DENTON (UNT), Texas - A groundbreaking ceremony for the University of North Texas College of Engineering’s new biomedical engineering building will be held at 2 p.m. March 22 (Thursday) at Discovery Park.

“This new facility will allow the College of Engineering to further provide the quality education and research expected of a Tier One research institution,” said Costas Tsatsoulis, dean of the College of Engineering. “By adding this new building, we’re able to better meet the demands of an ever-growing student class and recruit top talent in research and teaching in one of the nation’s newest and most innovative career fields.”

Construction will begin on the 26,250-square-foot expansion in April, with an anticipated completion date of fall 2019.

The architect for the $12.8 million expansion is TreanorHL and the contractor is Sundt Construction. The state-of-the-art building will house the Department of Biomedical Engineering and enable distance learning through connectivity and projectors. It will contain two large research labs, three teaching labs and three classrooms, one of which will be tiered and seat approximately 200 students.

“The Department of Biomedical Engineering has been growing rapidly since its creation four years ago,” said Vijay Vaidyanathan, founding chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. “This new building allows us to not only add more labs, equipment and classrooms, but also expand our research and teaching areas to further meet the demands of the engineering and healthcare fields. We’re excited to break ground and begin the next chapter of biomedical engineering at UNT.”

The Department of Biomedical Engineering began in fall 2014. In just three years, the department has grown to nearly 220 students, with its first graduating class this May, and admitted its first group of graduate students in fall 2017.

For more information about the biomedical engineering building, visit https://engineering.unt.edu/biomedical-engineering-building.