From the Nominator

State-of-the-art research facilities are critical to our ability to attract top faculty and advance discovery, but making these projects resonate with potential donors can be challenging. When the school launched an effort to build a new home for energy research, we decided to focus our communications efforts on developing a rich website that would explain the importance of the work, tell the stories of faculty whose labs would be housed in the new building, show visuals that would allow prospective donors to immerse themselves in the spaces, and clearly identify naming opportunities. The site makes heavy use of video, including an interview with the architect, and drone footage combined with renderings that place the building on campus. A link to a pdf included on the site (https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/web.sas.upenn.edu/dist/9/766/files/2018/11/VagelosLabEST-PS-22-1.pdf) provides access to a more traditional print-ready presentation of the case statement. Taken together, the resources that are accessible on the site have made the project accessible and immediate and given fundraisers a powerful set of tools to advance their conversations with donors.

From the Judges

Judges were impressed with this exciting site and found it to be well organized and structured; accessible and clean. Judges particularly loved the clarity of the naming opportunities and its page layout. The room magnification features make it easy for users and prospective donors to understand the design of the building. The VR flythroughs are really clean and smooth with well-placed interactive orienting map bubbles and information boxes and without the typical and sometimes awkward placement of digital stock images of people using the space. This site accomplished the objective of making research science understandable and accessible to a wide audience.