ZEL is a scientific and technical joint facility of Research Centre Jülich. Its activities are in the fields of measurement, control engineering, nuclear electronics and on-line data processing in hardware and software and include tasks concerning the scientific and technical infrastructure.

Priority tasks are detector systems, system and interface engineering, experiment automation and user software.

The Institute is subdivided into three departments.

• The department for tools, methods and infrastructure is concerned with the maintenance and further development of complex tools for circuitry and systems development and diagnostics for hardware, communications and computerization.
• The department for experiment data processing and communicartions focuses work on detector systems for medium-energy physics and system engineering.
• The latest department for measurement technology and image processing develops methods for imaging primarily for medicine.