Tennessee State University has received a $1.3 million grant to create the Tennessee State University Interdisciplinary Graduate Engineering Research (TIGER) Institute, which will be a state-of-the-art graduate level research facility for the College of Engineering, Technology and Computer Science (CoETCS).

Awarded by the National Science Foundation under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), the grant will be used to renovate and relocate five existing research laboratories into the new TIGER facility. The TIGER Institute will be located in the currently unfinished lower level of the Research and Sponsored Programs building on the western part of the campus.

Dr. Maria Thompson, vice president of the Division of Research and Sponsored Programs, said the facility will create more opportunities for externally funded research projects. “We’ve spent several months completing the grant proposal for this facility. Now TSU will have more advanced laboratories for our faculty and students to conduct research in areas of high national STEM workforce need,” said Thompson, who is principal investigator for the grant.  Dr. S. Keith Hargrove, dean of the College of Engineering, and Ron Brooks, assistant vice president of Facilities Management, are partnering with Thompson as co-principal investigators for the project.

The TIGER Institute will accelerate the University’s growing industry-research collaborations with Boeing, IBM, Raytheon, General Motors, DuPont and other companies. The Institute also will equip undergraduate and graduate programs, such as the doctoral degree program in computer information systems engineering, with additional infrastructure to complement existing research efforts in advanced scientific visualization, smart sensor networking, and materials science and engineering, which are all currently conducted in multiple engineering research labs located within Torrence Hall – the campus epicenter of engineering.

“The TIGER Institute will not only advance our land-grant research mission in engineering but also allow engineering faculty to have more meaningful collaborations with researchers in other disciplines on our campus.  The advanced scientific visualization laboratory will provide sophisticated tools for modeling and simulation to gain greater insight into multidisciplinary research problems,” said Thompson.

Brooks said, “The amenities within Torrence Hall are challenged by age and volume. The new facility will resolve those issues and provide an abundance of additional resources.”

As dean of CoETCS, Hargrove believes the Institute will allow TSU to continue to attract outstanding student and faculty scholars. He believes it will also notably contribute to the impending increase of the nation’s minority masters and doctorates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. “TSU is recognized as one of the top universities in the nation in graduating African-American students with engineering degrees. The transformation of the research facility has the potential to have a significant economic impact in the form of the development of a high-technology-enabled workforce,” he said.

Construction on the TIGER Institute is scheduled to begin spring 2011 and be completed summer 2011.