From NSCL (National Superconducting Cyclotron Facility) to FRIB (Facility for Rare Isotope Beams) at MSU

The NSCL (National Superconducting Cyclotron Facility) is funded by the National Science Foundation under a cooperative agreement to operate NSCL's Coupled Cyclotron Facility (CCF) as a national user facility. NSCL supports research and education in nuclear science, nuclear astrophysics, and accelerator & beam physics and engineering. In 2009, Michigan State University (MSU) and the Department of Energy signed a cooperative agreement to design and establish the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at MSU, which will advance understanding of rare nuclear isotopes and the evolution of the cosmos. FRIB will be built adjacent to NSCL. CCF operations will cease and the NSCL infrastructure will merge into the FRIB laboratory when FRIB construction nears completion. In this talk, I will provide a high-level summary of the NSCL's current facility and research plans, the envisioned integration into FRIB, the FRIB project status, and emerging new opportunities.
Konrad Gelbke is a University Distinguished Professor in the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy and Director of NSCL (National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory) at Michigan State University. He earned his PhD in physics at the University of Heidelberg in 1973. He spent several years as a researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California before joining NSCL in 1977. Dr. Gelbke has 35 years of experimental nuclear physics experience. His refereed research has been cited 8,700 times and he has an h-index of 54. He has managed over $350 million in funding during his career, 31 years of which have been dedicated to establishing a world-class experimental nuclear physics research program at MSU with collaborators worldwide. As NSCL Director, he focused on advancing rare-isotope science and education at NSCL. Dr. Gelbke has served on the DOE/NSF Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC), including service as Chair. Dr. Gelbke has served on more than 80 committees worldwide, including writing committees of three consecutive U.S. long range plans for nuclear science, and chairing a major program review for Germany's Helmholtz Association. He is co-initiator of MSU's High Performance Computing Center.