As advanced research requires ever more complex and large-scale facilities, the task of designing, developing, maintaining, and operating such facilities requires technical, scientific and management capabilities often beyond the scope of individual research groups. An organization such as AUI can provide the management oversight to ensure the success of these challenging enterprises while maintaining the scientific focus desired by the community. Our facilities recruit and maintain a professional staff of the highest competence, and we attempt to provide a work environment that is conducive to personal and professional growth. Over its 60-year history of providing the community with tools at the forefront of research, several of which have resulted in Nobel Prizes, AUI has performed with great success. In all its endeavors, AUI has always stressed excellence, from its style of governance, to the execution of its projects.
Our Board of Trustees, drawn from universities, research institutions and industry, provides a close link with the research community, to ensure its involvement and to provide oversight as we pursue programs of the highest scientific caliber. We recognize that in addition to the pursuit of pure knowledge, we have a responsibility to provide returns to the nation in the form of innovation, improved technical expertise and processes, and importantly, in the education of students and of the general public.
The new insights into the natural world we live in will not have a significant social impact if confined to a small number of professionals.
A vigorous outreach program within the available resources has been and remains a high priority for all AUI activities. At the current time, as AUI’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory operates three forefront radio telescopes for the benefit of the international astronomy community, and as we are transforming one of them into a new forefront observatory, the Expanded Very Large Array, we are also very proud of our newest endeavor, serving as the North American executive in building the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, or ALMA, in Chile along with our international partners. ALMA will be the world’s forefront millimeter and submillimeter observatory, providing a new window on the origins of galaxies and of planetary systems.
We feel that our record of accomplishment, our institutions, our academic connections, and the competence of our staff gives us a strong base to build for the future. We look with confidence to the challenges to come.
Dr. Ethan J. Schreier
President of AUI, Inc.
Associated Universities, Inc. unites the resources of universities, research organizations and the Federal Government in the planning, construction, and operation of forefront scientific facilities that promote discovery and education while expanding our knowledge of the physical world.
