[2][10] In March 2009, it was announced that the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory was to receive $68.3 million in Recovery Act Funding to be disbursed by Department of Energy's Office of Science.

[11] In October 2016, Bits and Watts launched as a collaboration between SLAC and Stanford University to design "better, greener electric grids".

[12] In April of 2024, SLAC completed two decades of work constructing the world's largest digital camera for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) project at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile.

The above-ground klystron gallery atop the beamline, was the longest building in the United States until the LIGO project's twin interferometers were completed in 1999.

Grad student Barrett D. Milliken discovered the first Z event on 12 April 1989 while poring over the previous day's computer data from the Mark II detector.

It is now used exclusively for materials science and biology experiments which take advantage of the high-intensity synchrotron radiation emitted by the stored electron beam to study the structure of molecules.

SLAC plays a primary role in the mission and operation of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, launched in August 2008.

The principal scientific objectives of this mission are: The Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) is partially housed on the grounds of SLAC, in addition to its presence on the main Stanford campus.

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is a free electron laser facility located at SLAC.

The LCLS is partially a reconstruction of the last 1/3 of the original linear accelerator at SLAC, and can deliver extremely intense x-ray radiation for research in a number of areas.

The laser's wavelength, ranging from 6.2 to 0.13 nm (200 to 9500 electron volts (eV))[24][25] is similar to the width of an atom, providing extremely detailed information that was previously unattainable.

The new system will utilize the 500 m (1,600 ft) of existing tunnel to add a new superconducting accelerator at 4 GeV and two new sets of undulators that will increase the available energy range of LCLS.

This facility was capable of delivering 20 GeV, 3 nC electron (and positron) beams with short bunch lengths and small spot sizes, ideal for beam-driven plasma acceleration studies.

The FACET-II project will re-establish electron and positron beams in the middle third of the LINAC for the continuation of beam-driven plasma acceleration studies in 2019.