MSOE’s newest academic building, the Dwight and Dian Diercks Computational Science Hall was honored by the Milwaukee Business Journal as the Best New Development in the Education category of its annual Real Estate Awards.  

According to Editor-in-Chief Mark Kass, “The Milwaukee Business Journal’s Real Estate Awards are a chance to recognize the projects – and the people behind them – that improve our region and continue making this a great community to live, work and visit.”  

More than 40 projects were submitted in a variety of Real Estate Awards categories. The awards feature projects that were completed in 2019 in southeastern Wisconsin, and have strong community impact and project success.  

MSOE celebrated the grand opening of Diercks Hall on Friday, Sept. 13, 2019. The building, located at 1025 N. Milwaukee St., was made possible with a $34 million gift from MSOE alumnus Dwight Diercks and his wife Dian and features an NVIDIA GPU-accelerated supercomputer. The gift was the largest MSOE has received from an alumnus.  

With its new B.S. in Computer Science degree focused on artificial intelligence and "Rosie," the supercomputer in Diercks Hall, MSOE is forging new frontiers in AI education. Unique to MSOE, the supercomputer is available to undergraduate students, offering them the ability to apply their learning in a hands-on environment to prepare for their careers. Thanks to the university’s corporate partnerships, students will access this high performance computing to solve real-world problems in their course work.  

Located in the heart of campus, the building was designed with students and the community in mind by providing modern classrooms, innovative laboratories, an auditorium and spaces to support companies that partner with MSOE. Diercks Hall—and the courses taught within—position MSOE at the educational forefront in artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning, cyber security, robotics, cloud computing and other next-generation technologies.  

A spacious vestibule on the first floor connects one end of campus to the other. The space opens into an atrium featuring flexible furniture to accommodate everything from small group collaborations to large events. The atrium highlights a video wall comprised of eight 50-inch screens and two large garage doors that open to an outdoor plaza to expand events outside and provide an outdoor study area. Next to the atrium is the 256-seat auditorium complete with a stage and projector screen, whose display can be extended onto the video wall in the atrium. The 256-seat layout signifies 28, a base-two number commonly used in computing. Given the high-tech nature of the building, design considerations were made throughout. The structural design of the building had to accommodate “Rosie,” the supercomputer, in a state-of-the-art datacenter on the second floor—directly above the auditorium. In order to have unobstructed views in the auditorium, the upper floors of the building are supported with a large steel truss system that hangs the ceiling of the auditorium.  This feature was also left exposed in the building for architectural effect.  

A cybersecurity laboratory on the third floor allows students to conduct real-world cyber security experiments and test defensive mechanisms in a professional and controlled environment. The room is grounded with special shielding paint and an electromagnetic field, and the ductwork is lined with copper to prevent computer viruses that students are working on from spreading to the rest of campus through the wireless network.  

Inside, Diercks Hall provides modern classrooms, innovative laboratories, an auditorium, and spaces to support companies who partner with MSOE. A major feature of the facility is a state of the art datacenter which is home to "Rosie," an NVIDIA GPU-accelerated AI supercomputer. Students, faculty and staff, and businesses across industries are invited to collaborate with MSOE to benefit from this tremendous asset to the region.