The National Science Foundation (NSF) has chosen Homestake, a former gold mine in the Black Hills, near Lead, South Dakota, as the site for a multipurpose deep underground science and engineering laboratory. The proposal, chosen from a field of four finalists, was prepared by a multi-institutional collaboration of researchers and submitted to an NSF site selection panel through the University of California (UC) at Berkeley. Leading the Homestake Collaboration was Kevin Lesko, a physicist who holds a joint appointment with UC Berkeley and the U.S. Department of Energys Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
This is a great event for science and engineering, said Lesko. Clearly the NSF site selection committee members did their homework and we owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude for all their deliberations, effort and dedication. The Homestake Collaboration still has a lot of work in front of us before construction and we will benefit greatly from the combined efforts of all the other collaborations that competed for the site.
In recognition of a $70 million gift for the Homestake effort from T. Denny Sanford, owner of the First Premier Bank and Premier Bankcard Inc., and one of the countrys top philanthropists, the new deep underground research facility will be named the Sanford Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (SUSEL).
Governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a strong supporter of the effort to convert Homestake into a research facility, released a statement in response to the NSF announcement which read in part:
The NSF site selection process was rigorous and fair. On behalf of the citizens of South Dakota, Dr. Lesko and I encourage and welcome collaboration members from the other three (proposed) sites to join with us in making the Sanford Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory a world class laboratory. My hope is that the tremendous talent and wealth of ideas proposed by all of
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Contact: Lynn Yarris
lcyarris@lbl.gov
510-486-5375
DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
10-Jul-2007