A boost in funding and a shift in focus to photon science have prompted expansion at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California.

Lisa Mongetta, the lab's human-resources manager, says the lab is seeking more than half-a-dozen physicists, research scientists and engineers, although she warned that the number could change rapidly. In recent weeks SLAC has filled dozens of other positions. The expansion is a reversal of fortunes for the lab, which in January 2008 announced it would shut down one of its colliders as a result of budget cuts (see Nature 451, 235; 2008).