Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower loved Colorado. His wife, Mamie, was a Denver native. The Western White House was located each summer at the Brown Palace Hotel in downtown Denver. The President even had a famous heart attack in Denver and was cared for at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital.

During Eisenhower’s two terms, NOAA, NIST (then National Bureau of Standards), NCAR, and I-70 came to Colorado. President Carter’s Solar Energy Research Institute, now NREL, was built in Golden in 1977. The University of Colorado partnered with NOAA, NIST, and NCAR to create CIRES and JILA labs. CSU partnered with NOAA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture labs to create CIRA and jointly house federal labs in Ft. Collins. Then, in 2006, the climate changed.

Wyoming, with massive financial reserves from oil and gas taxes, targeted its education system for investment.

The state of Wyoming and University of Wyoming in Laramie successfully outbid Colorado and our existing university/federal lab partners for what will become the world’s fastest computer - relocating NCAR’s supercomputer to southern Wyoming. Two years previous, a powerful Oklahoma Senator tried unsuccessfully to pull UCAR and portions of NCAR to his home state.

In response, leaders from Colorado Labs, universities, and the business community joined forces to create CO-LABS. Recognizing the enormous benefit the federal labs bring to Colorado, both economically and scientifically, CO-LABS provides the mechanism for these entities to work together to document the value of Colorado’s federal research labs, build a broad, strong constituency of support, facilitate interaction between the labs’ and universities’ tech transfer offices and companies looking to utilize lab technologies, and support retention and expansion of Colorado’s scientific resources.