “The opportunity to give something tangible that we felt would have an immediate impact was enough to push us forward.”   

Delaney and his coworkers have strong connections to the college. Natives of Mobile, both Delaney and his twin brother, Scott Delaney, graduated from the college with degrees in forestry. Al Derby, a 2008 graduate, chief forester and vice president, as well as Elliot Glass, a 2011 graduate, forester and wildlife biologist, both with Delaney Development, played key roles in deciding to make a gift to the college.

“Timber inventory is an important part of how our business operates,” said Delaney. “Enabling the students to learn with the most up to date equipment will give them an advantage in real-world business applications.”

Scott Enebak, the college’s associate dean of academic affairs and the Dwain G. Luce Professor, is spearheading the initiative. Enebak says students were unable to download data from the units or access computers due to connectivity and software compatibility issues, resulting in frustration for everyone involved. 

“The donation from the Delaneys came at a great time for the undergraduate students in the forestry program,” said Enebak. “Our current GPS units were technologically limiting us to what we could do in the classroom. Delaney Development’s gift allowed us to identify GPS units, as well as state-of-the-art management and inventory software that is identical to what the forestry industry and land management companies are moving toward using.”

Leaders within the college have touted the support provided by alumni.

“We are the first college to obtain this type of GPS unit and system for in-class instruction exposure,” said Janaki Alavalapati, dean of the College of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences. “Michael’s gift is helping our students to be successful in the workplace from day one.”

Two other Auburn colleges also are making advancements in the way of new lab tools. The College of Veterinary Medicine’s Scott-Ritchey Research Center is using funds generated from Tiger Giving Day to purchase a gene therapy tool called the Stunner, a piece of equipment designed to quickly characterize viruses and nanoparticles to aid in quality control of gene therapies. Auburn will be the first academic institution to incorporate this technology into biomedical research. Having access to this piece of equipment will turn what was previously two weeks of work for biomedical scientists into seconds.

In the College of Agriculture, among the latest lab tools to be added is a new polar equine heart rate monitor and health check tool for horses in the Department of Animal Sciences. There likewise is a new compact model dystocia simulator used to teach students calf positioning and how to pull a calf, and there is a new electroantennogram, or EAG, that allows for the measurement of insect antenna and how insects respond to certain smells. And in the Department of Biosystems Engineering, 3D scanners, 3D printers, drones, GPS receivers as well as an augmented reality sandbox have been added.

In the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, two new mass spectrometers are housed with essential applications available to any researchers at the university. 

"The College of Sciences and Mathematics has state-of-the-art mass spectrometers that are giving Auburn students and faculty the ability to learn and contribute to cutting-edge advances in chemical and biological sciences," said Doug Goodwin, chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. 

The first LC-MS-MS— or liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry—instrument is protein-centric, providing high quality and high sensitivity analysis of proteins. The samples are separated and introduced directly into the mass spectrometer to prevent any loss of the material. The samples can be further broken down in the mass spectrometer to provide sequence information which aides protein identification. The second LC-MS-MS instrument identifies small molecules by their formula and has the capability to break them down into smaller fragments to help with identification. This instrument uses larger columns, faster flow rates and requires more sample.