UCLA Digital Spaces Selects PlaceOS to Revolutionize Campus Experiences

UCLA Digital Spaces has partnered with PlaceOS to launch a multi-year initiative aimed at transforming the UCLA campus into a smart, connected, and user-friendly environment. This collaboration will use PlaceOS’s automation platform to integrate technologies across the entire campus—from classrooms and study spaces to dorms and event venues. The goal is to create seamless, personalized experiences for students, faculty, and visitors through smart room scheduling, app-based navigation, audiovisual control, environmental automation, and advanced analytics.

The project kicks off in Fall 2025 with a pilot phase introducing intelligent services like AI-powered BruinCast streaming, interactive digital signage, and automated lighting and climate systems. Future phases will expand these features campus-wide, guided by real-time feedback and data. By doing this, UCLA aims to become a benchmark for smart campus design, showing how technology can improve both the user experience and operational efficiency in higher education.

UCLA Digital Spaces, the audiovisual design and support division of Digital & Technology Solutions responsible for shaping the future of campus environments, announced a multi-year strategic product development alliance with PlaceOS, a leading platform for smart workplace and campus automation. This collaboration aims to transform how students, faculty, and visitors interact with UCLA’s physical spaces through intelligent, data-driven, and highly personalized experiences.

“As technologists, it is our duty to view the campus not as a series of disconnected venues, but as a single, interwoven ecosystem designed to foster collaboration, innovation, and community,” notes Dr. Joe Way, Executive Director, Digital Spaces at UCLA. “Classrooms should no longer be viewed as four walls and a projector,” continues Way. “They are integrated spaces, aimed at fostering engagement and creating unified opportunities. We have a responsibility to look at the campus as a holistic entity, tying in all systems to create human-centered experiences from the dorm, to the classroom, to study spaces, entertainment venues, residential life, and communications.”

By leveraging PlaceOS’s cutting-edge platform, UCLA Digital Spaces will integrate an innovative, dynamic suite of services across campus, leveraging a cloud-first strategy to automate audiovisual control and distribution, advanced room booking, wayfinding, environmental controls, space utilization analytics, streaming, learning tools, remote management and control, and event coordination. The result will be a seamless, adaptive, accessible, and sustainable campus environment that meets the evolving needs of its diverse community.

“Personally, it’s exciting to be back innovating in the university space—where my co-founder and I first started our careers. Universities are uniquely positioned to connect all systems and benefit from automation, improving both user experience and operational efficiency, explains Jonathan McFarlane, CEO of PlaceOS. He continues: “At the very least, this removes double-handling but with UCLA’s innovative thinking, we can go much further—not just demonstrating a smart campus to the broader IT and building industries, but setting a new benchmark for what a smart city can be.”

The first phase of the project will focus on deploying PlaceOS modules through an innovative pilot program scheduled to launch in Fall 2025. This initial deployment will introduce a robust suite of features, including cloud-first, app-based navigation tools; advanced audiovisual control and automation; intelligent room scheduling; interactive digital signage systems; comprehensive asset management; integrated AI enhancements; and a reimagined BruinCast cloud-streaming service. In addition, the pilot will implement intelligent lighting and climate control systems designed to improve sustainability, accessibility, and operational efficiency.

Subsequent phases will expand functionality to additional stakeholders across campus, incorporating real-time user feedback, space utilization data, and advanced analytics. This iterative approach will ensure that solutions evolve responsively, continuously optimizing the campus environment to meet the dynamic needs of students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Over time, the project aims to establish UCLA as a global model for intelligent campus design, where technology and human experience are seamlessly intertwined. “We believe this initiative will fundamentally reshape the role of technology in higher education,” added Way. “For the first time, our campuses will be treated as the interconnected, interdependent communities they are meant to be.”