A winning hand at TA-51: ACES Complex opens

October 27, 2011—Over the summer, significant investment went into refurbishing Technical Area 51, a facility occupied by the Laboratory's Earth and Environmental Sciences Division. The renovated facility was christened “ACES,” for Atmosphere, Climate, and Ecosystem Science.

The institution chose this location as a target for refurbishment funds because it exemplifies the Laboratory goal of investing in facilities and infrastructure that enable science and engineering, and because of recent programmatic growth in the ACES areas. As of this October, the facility is in operation and fully occupied with Earth and Environmental Sciences staff, many of whom relocated from Technical Area-3.

"The impact of the science we do here is extraordinary," said Nan Sauer, associate director for the Lab's Chemistry, Life, and Earth Sciences. "In five years this site is going to be world renowned."

To celebrate the renovation of the ACES complex, the Earth and Environmental Sciences division hosted an open house on Thursday, October 20. The divisions of Infrastructure Planning and Maintenance and Site Services were critical to the success of the work.

Of the project, Sauer said, “The success is a demonstration of institutional teaming at its best, from the support of upper management to the hard work done by Infrastructure Planning, Craft, and our own Earth and Environmental Sciences employees who undertook the challenging task of cleaning up this old site and planning the upgrade.”

Jim Bossert, the division leader for Earth and Environmental Sciences, added, “I am excited by the integration of scientists and capabilities in this remodeled facility and its potential to define the Lab's future leadership in climate change research."

TA-51 has been an experimental facility, largely for Environmental Programs, since the 1970s. It was only partially occupied for the past five years, and the state of the facility and grounds reflected a trend toward abandonment. Interest in revitalizing TA-51 stemmed from footprint-reduction efforts at TA-3 (staff needed to vacate the dilapidated trailers behind the Physics Building Auditorium) and the Earth and Environmental Sciences desire to consolidate varied climate change projects and their associated high-powered principal investigators in one “new” facility to achieve needed scientific synergy.

More than $500,000 in institutionally-backed facility upgrades have converted aging and neglected space into a collegial and much more modern facility. Staff continue relocating to TA-51, and Earth and Environmental Sciences Division is in the process of building collaborations around the multidisciplinary science encapsulated by the ACES acronym. As result, the Lab will be able to accomplish the ACES work for the DOE Office of Science in innovative ways.