State of the art laboratories for the Faculty of Social Sciences

For the first time ever, the 10,000 students, 260 professors and 100 staff at the Faculty of Social Sciences will be together under one roof in the heart of the city, at our downtown campus. This move will create greater opportunities for collaboration in research and teaching.

October 19th marked the official opening of this environmentally friendly building that will bring together a wealth of knowledge in social sciences and help strengthen partnerships among experts.

“There is always change under way at the University of Ottawa, and this magnificent building is the latest evidence of this,” says Allan Rock, president and vice-chancellor of the University. “The synergy created by having the students and faculty members of our largest faculty under one roof will be extremely beneficial. In fact, this building is more than simply a new home for Social Sciences. It will be an incubator for creative new ideas and innovation.”

The 15-storey building with a surface area of 25,299 square metres (272,316 square feet) is connected to Vanier Hall by several walkways, bringing together the Faculty of Social Sciences’ nine academic units as well as six research centres.

The second floor of the building is dedicated entirely to students with numerous study areas and meeting places, which will help to provide a rich and inspiring student experience—one of the four over-arching goals of the Destination 20/20 strategic plan.

Each floor also boasts meeting rooms to make it easier for researchers and students working on projects to gather together.

The new building is also home to comprehensive research laboratories to help generate and inspire new initiatives and discoveries. For example, the School of Psychology’s new INSPIRE laboratory makes it possible for researchers to explore areas of overlap between the social sciences and humanities and the field of neuroscience. This lab is currently the only lab in the world in addition to the lab at Harvard that has an integrated system capable of capturing in real time both cognitive and biological reactions of individuals subject to different stimuli.

“The INSPIRE laboratory, where it’s possible to run 18 different experiments at the same time, can provide creative solutions to behavioural economists, political scientists, forensic specialists, decision-makers, policy-makers and, of course, researchers from all fields of psychology through state-of-the-art technologies such as physiologic data acquisition and analysis, eye tracking and behavioural observation,” says Luc Pelletier, director and associate dean of the School of Psychology. “The laboratory represents a new way of thinking in designing and creating research facilities at the University.”

Text: Sabrina Abraham
Photo: Robert Lacombe
Published: October 2012