Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ)

The Jülich Research Centre (German: Forschungszentrum Jülich, short FZJ) is based near Jülich, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is a member of the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft.

Founded in 1956 as the Kernforschungsanlage Jülich (nuclear research institute Jülich, short KFA) it was originally focused on nuclear research. It was the site of three nuclear reactors, all now shut down:

• AVR reactor, the world's first pebble bed reactor, operating from 1966 till 1988.
• MERLIN reactor, also known as FRJ-1, a 5 MWt pool-type reactor operating from 1962 until 1985 (not to be confused with MERLIN reactor at Aldermaston).
• A DIDO class reactor simply called DIDO operating from 1962 (not to be confused with the original DIDO at Harwell Research Establishment), .

In 1990 the institute was renamed to the more neutral name as other fields of research were added in the meantime. More recently it has become involved in a number of Grid computing projects, such as UNICORE, DEISA and EUROGRID. It is also part of the European Gauss Centre for Supercomputing.

Recent scientific breakthroughs at the research centre include the discovery of the Giant magnetoresistive effect in 1988 (simultaneously with the Université de Paris Sud).