Message from Lab Director Sam Aronson

Brookhaven National Laboratory’s 10-Year Strategic Plan is, in a sense, a living document, revised annually, that guides our mission and asserts where the Lab will be most effective in serving the goals of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

We use this annual revision to assess our progress, adjust for new challenges, and set our path for the next fiscal year. I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce our updated plan.

BNL’s story of outstanding scientific achievement spans more than six decades. The key to our continued success is a strategy that defines our mission and vision, our core scientific capabilities, and how these capabilities connect with the major activities and initiatives we plan to undertake. In other words, our vision defines what we want to be, our mission defines what we intend to do, and our strategy defines how we plan to do it.

Our plan also details crucial infrastructure investments and opportunities for growth outside those core capabilities.

This online summary provides a high-level look at our strategy, capabilities, and initiatives. The list of facilities, projects, and research directions is not all-inclusive; instead it is meant to be a broad outline of our priorities for future research – areas where additional funding and effort will be expended to reach institutional goals.

The Decade Ahead

As we move through the next decade, the Lab’s vision is to be the “provider of choice” for world-class science and facilities in support of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science and its mission to enable breakthroughs that ensure a successful future for our nation. To us, this means excellence in all aspects of our work – from science, to safety, to project management, and more.

The Laboratory’s mission for the coming decade focuses on three broad areas: (1) advancing fundamental research in nuclear and particle physics to gain a deeper understanding of matter, energy, space, and time; (2) applying photon sciences and nanomaterials research to energy problems of critical importance to the nation; and (3) performing cross-disciplinary research to understand the relationship between climate change, sustainable energy, and the Earth’s ecosystems.

How do we do this? By pursuing the evolution and continued scientific leadership of the Lab’s user facilities — the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS), Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), and Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) — and focusing on five major activities built on our existing core capabilities.

Core Capabilities

Over several decades, Brookhaven has developed expertise in specific areas of science and associated applications through the conception, design, construction, and operation of advanced facilities like the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS), RHIC, NSLS, and CFN. These capabilities include:

The Laboratory defines its mission — what we intend to do — in terms of these core capabilities, which represent areas of science we are truly excited about.