Where Thinkers Become Makers

Amazing things can happen for humanity when minds meet, especially when those minds meet at the Murray Hall makerspace. This 3,500-square-foot facility is the central hub of Be a Maker (“BeAM”), a network of makerspaces where the Carolina community comes together to design and build objects for education and entrepreneurship.

Solutions to scientific and technical challenges often come from unexpected places, so we created places for people to come together, share ideas and be makers. BeAM joins traditional woodworking, metalworking and digital fabrication with today’s emerging technologies to turn ideas into solutions.

Projects have included nesting units for bees — an endangered building block for our ecosystem — and a telescope. Lessons teach how to operate fundamental tools of the future such as 3-D printers and laser cutters. The makerspaces also build figurative bridges, as people from different departments partner to lend their expertise to different sides of problem-solving; a community inspired to imagine, design and create.

Dr. Rich Superfine is creating access to makerspaces across campus, creating engaging collaborative spaces for innovation. He’s the Taylor-Williams Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy