No frontrunner among ideas for new SLAC name
BY DAN STOBER
After 46 years, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) will be getting a new name, one that probably will not include the word "Stanford"—even though the university will continue to run the laboratory.
The existing name is going the way of history, with a new moniker to be announced this fall. Suggestions are being accepted.
The laboratory got its self-descriptive name in 1962, when construction began on the 2-mile-long linear accelerator. It opened for business in 1966, smashing subatomic particles together to better understand the smallest parts of nature. SLAC has always been a federal research facility, operated on a daily basis by Stanford under the terms of a contract with its owner, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
Energy Department officials say a name change is needed to reflect a change in the lab's mission, with new emphasis on photon science and particle astrophysics.
But why the disappearance of "Stanford" from the new title? It stems from a trademark disagreement between Stanford and the Energy Department. Last year DOE filed a trademark and copyright application for "Stanford Linear Accelerator Center," part of a larger effort to establish legal protection for the names of DOE labs across the country.
Stanford, however, objected to the trademark request, on grounds that the university owns the rights to "Stanford."
"Both sides have a very rightful position," said Bill Madia, Stanford's vice president for SLAC, and a former director of two DOE labs, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
As these issues were "rattling through the system," Madia said, it became clear they might both be solved with a rename that didn't include "Stanford." The lab could get a new, mission-oriented name, and the university would not have to worry about trademark infringement.
But what new name? The decision is ultimately the Energy Department's, but SLAC has a committee working to come up with some suggestions. One oft-discussed idea: Call the lab "SLAC," with the letters no longer standing for any particular words. That's what happened to the Stanford Research Institute, which is now SRI International. That offering is not expected to carry the day, however; an acronym that stands for nothing is not what the DOE has in mind.
Some SLAC employees have attempted to come up with a new name that would still spell S-L-A-C while reflecting the changing research priorities. There is precedent for that on campus, with HEPL. The High-Energy Physics Laboratory became the Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory. But with SLAC, the task is more difficult, and no suggestions have caught on, including the idea of having the "S" stand for Sand Hill Road, the lab's home address. Then there is the suggestion that the lab be named in honor of Wolfgang "Pief" Panofsky, the lab's founder and first director.
For the Energy Department, the focus is on finding a name that captures the excitement of new research such as the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), said Devon Streit of DOE's Office of Laboratory Policy in the Office of Science.
The under-construction LCLS, with stunningly powerful and brief bursts of X-ray laser light, will take freeze-frame snapshots on the nano scale, providing images, for example, of chemical reactions at the molecular level for the first time. The LCLS is expected to have an impact on medicine, electronics, biology, solid-state physics, nanotechnology, energy production and materials science.
"It's going to be a real world-class facility," Streit said.
Suggestions for a new name are coming in from around the world, including overseas physics establishments like CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland. There's no frontrunner yet, but there's a chance the new name could include the words "national laboratory," as do some other DOE labs, including the Bay Area's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
A number of the labs have geographical names: Ames, Berkeley, Idaho, Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Savannah River. Menlo Park, the nearest town to SLAC, has a certain coincidental scientific connection, but on the wrong coast. Thomas Edison built his famous laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J.
"Silicon Valley National Laboratory," which has been suggested, is a bit unfocused. "Jasper Ridge National Laboratory" is a favorite of some SLAC employees who appreciate the beauty of the nearby wooded area in the Santa Cruz Mountains, but it says nothing of the lab's mission.
All things being possible, it's at least remotely conceivable that some sort of trademark settlement could be reached between the university and the Energy Department and "Stanford" would find a place in the new name.
To offer your own suggestions, go to http://today.slac.stanford.edu/feature/2008/new-name-for-slac.asp.