Kegonsa Research Campus - General Description

The Kegonsa Research Campus (KRC) is located 12 miles south of the main campus in the Town of Dunn. It is situated on 240 acres of agricultural property owned by the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Forty acres of the property have been set aside for "government use". The remaining acreage is in cultivation for agricultural crops.

The KRC consists of the Physical Sciences Laboratory (PSL), the Synchrotron Radiation Center (SRC), the Center for NanoTechnologies (CNTech), two Medical Physics Groups, the Nuclear Engineering-Engineering Physics Research Facility, one SRC Affiliated Facility, and a Limnology/ Sea Grant boat storage faciliy. Their respective missions are summarized as follows:

  • Physical Sciences Laboratory

    • PSL is a fee for service research and development facility and development facility that provides consulting, design, fabrication, testing and calibration of scientific instrumentation. As a UW-Madison service facility, PSL's first priority is the UW-Madison's faculty and staff, although PSL's expertise and unique capabilities are available to other institutions throughout the world and to the private sector as needed.

  • Synchrotron Radiation Center

    • SRC is a national light source, funded by the National Science Foundation, that is available for the study of electronic and optical properties of atoms, molecules and materials. Aladdin, an electron storage ring, is the primary research tool providing synchrotron radiation which consists primarily of light waves in the infra red to X-ray portion of the spectrum. Researchers use the synchrotron radiation to investigate a substance's properties such as absorption, reflectance, luminescence or conductivity.

  • Center for NanoTechnologies

    • CNTech is an interdisciplinary research center administered by the College of Engineering with participants from Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Material Sciences. The center is oriented towards developing technology for the semiconductor industry, particularly to the lithographic processes for making integrated circuits. Funding is obtained from a variety of scientific, public and private sources, and it is part of a national program to increase the technology base and competitiveness of US industry in the international semiconductor market.

  • SRC Affiliated Facilities

    1. The Canadian Synchrotron Radiation Facility (CSRF) is a Canadian National Facility, owned and managed by the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). It is funded by the NRC, the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Ontario Centre for Material Research. It is operated by the University of Western Ontario. The center maintains three beamlines at SRC in support of the synchrotron research interests of chemists, physicists, geologists, chemical and material science engineers from British Columbia to the Quebec Province.

  • Medical Physics

      • Medical Physics activites are centered on two facilities: the Tomotherapy Group and the Soft X-ray Cellular Biology Group.

    1. The Tomotherapy group is developing a new radiation therapy system for cancer treatment. This system will precisely target and destroy cancerous tumors while minimizing the damage to surrounding tissues. This will be accomplished by marryingthe accuracy of a CTscan with the cancer destroying radiation from an X-band radiographic linear accelerator. The CT scan will accurately identify the tumor locations and shape. Then the intensity modulated output from the accelerator will precisely target the cancerous cells as it rotates in a spiral pattern arround the patient.

    2. The Cellular Biology facility supports the Medical Physics beam line at the SRC. This facility is unique in the western hemisphere, allowing cellular radiation effects investigation in a heretofore unique energy region. Experimenters from the departments of Medical Physics, Human Oncology and Materials Science collaborate in a synergistic manner at this facility. Funding is derived from the National Institues of Health, National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

  • Energy Core Facility

    • The Nuclear Engineering - Engineering Physics Research Facility is conducting studies on the impact of energetic interactions between water and molten metals that have been observed in several industries where the two accidentally came in contact with each other. This is especially important in the recycle and treatment of both hazardous and radioactive wastes where a new process called catalytic extraction processing (CEP) is used to break the materials down into less dangerous components that can be reused or disposed of more easily. This process is also being considered as a damage control mechanism in the event of a nuclear reactor accident. The danger of the interactions under these conditions needs to be assesed. This group is carrying out studies that will provide answers to these questions.

  • Center for Limnology

    • The Limnology/Sea Grant Boat Facility provides maintenance and storage space for research boats involved in the lake studies being conducted by the two facilities.