Milwaukee School of Engineering on Monday announced a $125 million campaign aiming to support the future of applied artificial intelligence education on its campus.
MSOE’s “Next Bold Step: The Campaign to Accelerate Innovation,” includes support for construction of a new $76.5 million academic building called the Robert D. Kern Engineering Innovation Center. Construction of the four-story, 97,000-square-foot facility will break ground in the second half of 2025 at the southeast corner of Milwaukee and State Streets, currently a parking lot on the MSOE campus in downtown Milwaukee.
The Robert D. Kern Engineering Innovation Center will house MSOE’s new Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence Education, which will “guide initiatives across campus, attract top faculty talent and support area businesses,” according to a MSOE news release. Robert Kern was the founder of Town of Genesee-based generator manufacturer Generac and a major supporter of MSOE.
The building will also have labs, classrooms and public spaces designed to integrate AI learning across disciplines. There will be a particular focus on incorporating AI and machine learning into each of MSOE’s engineering programs. There will be robotics and AI workshops and an outdoor sustainability lab onsite as well.
MSOE’s Mechanical Engineering Department; Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering Department; Civil and Architectural Engineering and Construction Management Department; and the User Experience program will be housed inside the Robert D. Kern Engineering Innovation Center.
The new building will be connected to MSOE’s Allen-Bradley Hall of Science and the Fred F. Loock Engineering Center. Pewaukee-based VJS Construction Services and Milwaukee-based Ramlow/Stein Architecture + Interiors are the construction and design partners for the project.
Dwight Diercks, a MSOE graduate, and his wife Dian Diercks, are partially funding the construction of the Engineering Innovation Center. The Diercks donated $34 million to support the construction of MSOE’s Dwight and Dian Diercks Computational Science Hall, which opened in 2019. Dwight Diercks is a MSOE regent and senior vice president of Santa Clara, California-based tech firm NVIDIA. The Kern Family Foundation is also partially funding the new innovation center.
As part of its $125 million campaign, MSOE will also create the Dwight and Dian Diercks School of Advanced Computing. This new school, which will include MSOE’s computer science, software engineering and machine learning degree programs, will also “allow MSOE to weave AI and machine learning into degree programs across the university, and to support the exponential opportunities that advanced computing and computational sciences make possible in every industry,” according to the news release. MSOE will establish endowments to support faculty, research and student scholarships for the new school.
The “Next Bold Step” campaign aims to propel MSOE toward its goal of becoming the national leader of applied AI education. Campaign fundraising will also fund scholarships, academic programs, student support programs and operations.
[gallery size="full" td_select_gallery_slide="slide" ids="607676,607672,607673,607674,607675"]
