Bahen Centre for Information Technology

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The Bahen Centre for Information Technology is a building at the St. George campus of the University of Toronto. The university website bills it as a "state of the art facility for education of information technology professionals in electrical and computer engineering, computer science and IT research." Thus, it is primarily used by the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Mathematics.The large building contains 50 laboratories (including the Dynamic Graphics Project), 10 lecture theatres (including the large Adel Sedra Auditorium), 13 tutorial, 9 seminar rooms, and about 300 offices. It is home to the Emerging Communications Technology Institute (formerly the Nortel Institute), the Bell University Laboratories and an Advanced Surface Coatings Laboratory.HistoryThe Bahen Centre was constructed to meet the growing needs of the university's computer science and electrical and computer engineering programs, as the university doubled the size and funding of the programs. The building was named after engineer John Bahen, president of the Peter Kiewit and Sons building company, who was the leading donor to the C$108 million project. Jeffrey Skoll of eBay also donated $7 million.