Thank you President Hennesey, Congresswoman Eshoo, Congressman Honda, distinguished guests. On behalf of the Department of Energy, it is a great honor to celebrate with you today the inauguration of the Kavli Center here at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. I come with the warmest regards of Director of the Office of Science – and Presidential nominee for Under Secretary of Science – Ray Orbach, who regrets very much that he was unable to come today.

This is a very exciting time for the Office of High Energy physics in DOE. This laboratory was founded 44 years ago with a mission to understand what defines the Universe at its most fundamental level. What are its building blocks? And what are the powerful forces of nature that bind these basic constituents together?

Now such questions are as old as civilization, and while nature doesn’t necessarily hide the answers from us, it doesn’t always make the answers easy to see. Like many secrets even in our own lives, the greatest and deepest of nature’s secrets are not hidden at all, but lie unseen just in front of our eyes.

The key is the tools we use to see nature for what she is. We pursue these questions with our theory and experimental high energy physics tools. Our accelerator physicists are working hard to develop the tools for the future such as the international linear collider.

We at DOE are pleased and proud to see that the accelerator tools, originally developed from high energy physics, have led to new technologies and tools for the study of the structure of matter and biological materials at SSRL and are driving the development of revolutionary new tools such as the world’s first x-ray Free Electron Laser: the LCLS.

But the greatest tool of all that nature has created to understand herself is that of the human mind, a resource that this great laboratory and this great university set the world’s standard.

These are exciting times. We now see the high energy physics program of the laboratory broadening to include ventures in particle astrophysics and cosmology. For 44 years we have spent exploring 5% of what makes up the known Universe. Cosmologists are now telling us that the other 95% of the Universe is made of something completely different and unknown! These scientific challenges and opportunities are every bit as exciting as the challenges and opportunities that motivated the founding of this lab 44 years ago. In this sense history repeats itself, but on an entirely new and revolutionary path.

I would like to compliment the Chen family – Pehong and Adele – and the Stanford University leadership for their vision of this Institute that capitalizes on the strengths and resources of a great DOE lab and a great research University to launch a unique scientific opportunity. To Pierre Schwob for his generous contribution for Kavli’s computer center. I would like to thank Roger Blandford and Steven Kahn for their willingness and enthusiasm to lead this great adventure.

I would especially acknowledge and thank Fred Kavli for his very generous gift which is enabling us to realize this bold vision.

Thank you very much, and thank you Fred, for a great and beautiful partnership, and for the scientific adventure we have embarked on together.