In 1970, the building which is currently called the Multidisciplinary Engineering and Sciences Hall (MES Hall) was erected to house the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility (IUCF), one of the major nuclear research facilities in the United States. The primary mission of the facility was to enhance understanding of the structure of the atomic nucleus and its interactions by providing an environment for the research, development, and application of accelerator physics, nuclear physics, nuclear science, and materials science. The IUCF consisted of a large four-sector cyclotron, capable of accelerating protons to 200 MeV, preceded by a smaller injector of the same design.

The facility first became operational in 1976. Over the ensuing years, the facility would house many new additions to expand research possibilities, with one of these additions being the Indiana Cooler storage ring. The IUCF was operated as a multidisciplinary user facility, and scientists from other institutions were invited to submit research proposals. Each submitted proposal was assessed by a program advisory committee (PAC), and approved proposals would be allotted research time at the cyclotron facility. The IUCF housed research activities from organizations around the world, including NASA.

The records in this collection specifically document the proposal, construction, operation, and research output of the Indiana Cooler storage ring at the IUCF. G.I. Budker proposed in 1966 that the phase space of an ion beam orbiting in a storage ring can be reduced with a co-moving electron beam of matched velocity. Robert Pollock of the IUCF recognized that this technology could benefit nuclear physics research, and in 1983 he proposed the building of a new experimental environment, the "Indiana Cooler" storage ring.

The Cooler was a storage ring for light ions, consisting of a circular magnet lattice of about 100 meters in circumference, featuring an intense stored beam circulating through a thin internal target. The Cooler ring was built specifically to enable the novel technology of electron cooling, which made the use of an internal target possible.

The building addition was completed in 1985, and the first cooled beam began orbiting in the ring in April 1988. The proton beam from the cyclotron was injected into the Cooler storage ring on a time-share basis with experiments in other areas of the IUCF. The Cooler storage ring could accelerate a stored proton beam to 500 MeV, beyond the pion production threshold in nucleon-nucleon collisions. For a time, the Indiana Cooler contained the highest-energy electron-cooled beam in the world.

In 1989, the Cooler was used to accomplish the first demonstration of a "Siberian snake," an arrangement of longitudinal magnetic field solenoids which made non-vertical beam polarization possible. After fourteen years of constant use and an impressive string of research output, the final beam in the Cooler storage ring was orbited in July 2002.

After being funded by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for years, the IUCF was funded through medical and commercial use from 1998 onward. The cyclotron delivered its final beam on December 5, 2014, and the IUCF closed at the end of the year.