About the School : Resources and Facilities : The University at Large

The University at Large

Columbia University occupies three major campuses, as well as additional special-purpose facilities throughout the area. Besides the main campus located on the Upper West Side in Morningside Heights is Manhattanville, the newest addition to Columbia University. This open and environmentally sustainable campus will grow over the next decade to encompass more than 17 acres. Further uptown in Washington Heights is the Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), which includes Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the New York State Psychiatric Institute, College of Dental Medicine, and School of Nursing. Columbia Medical Center is the world’s first academic medical center, and opened in 1928 when Columbia’s health-related schools and Presbyterian Hospital (now NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital) moved to the Washington Heights location. Columbia Engineering’s Biomedical Engineering Department has offices on both the Morningside campus and CUMC.

Beyond its schools and programs, the measure of Columbia’s true breadth and depth must take into account its seventy-odd internationally recognized centers and institutions for specialized research. These centers study everything from human rights to molecular recognition and hold close affiliations with Teachers College, Barnard College, the Juilliard School, and both the Jewish and Union Theological Seminaries. Columbia also maintains major off-campus facilities such as the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, NY, and the Nevis Laboratories in Irvington, NY. Involved in many cooperative ventures, Columbia also conducts ongoing research at such facilities as Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY, and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies located just off the Morningside campus.

THE MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS CAMPUS

The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science is located on Columbia’s Morningside campus. One of the handsomest urban institutions in the country, the 13.1 million gross square feet (gsf) of the Morningside campus comprise more than 200 buildings of housing; off-campus apartments and commercial buildings; recreation and research facilities; centers for the humanities and social and pure sciences; and professional schools in architecture, business, the fine arts, journalism, law, and many other fields.

MANHATTANVILLE CAMPUS

From Broadway and 125th Street West to a revitalized Hudson River waterfront, Columbia's 17-acre Manhattanville campus will be a welcoming environment of publicly accessible open space, tree-lined streets, neighborhood-friendly retail, and innovative academic buildings that invite community engagement. The Jerome L. Greene Science Center, home to Columbia's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, and the Lenfest Center for the Arts opened in Spring 2017 and will be joined by the University Forum, a venue for hosting academic conferences, meetings, and symposia; and Columbia Business School by 2021. These spaces will house cutting-edge research and teaching in brain science, an art gallery, screening room, and performance spaces, and space for active community engagement. The Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute includes several Columbia Engineering faculty members and serves as a thriving hub where faculty and students from across Columbia, scholars from around the world, and members of the local community come together in the search for new insights about ourselves, exploring the complexities of the human mind and brain. The Institute will also house a community wellness center and an education lab to give hands-on experience in science to local students.

COLUMBIA ENGINEERING

Columbia Engineering (The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science) occupies four laboratory and classroom buildings at the north end of the campus, including the Northwest Corner Science and Engineering Building, an interdisciplinary teaching and research building on the Morningside campus. It was designed by the world-renowned architect Jose Rafael Moneo to serve as a physical and intellectual bridge, linking laboratories and maximizing the ready sharing and exchange of ideas, resources, and information. The building enables researchers across the University to work together to create new areas of knowledge, in fields where the biological, physical, and digital worlds fuse. This pandisciplinary frontier is the nexus at which our advances will provide innovative solutions to some of modern society’s most challenging problems in a wide range of sectors, from health to cybersecurity, from smart infrastructure to the environment.

Supporting multiple programs of study, the School's facilities are specifically designed and equipped to meet the laboratory and research needs of both undergraduate and graduate students. The School is also the site of an almost overwhelming array of basic and advanced research installations, such as the Columbia Genome Center and the Columbia Nano Initiative, established to serve as the hub for multidisciplinary and collaborative research programs in nanoscale science and engineering. Shared facilities and equipment to support nano research at the Engineering School include a state-of-the-art clean room in the Schapiro Center for Engineering and Physical Science Research (CEPSR) and a Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) Laboratory on the first floor of Havemeyer.

Among this group of advanced research opportunities is the Columbia Data Science Institute. Founded in 2012 by Columbia Engineering, the Data Science Institute is a University-wide resource that spans nine schools, including Journalism, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Columbia University Medical Center. The mission of the Data Science Institute is to train data science innovators and develop ideas for the social good.

Details about specific programs’ laboratories and equipment can be found in the sections describing those programs.

COLUMBIA ENGINEERING COMPUTING FACILITIES

The Botwinick Multimedia Learning Laboratory at Columbia University has redefined the way engineers are educated here.

Designed with both education and interaction in mind, the lab provides students and instructors with:

• 48 desktops

• A full set of professional-grade engineering software tools

• A collaborative classroom learning environment to help students engage in real-world interactions with community clients, Engineering faculty, and professional practitioners.

The lab is utilized in some of the School’s introductory first-year engineering projects, as well as advanced classes in modeling and animation, technology and society, and entrepreneurship.

THE MAKERSPACE

Columbia Engineering’s Makerspace provides students with a dedicated place to collaborate, learn, explore, experiment, and create prototypes. Students can utilize the space to work on a variety of innovative projects, including independent or group design projects, product development, and new venture plans. Located on the twelfth floor of the Mudd Building, this facility fosters student creativity by bringing together the workspace and tools for computer-aided design, physical prototyping, fabric arts, woodworking, electronics, and software. 

CARLETON COMMONS

Located on the fourth floor (campus level) of the Mudd Building, Carleton Commons and Blue Java Café comprise 2,800 square feet with seating for 160 and areas for casual meetings, individual and group work, and quiet study. Carleton Commons gives students a dedicated and comfortable space to gather, relax between classes, or meet and work with one another on problem sets or projects. The new design also enables flexible and reconfigurable use of the space for
larger gatherings and special events.