Harold L. Martin Sr. Engineering Research & Innovation Complex

In 2016, North Carolina voters approved a visionary, $2 billion bond initiative, investing in important, promising projects around the state. One such project was an engineering research complex at North Carolina A&T, approved for $90 million in funding. Five years later, the four-story facility was completed on time, under budget, and with a new name chosen by the A&T Board of Trustees: The Harold L. Martin Sr. Engineering Research and Innovation Complex.

The name not only recognizes Dr. Martin’s years of dedicated leadership as chancellor of A&T, but his education, his academic work and his service in administration. Dr. Martin earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering at A&T before completing a Ph.D. at Virginia Tech. He returned to A&T as an engineering faculty member. From there, he rose to department chair, dean of the college and vice chancellor for academic affairs. After a total of eight years as chancellor at Winston-Salem State University and as senior vice president for academic affairs of the UNC System, he returned to A&T in 2009 as its first alumnus to serve as chancellor. Under his leadership, North Carolina A&T has grown by more than 25% to become America’s largest historically Black university, and the College of Engineering has consistently been America’s single largest originating campus of Black engineers and Black women engineers.

The more than 2,300 doctoral, master’s and bachelor’s students enrolled in the college today will be in high demand tomorrow, with workplaces from Silicon Valley to Wall Street seeking their services. From NASA to Google, they bring with them an engineering education second to none, deep critical thinking skills and outstanding, hands-on experiential learning, enabling them to be workplace ready on day one. Tomorrow’s graduates will benefit immensely from the Martin Complex's state-of-the-art research and instructional facilities, the makerspaces, the high-bay drone development rooms, collaboration/ideation spaces and well-appointed laboratories, many supported through the generosity of corporate and individual donors.