SLAC and Stanford continue partnership that results in innovative research

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University will continue their partnership for another five years thanks to a five-year contract extension from the U.S. Department of Energy. Stanford has operated SLAC – originally known as the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center – since its founding in 1962.

“At SLAC, we are very fortunate to combine the best of both worlds,” said Chi-Chang Kao, director of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Professor of Photon Sciences. “We are an active part of the world-renowned Stanford community. And, because of the U.S. Department of Energy’s support for large-scale facilities and projects bigger than what any one institution can undertake alone, we participate in research that expands our knowledge of the natural world, aids development of future technologies, and impacts society.”

The two-mile long linear accelerator can be seen from a number of vantage points in Menlo Park. SLAC operates the nation’s only (and the world’s first) X-ray laser facility, which is undergoing a billion-dollar upgrade and will increase the power and capacity of the X-ray laser for experiments that sharpen our view of how nature works on the atomic level and on ultrafast timescales.

SLAC is also leading construction of the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy – the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, or LSST. When completed, the camera will be housed in a new mountaintop facility in Chile to address some of the most pressing questions about the structure and evolution of the universe and enhance our understanding of dark matter and dark energy.

Photo of SLAC’s research yard at dawn, seen from the radio tower overlook by Matthew Beardsley