Milwaukee School of Engineering’s supercomputer has completed 150,000 jobs since 2019, is powered by Silicon Valley technology and has some of the most advanced computing abilities in the state. Its name is Rosie. Located in a glass-wrapped room like a museum exhibit, the computer is built from Santa Clara, California-based NVIDIA equipment and operates kind
Already a subscriber? Log in
To continue reading this article ...
Subscribe to BizTimes today and get immediate access to our Insider-only content and much more.Learn More and Subscribe Now
Dwight Diercks[/caption]
“If you walk by Rosie in March as final projects come due, it's humming, it's loud, it's a little hot, but that's great, because that means everything's being used,” said 
Diercks Hall. Image from MSOE[/caption]
At 65,536 square feet (which was important to Diercks because it’s a binary number), Diercks Hall is located at the center of MSOE’s downtown Milwaukee campus and has given students, faculty, staff and the university’s corporate partners access to state-of-the-art classrooms and laboratories, as well as the supercomputer, MSOE leaders said.
Since the building opened in 2019, MSOE’s first class of bachelor's in computer science students graduated in 2022, with 119 students graduating from the program since then. They’ve gone on to work at companies like Amazon Robotics, NVIDIA, Google, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, SpaceX, Rockwell Automation, Direct Supply and Baird, among others.
In the meantime, the university also has increased its academic offerings for AI-related certificates and curriculum. In 2023, MSOE launched the AI for emerging applications undergraduate certificate and the graduate certificate in advanced business strategy using AI and analytics, and also established the PieperPower endowed chair in AI and started an AI Club.
MSOE is still the only undergraduate program in Wisconsin offering a bachelor's in computer science that is focused on artificial intelligence.
“(In planning for Diercks Hall) We saw the need for computer science and AI, and for the need to create a program where we could have graduates lean into this upcoming AI revolution that we knew was coming,” Diercks said. “We launched the first of its kind in the nation: an AI heavy curriculum, computer science degree.”
[caption id="attachment_597283" align="alignleft" width="533"]
Inside MSOE's supercomputer Rosie.[/caption]
The addition of Diercks Hall and Rosie has helped advance the school’s mission of offering hands-on learning and access to cutting edge learning tools for their students, MSOE leaders said, which is unique at a school like MSOE where a vast majority students are in an undergraduate program, rather than a graduate program.
“At a lot of R1 schools, they’re a research focused university where the faculty's job is to do research, and all they really do is get grants and churn out publications like it's going out of style, maybe undergraduates get to do some menial lab work,” said