100 Institute Road, Worcester MA, 01609
Higgins Labs was built in 1942 to provide a new home for the Department of Mechanical Engineering, which had outgrown its space in Stratton Hall. The three-story building was named after Milton P. Higgins, the first superintendent of WPI’s Washburn Shops; it originally housed early laboratories for experiments in heat transfer, lubricants, fuels, structure of metals, ventilation, heating, refrigeration, metallurgy, and internal combustion. In 1994 the building was completely refurbished and expanded—it now houses classrooms and labs for the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering, as well as several robotics engineering labs. Facilities include a state-of-the-art design studio, low-speed wind tunnel, and laboratories for computer-aided engineering, fluid dynamics and thermal processes, laser holography, structural dynamics and vibrations, manufacturing, and rehabilitation engineering and biomechanics.
