Ole Miss STEM Center wins AIA Mississippi COTE and Design Merit Awards!

The Jim and Thomas Duff Center for Science and Technology Innovation has been awarded the 2025 AIA Mississippi COTE and Design Merit Awards. It is the largest academic building in the history of the University of Mississippi’s main campus and its most environmentally friendly—it is 70% carbon neutral relative to similar buildings nationally. This high-performance building integrates such features as terracotta window-shading louvers at the south façade, sensor technology that monitors laboratory air quality, 36 filtering fume hoods, and energy recovery in both the heating and cooling systems, all contributing to this lab building’s significant energy use reduction.

Designed by Ellenzweig in collaboration with McCarty Architects, this student-centric facility brings together science and engineering to enhance STEM learning and foster interdisciplinary programs on campus. The Center provides ample study space and celebrates academic support activities, accommodating over 2,000 students every hour throughout the day with more than 50 labs and TEAL classrooms that are flexibly designed for team-based interactive learning.