Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based Sciences and Education
research institute at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY
The Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based ScienceS and Education (CLASSE) is a particle accelerator facility located in Wilson Laboratory on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York. CLASSE was formed by merging the Cornell High-Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) and the Laboratory for Elementary-Particle Physics (LEPP) in July 2006. Nigel Lockyer is the Director of CLASSE in spring of 2023.
The Wilson Synchrotron Lab, which houses both the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) and CHESS, is named after Robert R. Wilson, known for his work as a group leader in the Manhattan Project, for being the first director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and for contributing to the design of CESR.
LEPP
The Laboratory for Elementary-Particle Physics (LEPP) is a high-energy physics laboratory studying fundamental particles and their interactions.
The 768-meter Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) is in operation below the campus athletic fields. CESR is an electron-positron collider operating at a center-of-mass energy in the range of 3.5–12 GeV. Completed in 1979, CESR stores beams accelerated by the Cornell Synchrotron.
Adding to a long history of significant developments, such as superconducting radio frequency cavities and pretzel orbits, the accelerator group is now developing an entirely new type of superconducting linear accelerator called the Energy Recovery Linear accelerator (ERL). The group is also involved in the design of damping rings, tracking simulations, RF cavities, and accelerator operation for the International Linear Collider (ILC).
Cornell University has the largest graduate program in accelerator physics in the US.
CHESS
The Cornell High-Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) is a high-intensity, high-energy X-ray light source. The lab provides synchrotron radiation facilities for multidisciplinary scientific research, with a particular focus on protein crystallographic studies under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based Sciences and Education” is research institute at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cornell, Laboratory and Accelerator-based, not as a finished interpretation.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5171539. Authority coordinates are 42.445, -76.473. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2023 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based Sciences and Education” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.