Penn State researchers who teamed up with Exton’s Bentley Systems to create a 3D model of the university’s campus are finalists for the “Be Inspired” award, writes Samantha Chavanic for Penn State News.

The award, presented annually by Bentley, recognizes the astonishing work by the company’s software users. The detailed, virtual-reality mesh model was one of the three finalists in the BIM Advancement in Reality Modeling category.

The award ceremony was held at Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure 2017 Conference in October. The work of the team comprised of professor of architectural engineering John Messner and architectural engineering doctoral candidate Zhouqian Jiang will be recognized in the 2017 Year in Infrastructure yearbook.

The pair worked with Bentley and OPP to capture thousands of aerial images of the University Park campus. These were then processed using Bentley’s software to create a 3D virtual model campus.

“We would like to get to a point where we can easily retrieve information about all the buildings, the infrastructure that supports the campus, and the real-time sensor data,” said Messner.

Read more about the 3D model at Penn State News here.