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    June 8, 2026

    UCalgary Admissions and Recruitment

    What is Lab NEXT? A Starting Point for Future Students

    Explore Lab NEXT at UCalgary and experience our Makerspace, collaboration rooms, and high-performance computers!

    You’re walking across campus, thinking about the kinds of ideas you want to explore when you get to university—maybe something creative, maybe something hands-on, maybe something that hasn’t quite taken shape yet. Then you discover Lab NEXT.

    Suddenly, those ideas don’t feel far off anymore.

    At the University of Calgary, Lab NEXT is where imagination meets technology. It’s a space designed for teaching, learning, and research—but more importantly, it’s where you can experiment, build, and bring your ideas to life. From open collaboration areas to immersive Virtual Reality setups, Lab NEXT is built to support how you think, create, and explore. Once you’re part of the UCalgary community, Lab NEXT will become a place you can return to again and again as your ideas grow.

    Start with the Makerspace. Here, what begins as a concept can quickly turn into something tangible. You might design a model and watch it emerge from a 3D printer, or try your hand at laser cutting, sewing, or embroidery to create something completely your own. You don’t need to have everything figured out, either—support is built in. You can book consultations to learn new software, shape a research topic, or get guidance on assignments. It’s a space where curiosity is enough to get started, and where learning happens by doing.

    Step a little further, and you’ll find something even more immersive: Virtual Reality. Lab NEXT’s VR spaces are equipped with high-performance computers, multiple VR headsets, dual 4K monitors, and a dedicated room-scale area for movement and interaction. Here, ideas aren’t just seen—they’re experienced. In programs like architecture, students use VR to step inside their designs, understanding scale and space in a way that goes far beyond a screen. It’s one thing to imagine a concept; it’s another to walk through it.

    Then there’s the Visualization Studio—a striking, high-resolution display wall that opens up entirely new ways of working with information. Whether it’s analyzing complex data, exploring detailed imagery, or working across multiple displays at once, this space gives you the visual clarity to see your projects differently and think bigger.

    Behind the scenes, Lab NEXT also supports the deeper side of your work. From data management and spatial analysis to A/V editing, digitization, publishing, and measuring research impact, there’s a wide range of tools ready to support whatever direction your studies take. You might drop into a workshop to learn something new, or book a quick consultation to get started on a project.

    What makes Lab NEXT stand out isn’t just the technology—it’s the mindset behind it. UCalgary is a place where students are encouraged to start something: a project, a business, a research idea, a creative pursuit, or a solution to a problem that matters to them. Spaces like Lab NEXT and its Makerspace exist because making, testing, and creating are part of who we are. Maybe you arrive with a fully formed idea. Maybe you arrive with nothing more than a question. Either way, this is a place where you can experiment, learn by doing, and turn possibilities into something real. Because at UCalgary, the next big thing doesn’t always begin with a finished plan. Sometimes it begins with a student deciding to begin.



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