User Facilities

Brochure (7.4MB) The BES user facilities provide open access to specialized instrumentation and expertise that enable scientific users from universities, national laboratories, and industry to carry out experiments and develop theories that could not be done at their home institutions. These forefront research facilities require resource commitments well beyond the scope of any non-government institution and open up otherwise inaccessible facets of Nature to scientific inquiry. For approved, peer-reviewed projects, operating time is available without charge to researchers who intend to publish their results in the open literature. These large-scale user facilities many of which were justified and built to serve a specific discipline of the physical sciences have made significant contributions to many other fields of importance, including biology and medicine. Over 10,000 scientists (16KB) conduct experiments at BES user facilities annually. Thousands of other researchers collaborate with these users and analyze the data from the experiments at the facilities to publish new scientific findings in peer-reviewed journals.

• X-ray Light Sources
• Neutron Scattering Facilities
• Nanoscale Science Research Centers
• Electron-Beam Microcharacterization Centers