The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the academy’s purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance wit genera policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Bruce Alberts and Dr. William Wulf, chairman and interim vice chairman, respectively, of the National Research Council.
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
William Daley, Secretary Designate
Mary L.Good, Under Secretary for Technology
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Arati Prabhakar, Director
Robert Hebner, Deputy Director
Marc Desrosiers, Contracting Officer’s Technical Representative
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
Bruce Alberts, President
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
Bruce Alberts, Chair
Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications
Robert Hermann, Chair
Norman Metzger, Executive Director
Board on Assessment of NIST Programs
Wilmer R.Bottoms, Chair
Dorothy Zolandz, Director
Barbara Jones, Administrative Assistant
2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20418
202/334–3483
FAX 202/334–2791
BOARD ON ASSESSMENT OF NIST PROGRAMS
General Information
Each year since 1959, the National Research Council has assessed the programs of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and its predecessor, the National Bureau of Standards. Assessments are currently performed by about 150 leading scientists and engineers, equally from U.S. industry and academe, appointed by the National Research Council (NRC), and administered by the NRC’s Board on Assessment of NIST Programs.
Assessment value depends on the quality and relevance of NRC appointees and the extent to which the appointees combined abilities encompass the broad spectrum of scientific and engineering disciplines at NIST. Panel Members are not compensated but participate in the assignments out of a sense of civic and professional responsibility and benefit from the techniques and contacts acquired. Panel Members are appointed for 3-year terms and may not serve more than 2 consecutive terms on the same Panel.
Each Panel makes an annual site visit of a 2- or 3-day duration in the NIST facilities for briefings on the state of NIST, priority concerns, programs, personnel, facilities, plans, and visits with the staff and to the laboratories. Panels assess the national importance of the programs, the technical merit of the effort, the quality of the staff, the state of the equipment, adequacy of financing, and priorities in the context of U.S. need. Panel Members become major channels for the transfer of NIST technology and link NIST scientists to their counterparts in industry and academe.
There are currently seven major Panels, two Subpanels, and as many ad hoc Panels as needed for assessing the seven major organizational areas (electronics and electrical engineering, manufacturing engineering, chemical science and technology, physics, materials science and engineering, building and fire research, and information technology) of NIST. The Board on Assessment of NIST Programs assembles and schedules the Panels, provides direction to the Panels, oversees Panel activities, reports on Board/Panel findings to the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology, the Secretary of Commerce, and sometimes the Congress, and assembles the Panel reports for publication. The Board consists of a Chair, 6 Members-at-Large, and 10 Panel Chairs/Co-Chairs/Vice Chairs.
All Board/Panel reports are reviewed by the NRC Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications and approved by the NRC’s Report Review Committee prior to distribution to the NIST, the Department of Commerce, the Office of Management and Budget, and General Accounting Office, the Library of Congress, appropriate Committees of the Senate and House of Representatives, and are made available to the public.
FUNCTIONS OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a non-regulatory agency within the Commerce Department’s Technology Administration. NIST’s primary mission is to promote economic growth by working with industry to develop and apply technology, measurements, and standards.
NIST carries out its mission through a portfolio of four major programs:
The Advanced Technology Program (ATP). The competitive ATP provides cost-shared awards to industry to develop high-risk, enabling technologies that promise significant commercial pay-offs and widespread benefits for the economy. The ATP provides funding to individual companies and to industry-led joint ventures. The program seeks to build bridges between basic research and product development. It accelerates technologies that otherwise are unlikely to be developed in time to compete in rapidly changing markets without such a partnership of industry and government.
The Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP). The MEP is a grassroots effort to improve the competitiveness of smaller manufacturers by offering access to the business and technology information and expertise that allow them to improve their operations. These smaller companies are assisted through MEP’s nationwide network of affiliated manufacturing extension centers run by local, state, and non-profit groups.
Baldrige National Quality Program. This quality outreach program recognizes and promotes quality improvement by U.S. manufacturing and service companies. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award has become both the U.S. standard of quality achievement in industry and a comprehensive guide to quality improvement.
Laboratory Research and Services. NIST’s laboratory program provides technical leadership for the nation’s measurement and standards infrastructure and assures the availability of needed measurement capability to promote the U.S. economy and public welfare. This effort is planned and implemented in cooperation with industry and focused on infrastructural technologies, such as measurements, standards, evaluated data, and test methods. The benefits from such enabling technologies typically spread across entire industries, and the investments needed to produce them cannot be recovered by individual companies.