[en] In the past decade, significant advances have been made in the theory and technology of high brightness electron beams and single pass FELS. These developments facilitate the construction of practical UV and X-ray FELs and has prompted proposals to the DOE for the construction of such facilities. There are several important experiments to be performed before committing to the construction of dedicated user facilities. Two experiments are under construction in the IR, the UCLA Self Amplified Spontaneous Emission experiment and the BNL laser seeded Harmonic Generation experiment. A multi-institution collaboration is being organized about a 210 MeV electron linac available at BNL and the 10 meter tong NISUS wiggler. This experiment will be done in the UV and will test various experimental aspects of electron beam dynamics, FEL exponential regime with gain guiding, start up from noise, seeding and harmonic generation. These experiments will advance the state of FEL research and lead towards future dedicated users' facilities