Today was the official opening for the new Quantum-Nano Centre (QNC) on the Waterloo campus, sponsored in-part by the co-founder of RIM and the Blackberry, Mike Lazaridis.  This will be the new “home” for our Nanotechnology Engineering students, with classrooms, teaching and research labs, faculty offices, and meeting spaces where people can collaborate.  The opening ceremonies had the usual speeches, which were actually quite inspirational.  But the biggest excitement was generated at the start when Prof. Stephen Hawking from Cambridge delivered the opening address!

The building is technically very complex, with vibration resistant floors, electromagnetic radiation shielding, precise temperature and humdity control, Class 100 and 1000 cleanrooms, etc. Everything you need to house cutting-edge nanotechnology and quantum information science research equipment.  I played an extremely small role in the design, reviewing some lab specifications for the nanobiotechnology facilities a number of years ago, so I’ll be interested to see how it turned out.

Here are some snapshots of the building I took today.  It was too crowded to see much inside, so I’ll wait until the public open house on September 29.