SURA was founded in May 1980 at a meeting at The College of William & Mary, in which a group of research physicists from various universities recognized the opportunity to create a consortium to promote the expansion of nuclear physics in southeastern United States.

SURA was initially formed in response to the science community’s desire to build an electron macerator to explore the role of quarks in nuclear structure.

[3] As a consortium of 57 advanced research institutions, SURA collaborates with its members to bring expertise to support the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Department of Defense in addition to other federal and commercial industry research and development programs.

By the mid-1980s it was clear that access to high-capacity computer resources would be needed to facilitate collaboration among the SURA member institutions.

SURA itself stepped up to the challenge and, with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and SURA universities, “SURAnet” was up and running in 1987, and was part of the first phase of National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) funding as the agency built a network to facilitate scientific collaboration.