An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Physics Laboratory Fiscal Year 2010 (2010) / Chapter Skim
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The organizational structure of the Physics Laboratory for accomplishing its mission and goals includes six vertically integrated divisions: Atomic Physics Division, Electron and Optical Physics Division, Ionizing Radiation Division, Optical Technology Division, Quantum Physics Division, and Time and Frequency Division. The Physics Laboratory also includes an Office of Electronic Commerce in Scientific and Engineering Data to coordinate and facilitate the electronic dissemination of information on the Internet.
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The general observations of the panel relative to the assessment criteria requested by the NIST Director are presented in the following sections. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS RELATIVE TO THE ASSESSMENT CRITERIA The Technical Merit of the Current Laboratory Programs Relative to Current State-of-the-Art Programs Worldwide The Physics Laboratory has had two decades or more of outstanding research accomplishments because of a group of dedicated, exceptional scientists and technical staff responding to the needs of NIST, the nation, and the world, along with an administration that fostered a collegial and intellectual climate conducive to such productivity.
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For example, despite recent renovations, the building housing the majority of the Ionizing Radiation Division remains a concern. There are also concerns about the buildings and facilities used by the Atomic Physics, Electron and Optical Physics, Quantum Physics, and Time and Frequency Divisions.
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This should lead to a good coordination of effort across the Physics Laboratory in crosscutting research activities. The division's largest program is the development of measurement capabilities for EUV optics, including EUV metrology and damage issues, the maintenance of national primary standards for radiometry in the EUV and adjoining spectral regions, and the operation of national user facilities for EUV science and applications.
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Examples of programs that demonstrate the leadership position of the laboratory both in developing new standards and in ensuring that current and new standards intercompare favorably with those of other nations include the following: the determination of exposure and absorbed dose standards for developing medical practices involving ionizing radiation, the development of low-level radiochemistry protocols for nuclear forensics and radiochronology, the development of experiments to measure basic physical properties of the neutron, the application of neutron radiography to next-generation energy production programs, and interlaboratory comparisons of values for specific measurements which have established that the NIST values are as good as or better than those of most other national and international laboratories. Major projects that support these programs include, in the medical area, imaging measurement standards for single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)
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The budget, facilities, equipment, and human resources available to the Ionizing Radiation Division are below those necessary to sustain the present quality of work being achieved and what is needed from this group by both internal and outside customers. OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY DIVISION The mission of the Optical Technology Division is to develop and provide national measurement standards and services to advance optical technologies spanning the terahertz through the infrared (IR)
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. The accomplishments have been dramatically aided by the infrastructure of this division and by JILA scientists, and the students and postdoctoral researchers training at JILA obtain a unique educational advantage through their close interactions with expert instrument makers, electronics designers, and information technology (IT)
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NIST provides an array of services to a very broad user community in the United States: the NIST Internet Time Service is used more than 3 billion times every day; NIST radio station WWVB is widely used to synchronize commercial timekeeping devices to NIST time; and the NIST Automated Computer Time Service helps industry meet Securities and Exchange Commission requirements to synchronize the time-stamping of hundreds of billions of dollars of electronic financial transactions to NIST time. The Time and Frequency Division operates the world's most accurate primary frequency standard (NIST-F1)
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