UC Berkeley celebrates opening of Grimes Engineering Center

Students, faculty, staff, key benefactors and the legendary Oski the Bear came together Monday for a festive celebration of the opening of the Grimes Engineering Center, a new hub on the north side of campus. UC Berkeley Engineering marked this exciting milestone — just two years after the building’s groundbreaking — with a ribbon-cutting ceremony led by Chancellor Rich Lyons.

Situated at the heart of the Berkeley Engineering community, the new center’s open, light-filled design will provide a welcoming space for engineering students to gather and collaborate. In addition, it will offer one-stop access to advising, career services, tutoring, academic and social events, as well as the college’s flagship entrepreneurship program, the newly relocated Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology.

Speaking at the celebration, Lyons expressed his excitement over the new building’s impact on the student experience. “It’s not just the benefits of new physical space, it is also a matter of what that space supports and what it catalyzes,” he said. “With that in mind, I am quite certain that this new center is perfectly suited for the constructive collision of ideas — big and small, brilliant and crazy — for all that makes Berkeley, Berkeley.”

In her remarks, engineering dean Tsu-Jae King Liu noted that the new center reflects the college’s commitment to transforming the culture of the engineering field into one that is more welcoming and inclusive, a key priority of hers as dean.

“The Grimes Engineering Center is the physical embodiment of this transformation,” she said. “It will empower generations of future engineering innovators and leaders to be effective agents for positive change in our society.”

A light glass-and-steel pavilion added more than 35,500 square feet and two floors to the former Bechtel Engineering Center. This innovative adaptive reuse strategy significantly reduced the overall embodied carbon impact of the renovation and expansion of the former facility. The project is on track to earn a Platinum LEED certification later this year, the highest possible rating for the green-building certification system.

The new four-story building was developed with architectural and engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and general contractor XL Construction.

Given the center’s proximity to the Hayward Fault — a mere 1,300 feet — seismic resilience also factored into the building’s design, including an innovative system of tension rods that use shape-memory alloy cables that stretch and absorb energy during an earthquake, then return to their original shape like a rubber band. This is the first time that this special material has been used in new construction. During development, the cables were tested on the earthquake shake table at the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center and in the structural engineering lab in Davis Hall.

The center’s modern design also reinforces its role as an educational hub. Its transparent profile puts the vibrancy of student life on display while showcasing new building technologies. Every structured system in the building is exposed and can serve as a teaching tool, allowing engineering students to examine connections, gussets, dampers, a rod-hung stairway and other features.

The dynamic mix of specialized spaces and programs was welcomed by the engineering students in attendance, who were uniformly enthusiastic about how the new building will shape their campus experience.

“This engineering center will not only be a place where students come to study, have meetings and meet with their advisers,” said Vivian Chung, a senior majoring in bioengineering and materials science and engineering. “It will be a place where students know they’ll have a home to go to throughout the day, make some of their closest friends, come up with and execute the most outrageous yet innovative ideas late into the night, and gain the knowledge and support they need to succeed here.”

The Grimes Engineering Center was funded entirely by philanthropy, with generous gifts from over 135 donors. Lyons and Liu expressed their deep gratitude to key benefactors and highlighted the important role the Engineering Advisory Board played in getting the project off the ground.

“It began with the members of our Engineering Advisory Board, whose early feedback on the building design and leadership in philanthropy propelled this forward,” said Liu. “It was heartening to see how the vision resonated with so many people, many of whom are here today.”

Among those attendees were Michael (B.S.’87 EECS) and Janelle Grimes (B.A.’86 PoliSci), the center’s lead donors and the building’s namesake. Liu thanked them for their many years of service to UC Berkeley. Michael Grimes served on several UC Berkeley advisory boards, including 14 years on the Engineering Advisory Board. And Lyons honored them for “enriching the educational experience of Berkeley undergraduates” through their role in developing and launching unique campus programs, such as the dual-degree Management, Entrepreneurship, & Technology (M.E.T.) Program, now housed in the new engineering center.

Liu also recognized Eugene Jarvis (B.S.’76 EECS), founder of arcade video game entertainment company Raw Thrills, for his generous support. The Eugene Jarvis Auditorium and the Raw Thrills Lounge in the building are named in his honor.

In his remarks, Michael Grimes focused on the new building’s purpose: to provide students with a place to research, discover and develop breakthroughs with far-reaching, societal impact. This, he said, would not have been possible without the contributions and shared vision of many in the Berkeley community.

“You have not only the tremendous gratitude of the thousands of students who will inhabit this space, but also the extended gratitude of the millions, literal millions, of people whose lives will be improved by the breakthroughs inspired in this transcendent edifice with a supremely worthy purpose,” he said.

In closing, Liu shared how she expects the new center to become the “nexus of student life” for current and future Berkeley engineers. “I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has made this possible!” she said.