The President's Science Advisory Committee and a sister group of the United States Atomic Energy Commission joined forces in 1962 to "assess the future needs in high-energy accelerator physics.

"[2] The panel's recommendations, issued in 1963, included the need to immediately commence design and construction on 200 GeV proton accelerators.

[2] On January 17, 1965, the National Academy of Sciences addressed the last recommendation by sponsoring a meeting of presidents from 25 research universities to discuss the management of the accelerator facility that would later become the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab).

The meeting eventually resulted in the decision to form the Universities Research Association, with 34 original members, to build and manage the new accelerator facility.

Its early activities are related to the Superconducting Supercollider, the Pierre Auger Observatory, the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF), and the associated Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), and involvement in the Honeywell International-led National Technology and Engineering Solutions at Sandia (NTESS) that manages and operates Sandia National Laboratories.