Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory
The (SSRL), a directorate of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, is an Office of Science user facility operated for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) by Stanford University.
Located in Menlo Park, SLAC is a multi-program national laboratory exploring frontier questions in photon science, astrophysics, biochemistry, material science, particle physics and accelerator research. SLAC engages only in fundamental research that is published or shared broadly with the scientific community. The DOE Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
SSRL produces extremely bright X-rays as a resource for researchers to study our world at the atomic and molecular level. Research at SSRL benefits many sectors of the American economy and leads to major advances in energy production, environmental remediation, nanotechnology, new materials and medicine. SSRL provides unique educational experiences and serves as a vital training ground for future generations of scientists and engineers.
Scientific mission
SSRL enables and supports outstanding scientific research by a broad user community in a safe environment. SSRL operates approximately nine months each year with an extremely high reliability — delivering more than 95 percent of scheduled X-ray beam time. Access to the SSRL is competitive based on peer review. Users disseminate their findings through talks and publications, and new highlights are featured monthly. Experiments conducted at SSRL resulted in approximately 11,600 scientific publications since 1974.