A place to build what comes next

David and Linda Morris at the opening of the new David Morris Innovation Hub on October 1, 2026. (Photo: Alex Pugliese)

David Morris, ’68 BSc(MechEng), ’70 MSc, ’73 PhD, has spent much of his life taking things apart, putting them back together and figuring out how they could work even better.

As a University of Alberta student, he developed an artificial heart. Later, he built race car engines, ran a professional racing team and built a successful automotive business. Even today, at 80, his workshop is filled with cars he restores himself and airplanes he flies (both real and model).

Now, Morris wants the next generation of engineering students to have a place to discover what they can build.

His $1-million gift establishes the new David Morris Innovation Hub inside the Engineering Teaching and Learning Centre (ETLC). The dedicated facility provides student project teams with room to design, build and showcase automotive and vehicle-related projects, expanding the Faculty of Engineering’s capacity for hands-on learning.

“They need to have a place to go,” Morris says. “They need to learn how machines work and how to work with their hands.”

Nathan Chong, ‘25 BSc(MechEng), knows first-hand the power of that kind of environment.

For three years, Chong was heavily involved with engineering student project teams, including leading the Autonomous Robotic Vehicle Project, whose students designed and built Arctos, an autonomous underwater robot.

Working alongside students from different engineering disciplines gave Chong opportunities to put classroom learning into practice, tackle complex problems and develop skills that have stayed with him beyond university.

“Everything I learned on the student project teams directly translates to what I do today,” he says.

Chong now works in Silicon Valley as a technical program manager at Tesla, where that multidisciplinary experience continues to shape his work.

His experience also helped Morris see the potential of creating even more opportunities for students to learn this way.

Meeting Chong through the William Muir Edwards Citizenship Awards, another initiative Morris supports, reinforced a vision Morris had held for years: a bright, collaborative space where students could test ideas and turn blueprints into reality.

That idea is now the David Morris Innovation Hub.

Located across the hall from the Elko Engineering Garage (supported by a major gift from philanthropist Ernie Elko and his late wife, Cathie), the hub builds on the Faculty of Engineering’s existing hands-on learning spaces — the two combined creating a high-profile ecosystem of easy-to-access student experience labs. It also helps the faculty drive towards its goal of becoming a Canadian leader in experiential engineering education.

For Morris, the gift is rooted in gratitude for his own nine years at the U of A.

“I loved my university years,” he says. “I learned tremendous life lessons there.”

Now, he hopes the hub will give students the freedom to experiment, learn from one another and perhaps create something no one has thought of yet.

“Engineering is a wonderful basis for anything in life,” Morris says. “It teaches you how to identify problems and how to solve them.”

And with a place to put those lessons into practice, the next idea that changes a student’s life — or perhaps something much bigger — may be just around the corner, waiting to be built.