As funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act start to flow into Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, much of that funding is flowing out to small businesses. To date, Berkeley Lab has been awarded more than $220 million in Recovery Act funds, a large part of which will go toward infrastructure projects and buying and upgrading computers and scientific equipment, such as microscopes, lasers and gene sequencers. So far, $38.2 million in Recovery Act subcontracts have been awarded, of which 58 percent went to small businesses.

Through $1.8 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Berkeley Lab scientists will provide technical expertise to help federal energy managers with advanced energy-efficient technologies in lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), and control systems.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced that Berkeley Lab will receive $40.3 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support research in biofuels, fusion energy and the nation’s power grid. This allocation brings Berkeley Lab’s total ARRA funding from the DOE’s Office of Science to $156.1 million.

Old Town had its heyday in the post-World War II years, when Harry Truman was president and America was locked in a nuclear weapons race with the Soviet Union. Today, less than 150 people work in Old Town, half of them in one building. Faced with a critical need for space, Berkeley Lab has applied for $45 million in federal stimulus funding for demolition and remediation of the site and to prepare it for construction.

BELLA has the potential to drastically cut the costs of performing accelerator-based scientific experiments. Systems like BELLA hold the promise of making possible a table-top accelerator with particle energies in the tens of GeV range.

The first portion of an allocated $115.8 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding has arrived at Berkeley Lab. With $70 million directed to nine construction projects, hiring is already underway and is expected to result in up to 700 jobs for local contractors and employees, as well as suppliers in California and around the nation.