Michigan State University operates FRIB as a scientific user facility for the Office of Nuclear Physics in the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

The heart of FRIB is a high-power superconducting linear accelerator that accelerates all ions from hydrogen to uranium to at least 200 MeV/nucleon and produces rare isotopes by in-beam fragmentation. FRIB will enable scientific research with fast, stopped, and reaccelerated rare isotope beams, supporting a community of 1,800 scientists from around the world.