It operates a broad range of research infrastructures like supercomputers, an atmospheric simulation chamber, electron microscopes, a particle accelerator, cleanrooms for nanotechnology, among other things.

Current research priorities include the structural change in the Rhineland lignite-mining region, hydrogen, and quantum technologies.

FZJ has 15 branch offices in Germany and abroad, including eight sites at European and international neutron and synchrotron radiation sources, two joint institutes with the University of Münster, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), and three offices of Project Management Jülich (PtJ) in the cities of Bonn, Rostock, and Berlin.

[4] The institution was established on 11 December 1956 by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia as a registered association before it was renamed Nuclear Research Centre Jülich in 1967.

In 1959, it became the "Arbeitsgemeinschaft Versuchsreaktor GmbH" (AVR GmbH) – a consortium of 15 local electricity suppliers headed by the Düsseldorf municipal utilities (Stadtwerke Düsseldorf) as the owner and operator (other partners included the municipal utilities in Aachen, Bonn, Bremen, Hagen, Hanover, Munich, and Wuppertal).

AVR received scientific support and operating subsidies from the Nuclear Research Centre Jülich (KFA) but was formally independent.

This contamination was caused by the coating of the fuel pellets made of silicon carbide and porous carbon, which leaked under the high temperatures in the reactor core and released radioactive fission products.

Safety researcher Rainer Moormann, who raised public attention to the graphite dust contamination, was awarded the Whistleblower Prize in 2011.

[12] Research into what is now known as neuroscience began in 1964 when the Institute of Nuclear Medicine was founded and radiotracers were developed and used in imaging techniques.

The other members of the Board of Directors are – as of October 2021 – Karsten Beneke (vice-chair since 2011), Astrid Lambrecht (since 2021), and Frauke Melchior (since 2021).

[24] On 10 December 2007, Peter Grünberg from Forschungszentrum Jülich was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics together with Albert Fert from Paris-Sud University in France.

[26] The Wolf Prize in Physics was also jointly awarded in 2011 to Knut Urban from Forschungszentrum Jülich, Maximilian Haider from CEOS GmbH, Heidelberg, and Harald Rose from the Technical University of Darmstadt for their breakthrough in electron microscopy.

In 2002, Maria-Regina Kula und Martina Pohl won the German Future Prize for the development of biological catalysts.

After successful completion of their final exams, trainees are offered a six-month employment contract in their chosen profession.

[45][46] The bioeconomy is an economic system based on the sustainable use of biological resources including plants, animals, and microorganisms.

It is argued that a bioeconomy will become necessary due to the finite nature of oil reserves, on which many industrial and everyday products are based, anthropogenic climate change, and the continued growth of the world population.

[48] The Rhineland lignite-mining region, where FZJ is located, is undergoing an important structural change due to the coal phase-out.

These projects include the cultivation of novel plants, sustainable agriculture, and the hydrogen economy, as well as collaborations between the field of information and industry, for example in the area of artificial intelligence or data analysis.

FZJ coordinates and is involved in several research infrastructures in the ESFRI Roadmap, which identifies strategically important facilities and platforms in the EU.

Examples include the neuroscientific digital platform EBRAINS,[53][54] the EMPHASIS project for plant phenotyping,[55] the coordination of the European supercomputer network PRACE,[56] and the IAGOS cooperation for research into the Earth's atmosphere using instruments on commercial aircraft.

[57] The Ernst Ruska-Centre 2.0 for ultrahigh-resolution electron microscopy and the German contribution to the European Aerosols, Clouds and Trace gases Research Infrastructure (ACTRIS-D) [58] have been part of Germany's National Roadmap since 2019.

[66] The JUWELS supercomputer (Jülich Wizard for European Leadership Science) was put into operation in 2018 and was expanded in 2020 to include a GPU-based booster module.

[68] The Institute of Neurosciences and Medicine (INM) develops and applies medical imaging techniques using MRI and PET for clinical applications and to investigate neurological, neuropsychological, and psychological issues.

In addition, JCNS has branch offices at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble and at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) in Oak Ridge.

EBRAINS is a digital, European research infrastructure that was created as part of the EU-funded Human Brain Project (HBP).

Forschungszentrum Jülich supports the infrastructure by providing computing capacities for simulations and big data analyses.

The aim of this EU platform, which is coordinated by Forschungszentrum Jülich, is to analyse and quantify the external characteristics of plants (the "phenotype") such as the root architecture or the number of leaves.

1550 m2) provides a research infrastructure for the development of membrane systems, covering the entire spectrum of services from the production of the materials needed and the characterization using analytical instruments right up to the testing of modules and components.

Through a globally parallel data system, applications had access to more than 60 terabytes of storage space and an integrated tape drive with a capacity of one petabyte.

The services offered range from occupational health and safety to emergency medical care and psychosocial counselling.