Richard N. White, who was a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell for 37 years, has given his name to an instructional facility in the George Winter Laboratory in the basement of Thurston Hall. In a ceremony on Oct. 8, attended by his former students and colleagues, and Engineering Dean W. Kent Fuchs, White, a professor emeritus since 1998, unveiled a plaque in his honor at the new teaching center.

The first classes already have been held in the facility, whose leading use will be as a classroom for civil and environmental engineering and as a communications center for the earthquake research facility being built in Winter Lab. Among the new White Center’s high-tech capabilities are high-speed Internet 2 transmission, Polycom video conferencing, multiple remote cameras for viewing lab activities, and Internet 2 grid software for multiple functions, including storage of streaming data from experiments.

—Cornell News Service