The Cyclotron Institute at Texas A&M University

Since the first cyclotron beam fifty years ago, the Texas A&M Cyclotron Institute has functioned as a university-based laboratory. Over the past two decades it has been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the State of Texas, the Welch Foundation, and commercial sale of beam-time. The first accelerator is a conventional isochronous cyclotron modeled after the 88″ cyclotron at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. It arose from a proposal funded by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the R. A. Welch Foundation (a private foundation headquartered in Houston), and the State of Texas and continued to operate from 1967 to 1987. After recommissioning in 2007 as a higher-field K150 machine, it is still in operation. The K500 cyclotron, funded in 1980 by the Welch Foundation and Texas A&M University and modeled after the Michigan State NSCL K500 cyclotron, is a superconducting isochronous cyclotron whose first beam was extracted in 1988.