History
AUI was established in 1946 as an educational institution dedicated to research, development, and education in the physical, biological and engineering sciences. Nine northeastern universities joined in sponsoring AUI in 1946: Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, University of Rochester, and Yale University.
AUI was granted an absolute charter by the Board of Regents of the State University of New York Education Department, which called for AUI to "acquire, plan, construct and operate laboratories and other facilities" that would unite the resources of universities, other research organizations and the Federal Government. It was envisioned that AUI would create facilities and laboratories so large, complex, and costly as to be outside the scope of a single university. These facilities were to be made available on a competitive basis to all qualified scientists without regard to affiliation, as well as to resident scientific staff.
Over the years, AUI took on a broad national character with a diversified Board of Trustees from universities and other institutions across the country. The nine founding universities are still represented, although ties to their administrations are not of a formal nature.
From 1947 until 1998, AUI was responsible for building and then managing the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), a multi-disciplinary science research center located on Long Island, New York. In that period, AUI/BNL were responsible for the design, development, construction, and operation of numerous major facilities, the most recent being the National Synchrotron Light Source and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. During AUI's management at Brookhaven, six Nobel prizes were awarded for research conducted wholly or partially at BNL. Four of those prizes were awarded to scientists at the laboratory, in 1957, 1976, 1980 and 1988. AUI lost the contract to manage the BNL in 1998 in the wake of a 1994 fire at the facility's high-beam flux reactor that exposed several workers to radiation and reports in 1997 of a leak of tritium into the groundwater of the Long Island Central Pine Barrens, on which the facility sits.[2][3]
In 1955, AUI proposed the establishment of a national radio observatory and has managed the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) for NSF since its creation in 1956.
In 2002, AUI was named by NSF as the North American Executive for the international Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).
In 2008, AUI, together with the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), created the Virtual Astronomical Observatory LLC, to manage the Virtual Astronomical Observatory for NSF and NASA.
In 2015, AUI, the National Science Foundation (NSF) selected Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) to manage the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) through a new 10-year cooperative agreement. The new agreement includes the operation of the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), the North American share of the international Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), and NRAO's development laboratories and administrative and management functions, effective 1 October 2016.
The Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), which were recommended for divestment several years ago, will exit NRAO and become independent facilities known as the Green Bank Observatory (GBO), with Karen O'Neill as its director, and the Long Baseline Observatory (LBO), with Walter Brisken as its director. Pending submission, review, and approval of a supplemental funding request, AUI will continue managing each under a separate cooperative agreement for the next two years, while NSF decides the long-term future of these facilities.[4]
