The grant, announced last Monday, will allow Michigan State to refurbish and couple its two superconducting cyclotrons, or atom smashers. The result will be equipment so powerful it will do in about half a day experiments which now would take a year.
"It will allow us to do things that haven't been possible up until now," said Konrad Gelbke, director of the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at the university.
"It's a cost-effective move in a field that's experiencing explosive growth - and intense competition - worldwide."
Cyclotrons can be used to create radioactive isotopes and other particles, such as those used as "tracers" in medicine and other sciences. Nuclear physicists might use cyclotrons to study how the elements making up the world were formed.
They are used in laboratories across the world, mostly for nuclear research.
The National Science Foundation will give Michigan state $12 million over the next five years for the project, redirect $3.7 million from the existing spending for the lab's operation and authorize another year for its $9.3 million operating fund.
The grant will pay to join the two existing cyclotrons to produce radioactive beams of much higher intensity.
Michigan State will provide $6 million, in addition to a previous start-up investment that included a $1.3 million building addition.
The work is expected to be completed by 2001.
The lab has two cyclotrons, the K500, the first of its kind in the world, and a more powerful K1200. In the past decade, some 500 scientists and 60 doctorate students worldwide have used the Michigan State cyclotrons.
Cyclotrons accelerate particles of atoms, using low voltages of electricity and magnetic fields. Particles hurled out of the cyclotron target a nucleus, resulting in the formation of other particles.
Some of the particles created exist for less than a few thousandths of a second, but still long enough for experiments to be conducted.