## [Cornell gets $25 million grant to build William H. Gates Hall, launching new home for computing and information science](http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Jan06/GatesCIS.ws.html)
> The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded $25 million to Cornell University to support the construction of the signature building for a planned information campus that will bring together the several units of the university’s Faculty of Computing and Information Science (CIS).
> The new building, to house the Department of Computer Science and elements of the Information Science Program, will be named William H. Gates Hall. The Committee on Alumni Affairs and Development of the Cornell Board of Trustees approved the building’s name at its meeting in New York City, Jan. 20.
> According to Kenneth Birman, professor of computer science and chair of the CIS building committee, the information campus project is still in the feasibility study stage. Gates Hall is estimated at 100,000 square feet and projected to cost about $50 million. Expanded construction beyond the signature building is planned, based on support from Cornell and additional donors. When completed, the information campus will be a complex of linked buildings integrated with a variety of green spaces and common spaces designed to involve students and provide opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration.
> About a dozen possible locations are being evaluated, Birman said. The proposal for the project calls for the information campus to be strategically located in proximity to the Colleges of Engineering and Arts and Sciences, the Life Sciences Technology Building and other key academic partners.
> Gates Hall will house a lecture hall, faculty offices, classrooms, laboratories, student project spaces and conference rooms. The building will make innovative use of technology to foster collaboration both on and off campus, and it will include facilities specifically designed for CIS researchers whose primary offices might be elsewhere on the campus. As in Duffield Hall and the Life Sciences Technology Building, which is under construction, there will be formal and informal meeting spaces to foster “intellectual collisions” and cross-pollination.
I love that “intellectual collisions” is in quotes while cross-pollination is not. Also, I can’t wait to see where the hell they find 100,000 square feet of space on campus.
End alumni griping!
(thanks to Dad for the link)
