Universities Research Association

Universities Research Association

Formation	1965
Headquarters	Washington, D.C., United States
Location	United States Italy Japan United Kingdom
Membership	90
Council of Presidents, Chair	Garnett S. Stokes (2023)^[1] President, University of New Mexico
President and CEO	John C. Mester^[1]
Website	URA

The Universities Research Association is a non-profit association of more than 90 research universities, primarily but not exclusively in the United States. It has members also in Japan, Italy, and in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1965 at the behest of the President's Science Advisory Committee and the National Academy of Sciences to build and operate Fermilab, a National Accelerator Laboratory. Today, the mission of URA is "to establish and operate in the national interest unique laboratories and facilities for research, development, and education in the physical and biological sciences to expand the frontiers of knowledge, foster innovation, and promote the education of future generations of scientists."

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History

The President's Science Advisory Committee and a sister group of the United States Atomic Energy Commission joined forces in 1962 to "assess the future needs in high-energy accelerator physics." The panel's recommendations, issued in 1963, included the need to immediately commence construction and design on a series of cutting-edge, high-energy proton accelerators to ensure that the United States remained at the forefront of this growing set of technologies and the science they permitted. An additional recommendation called for a new administrative construct to ensure robust participation of experts from a broad swath of the Nation’s universities. In early 1965 the National Academy of Sciences addressed this last recommendation by sponsoring a meeting of presidents from twenty-five major research universities to discuss the management of the accelerator facility that would later become the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). The meeting eventually resulted in the decision to form the Universities Research Association, with 34 original members, to build and manage the new accelerator facility. URA filed its articles of incorporation on June 21, 1965. J. C. Warner, president of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, served as URA’s first president.

URA has been involved in complex scientific endeavors, including the development of the Tevatron at Fermilab, early activities related to the Super-Conducting Supercollider, Pierre Auger Cosmic Observatory, the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF), and the associated Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), and involvement in the Honeywell International-led National Technology and Engineering Solutions at Sandia (NTESS) that manages and operates Sandia National Laboratories. Current major projects of the association include supporting Fermilab through a partnership with the University of Chicago and coordinating U.S. support of the Pierre Auger Cosmic Observatory.