METU-The Research and Application Center for Space and Accelerator Technologies (İVME-R) was founded in 15^th of April 2019, in accordance with the Higher Education Council Law No. 2547 and announced in the Legal Gazette.

A lecturer in METU Physics Department, Prof. Dr. M. Bilge Demirköz was appointed director of İVME-R at 7^th of May, 2019. İVME-R aims to be a center for expertise for Turkey’s national goals on space & accelerators, to decrease scientific, technologic and economic dependency on foreign countries and to enable Turkey to have a voice in international market with developing unique technologies.

By doing analysis, design, tests, integration and application for space & accelerator technologies, IVME-R aims to increase Turkey’s competition power in these fields. İVME-R’s other aims can be counted as decreasing brain drain by creating an attractive environment for working on space & accelerator technologies and creating opportunities for homecoming of out-of-country scientists, eventually to decrease the need for qualified human power to contribute to Turkey’s needs.

The fields of activity of our center in line with its goals and objectives;

• To be an effective partner of the scientific community in the field of space and accelerator technologies in the world,
• To conduct research in the field of space and accelerator technologies, to carry out national and international projects,
• Organizing national and international related courses, conferences, seminars, competitions, congresses, symposiums,
• To support research activities of university members,
• To support university students' social and scientific activities in accordance with the aims of the center, their research studies on related subjects at the undergraduate, graduate and doctoral level, and to train expert human resources by providing the necessary infrastructure.

Our Center’s "Particle Radiation Tests Creation Laboratory" project will perform a tests on the developed electronic materials for the space program and "METU Defocusing Beam Line", which carries the distinction of being Turkey's first Particle Radiation Testing Infrastructure, is located in Sarayköy Nuclear Energy Research Institute Department (NÜKEN).

The Center has an R&D Laboratory in the Physics Department of METU, where our projects are carried out, is included in the process of structuring and infrastructure.

METU - İVME-R; is the first Turkey based Research Center to be a member of CERN OpenLAB, founded by CERN.