At the request of NIST, the National Research Council1 has, since 1959, annually assembled panels of experts from academia, industry, medicine, and other scientific and engineering environments to assess the quality and effectiveness of the NIST measurements and standards laboratories, of which there are now seven,2 as well as the adequacy of the laboratories’ resources.
At the request of the Director of NIST, in 2015 the National Academies formed the Panel on Review of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and established the following statement of task for the panel:
The National Research Council shall appoint a panel to assess the scientific and technical work performed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Center for Neutron Research. This panel will review technical reports and technical program descriptions prepared by NIST staff and will visit the facilities at the Center for Neutron Research. Visits will include technical presentations by NIST staff, demonstrations of NIST projects, tours of NIST facilities, and discussions with NIST staff. The panel will prepare a report summarizing its assessment findings.
This report presents general observations and recommendations about the NIST Center for Neutron Research, based on the assessment foci of the 2015 review. These observations complement those presented in prior reports,3 whose foci differ.
The Director of NIST requested that the panel focus its assessment on the following factors:
- Assess the organization’s technical programs.
- How does the quality of the research compare to similar world class research in the technical program areas?
- Is the quality of the technical programs adequate for the organization to reach its stated technical objectives? How could it be improved?
- Assess the portfolio of scientific expertise within the organization.
- Does the organization have world class scientific expertise in the areas of the organization’s mission and program objectives? If not, what areas should be improved?
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1 Effective July 1, 2015, the institution is called the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. References in this report to the National Research Council are used in an historical context identifying programs prior to July 1.
2 The seven NIST laboratories are the Engineering Laboratory, the Physical Measurement Laboratory, the Information Technology Laboratory, the Material Measurement Laboratory, the Communication Technology Laboratory, the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, and the NIST Center for Neutron Research.
3 See the National Research Council reports Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Center for Neutron Research—Fiscal Year 2011 and Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Center for Neutron Research—Fiscal Year 2013, published by the National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., in 2011 and 2013, respectively.
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- How well does the organization’s scientific expertise support the organization’s technical programs and the organization’s ability to achieve its stated objectives?
- Assess the adequacy of the organization’s facilities, equipment, and human resources.
- How well do the facilities, equipment, and human resources support the organization’s technical programs and its ability to achieve its stated objectives? How could they be improved?
- Assess the effectiveness by which the organization disseminates its program outputs.
- How well are the organization’s research programs driven by stakeholder needs?
- How effective are the technology transfer mechanisms used by the organization? Are these mechanisms sufficiently comprehensive?
- How well is the organization monitoring stakeholder use and impact of program outputs? How could this be improved?
The context of this technical assessment is the mission of NIST, which is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve the quality of life. The NIST laboratories conduct research to anticipate future metrology and standards needs, to enable new scientific and technological advances, and to improve and refine existing measurement methods and services.
In order to accomplish the assessment, the NRC assembled a panel of six volunteers whose expertise matches that of the work performed by the NCNR staff.4
On July 7-9, 2015, the panel assembled for two and a half days at the NIST facility, during which it received welcoming remarks from the NIST Director, heard overview presentations by NCNR management and presentations by researchers at the NCNR, and attended an interactive session with NCNR management.
The panel’s approach to the assessment relied on the experience, technical knowledge, and expertise of its members. The panel reviewed selected examples of the technical research performed at the NCNR; because of time constraints, it was not possible to review the NCNR programs and projects exhaustively. The examples reviewed by the panel were selected by the NCNR. The panel’s goal was to identify and report salient examples of accomplishments, challenges, and opportunities for improvement with respect to the factors suggested by the Director of NIST. These examples are intended collectively to portray an overall impression of the center, while preserving useful suggestions specific to the projects and programs that the panel examined. The panel applied a largely qualitative rather than a quantitative approach to the assessment.
Given the necessarily nonexhaustive nature of the review, the omission in this report of any particular NCNR project should not be interpreted as a negative reflection on the omitted project.
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4 See http://www.ncnr.nist.gov/ for information on the NIST Center for Neutron Research organization and programs, accessed July 24, 2015.