 In keeping with the building's cutting edge technical advancements, the ribbon cutting ceremony was a purely digital affair.President Stanley Ikenberry, Chancellor Michael Aiken, and David Grainger, representing his father, William Wallace Grainger, pressed assigned areas on a computer touch screen to change a computerized red ribbon into a visual explosion of fireworks.In 1995 Grainger library took home the prize of Project of the Year as awarded by the Illinois Engineering Council.