Research Facilities

Research facilities include:

• MSU hosts the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science (DOE-SC) user facility. FRIB is funded by the DOE-SC, MSU and the State of Michigan. Supporting the mission of the Office of Nuclear Physics in DOE-SC, FRIB will enable scientists to make discoveries about the properties of rare isotopes (that is, short-lived nuclei not normally found on Earth), nuclear astrophysics, fundamental interactions, and applications for society, including in medicine, homeland security, and industry. FRIB will commence its experimental program in 2022. Until then the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) will continue to operate. NSCL, is a National Science Foundation funded national user facility with the mission to allow scientists from all over the world to make scientific discoveries about the inner workings of atoms and their role in the universe.
• Keck Microfabrication Facility
• X-ray diffraction apparatus employing X-ray cameras and a 12 kW rotating anode X-ray source;
• photo and electron-beam lithographic facilities for device fabrication with 50nm resolution;
• two automated SQUID Susceptometers;
• an electron spin resonance laboratory;
• an ultrahigh-vacuum four-gun sputtering system;
• an advanced test facility for trigger development for the DZero experiment at Fermilab;
• Acoustic labs
  • 174 cubic meter reverberation room
  • 32 cubic meter anechoic room
  • sound localization test facility
• a number of data acquisition and analysis computers;
• a state-of-the-art electronics design facility.
• High Performance Computing Center

Important off-campus facilities in the high-energy area include the accelerator at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois; the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York; the accelerator complex at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland and Argonne National Laboratory, where experiments are currently carried out by MSU faculty and students.

The astronomy faculty makes use of the facilities on campus, which include a 0.6m telescope, and of the observatories at Kitt Peak (Arizona), WIRO (Wyoming), Mounts Wilson and Palomar (California), Sliding Springs (Australia), and Cerro Tololo and Las Campanas (Chile). MSU has joined the SOAR consortium and built a 4-meter telescope near La Serena, Chile.