User Facilities and Work for Others

Throughout the country, DOE OHER-funded facilities, technology and staff have been used by various government agencies. These agencies include the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as well as many private-sector corporations. User facilities and the Work for Others (WFO) program communicate science through these collaborative efforts while advancing scientific and technical expertise in a cost-effective way. Over 100 agencies, corporations, and universities have joined DOE in participating in the WFO program.

One such highly collaborative program is the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program, an atmospheric measurement and modeling project. ARM provides basic research information that will later be used by farmers, aviators, and weather forecasters. The ARM program exemplifies teamwork and the sharing of expertise of 10 national laboratories, 18 universities, 11 government agencies, 4 foreign participants, and 3 private companies. Shown at the left, a weather observation balloon is launched from the Southern Great Plains test site located near the Kansas-Oklahoma border.

Another example of a collaborative effort is the Alpha Particle Microbeam project (right) initiated at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in 1989. The microbeam, which allows basic mechanistic studies at the individual cell level, has been used in research supported by NIH and NASA as well as DOE. The single-particle irradiation technique was first developed at PNNL but has since spread to other laboratories, including Texas A&M University, Columbia University, and the Gray Laboratory in London, England. (citation)