Brookhaven Lab - Past and Present

Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) was founded in 1947 as a multipurpose research laboratory intended to house large, state-of-the-art research facilities and make them available to scientific (and industrial) users from all over the world.  BNL is located in eastern Long Island on the former site of the U.S. Army Camp Upton, which served as a training facility for soldiers during both WWI and WWII.  The operation of the laboratory was originally managed by the Ivy League universities of the East Coast and MIT.  In 1997, the U.S. Department of Energy sought new management for the Laboratory.  Stony Brook partnered with Battelle Memorial Institute to create Brookhaven Science Associates LLC (BSA), which competed for and won the contract to manage and operate BNL for the Department of Energy.  BSA has managed the Lab since 1998.

Over its history, BNL has built and operated numerous reactors, accelerators, colliders, and other facilities that have supported basic and applied research in areas such as nuclear and high-energy physics; materials science; nanoscience; energy and environmental research; national security and nonproliferation; neuroscience; structural biology; and computational sciences.  Seven Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work done at BNL's facilities, and BNL scientists have been recognized for many important discoveries.  The BNL webpage provides more history.

Today, BNL has a staff size of nearly 3,000 and supports a user community as large as 5,000 investigators from around the U.S. and the world.  Some of BNL's most widely used facilities include the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLSII) and the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN).  Construction of an Electron Ion Collider (EIC) is currently underway.  This unique collider, expected to be completed early in the 2030's, will utilize portions of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), which recently completed its science mission after 25 years of operations.  BNL also offers STEM education and workforce development programs that draw more than 30,000 participants annually.