The F.R. Newman Laboratory for Elementary-Particle Physics (LEPP) is a research laboratory of the Cornell University Department of Physics engaged primarily in experimental and theoretical Elementary Particle Physics (EPP) and Accelerator Physics. The primary source of support for LEPP research is the National Science Foundation. LEPP is housed in two main buildings: F.R. Newman Laboratory houses faculty offices, LEPP management, the LEPP theory group, the SuperConducting RF group, machine shop and drafting shop. R. R. Wilson Synchrotron Laboratory houses the CESR storage ring and support staff, the CLEO detector and CLEO collaborator offices, the CHESS facility, and the LNS electronics shop.

Buried 40 feet beneath Alumni Field on the Cornell University campus is the 768 meter Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR). CESR is an electron-positron collider operating at a center-of-mass energy in the range of 3.5-12 GeV. Its performance builds on Cornell.s longstanding program in accelerator physics: Cornell built a cyclotron as early as 1935. CESR, completed in 1979, stores beams accelerated by the Cornell Synchrotron, an earlier machine used for fixed target experiments. Using superconducting radio-frequency cavities and pretzel orbits (both technologies developed at Cornell), CESR operated throughout the 1990.s as the highest luminosity electron-positron collider in the world. CLEO-c is a dedicated program of charm physics at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR).