Credit score:
Wealthy Press/NIST
A lot has modified since I walked onto the Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus of the Nationwide Institute of Requirements and Expertise (NIST) virtually three years in the past to start my time period as its director and below secretary of commerce for requirements and know-how.
We have been all nonetheless feeling the impacts of the pandemic, and I arrived to a largely empty campus with darkened, quiet hallways. It was a bit of stunning to really feel so little life on the campus the place I had beforehand spent many years as a researcher after which as director of the NIST Materials Measurement Laboratory.
Whereas the hallways have been quiet, NIST’s employees members have been nonetheless exhausting at work. The pandemic had pressured a lot of them to regulate to dwelling workspaces or to attenuate their time on campus. At present our campuses in Gaithersburg and Boulder, Colorado, are thriving as soon as once more, as are our a number of joint institutes and collaborations.
Three years in the past, there was no ChatGPT, and we have been nonetheless ready for AI to do one thing groundbreaking. As soon as ChatGPT got here alongside in November 2022, different AI fashions adopted quickly after. They’ve introduced each pleasure and concern about their energy and the way they’re used.
Now, due to the thought management and exhausting work of so many at NIST, we have now an AI Threat Administration Framework, the NIST AI Innovation Lab, the AI Security Institute and plenty of collaborations and initiatives which might be working to make sure we get probably the most from this know-how, whereas serving to to advertise its protected and efficient use. And in 2025 we plan to launch a brand new Manufacturing USA institute centered on reworking manufacturing with AI.
All through our labs, we have now provide you with artistic methods to use AI to enhance our analysis and our operations. We have now introduced collectively trade, academia, civil society and authorities businesses to assist us perceive the right way to drive AI innovation with out inflicting hurt to individuals, society and the planet.
Three years in the past, inflation was excessive, and we nonetheless couldn’t get the issues we wanted. Provide chains have been disrupted, and there weren’t sufficient semiconductor chips to energy the products and providers we use day-after-day. Three years in the past, semiconductor manufacturing was a distant reminiscence within the U.S.
At present, we have now unimaginable investments in U.S. manufacturing that may assist our nation as soon as once more lead in semiconductors. Many, many individuals labored extremely exhausting to determine the CHIPS for America program and preserve it centered on the aim of build up a brand new U.S. semiconductor manufacturing base and a sturdy semiconductor R&D ecosystem. No doubt, that ecosystem depends upon measurements from NIST.
Tens of billions of {dollars} have been awarded that may assist manufacturing services and analysis and improvement. This features a CHIPS Manufacturing USA institute centered on digital twins that may enable us to construct, design and collaborate on semiconductor analysis within the digital world. The collaboration establishing this institute has already generated trade funding that’s greater than 3 times our federal funding, for a complete of $1 billion for this vital know-how.
All of those efforts and investments can have an unimaginable and lasting impression on revolutionizing manufacturing capability in our nation. They’ll assist to make sure that we by no means once more expertise the shortages we confronted through the pandemic. And they’re bringing new, good-paying know-how jobs to so many components of the nation.
Three years in the past, we didn’t have a technique for U.S. authorities participation in requirements improvement. Now NIST is reinvigorating U.S. requirements efforts as we implement the U.S. authorities Nationwide Requirements Technique for Important and Rising Applied sciences that was launched by the White Home final summer time.
At present, that technique and the implementation plan we developed in partnership with the personal sector is driving ahead the success of our industries. Trillions of {dollars} of commerce depend on our potential to transform American innovation into worldwide requirements. And our work will assist the U.S. keep engaged and proceed to guide the world within the face of a quickly evolving and extremely aggressive worldwide panorama.
Whereas NIST isn’t a requirements improvement group, our consultants take part in and supply technical management to hundreds of nationwide and worldwide committees. Their work demonstrates our robust dedication to our mission: to advertise U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness.
After I arrived virtually three years in the past, the pandemic had made us aware of how weak our society is to infectious illnesses. The consultants at NIST stepped as much as assist the nation reply. We offered the check supplies wanted to guarantee the standard of measurements of SARS-CoV-2, in order that correct diagnostic kits might be made and distributed by the thousands and thousands.
Following on that success, we launched a check materials for Mpox in report time and adopted that by producing a check materials for hen flu. These supplies assist to hurry improvement of the exams that detect illness and the vaccines that defend us — and can assist us to struggle the following pandemic.
The world has modified a lot previously few years — however not simply from COVID.
We are actually experiencing hurricanes and wildfires which might be larger and extra damaging than ever earlier than. In line with NOAA, increased ocean temperatures are fueling extra intense Atlantic hurricanes. And as we more and more construct communities in pure areas, fires inside these communities have gotten extra harmful and extra expensive than ever earlier than.
NIST’s Catastrophe and Failure Research program is working exhausting to make our communities extra resilient, together with by means of the Hurricane Maria and Champlain Towers South investigations. And I do know that similar to with the Joplin twister investigation, World Commerce Middle investigation and different extremely advanced investigations and research that we have now carried out, we’ll produce trusted suggestions that may make our houses and buildings safer to forestall future devastation.
We have now additionally studied wildfires and developed steerage to make houses and communities safer by mitigating the hazards of sheds, fences and mulch beds the place communities meet wildlands. We’ve shared classes realized from the 2018 Camp Hearth in California, together with methods for safeguarding lives when there’s not sufficient time to soundly evacuate all residents.
All of this work continues NIST’s unimaginable contribution to fireplace analysis, together with 50 years of enhancements for the reason that Federal Hearth Prevention and Management Act of 1974. By the many years NIST has performed a key position in making houses, clothes and furnishings safer — serving to to cut back hearth fatalities within the U.S. by greater than 50%.
Within the final three years, NIST has additionally improved the nation’s cybersecurity posture. We launched the very first post-quantum cryptography requirements that may put together the nation to guard our encrypted information from future quantum computer systems.
We up to date our Cybersecurity Framework with the participation of over 100 nations, making it a globally vital cybersecurity doc that has been translated into many languages, together with Ukrainian. And we have now up to date pointers for digital identification and face recognition evaluation, making it safer and extra environment friendly to do enterprise or board an airplane. We have now labored to assist the necessity to develop the nation’s cybersecurity workforce — and spurred the event of a White Home technique to handle this want.
NIST performs an vital position because the nation’s measurement institute, or NMI, offering distinctive measurement providers comparable to commonplace reference supplies, information and calibrations. All of those are utilized by trade to innovate and to make sure the standard of their services and products. I’m excited to say that NIST is as soon as once more poised to vary the way in which the world measures, getting ready for a global settlement on redefinition of the second.
Years of analysis into the phenomena of quantum physics have given us the instruments to higher perceive how the universe works and to manage and manipulate matter on the smallest scales and coldest temperatures.
NIST is pushing the envelope in quantum science, bettering timekeeping and navigation. And in these final three years, we have now introduced enhancements in quantum sensing which might be serving to to higher detect radio alerts and defects in transistors, and to measure gravity, ultralow pressures, acoustic vibrations, and even basic relativity on the millimeter scale.
These developments can assist us higher perceive the place floodwaters will movement. They’ll result in higher medical diagnostics and coverings. They’re advancing communications know-how.
NIST is all the time waiting for the following innovation and the way vital enhancements in measurement science can get us there. I prefer to remind myself that the navigation system that I depend on so typically is a results of quantum analysis carried out at NIST many years in the past. And I’m excited to see what ubiquitous important know-how outcomes from the basic analysis taking place in a NIST lab at present.
In different areas of labor, NIST has discovered higher methods to assist our planet by means of improved monitoring of greenhouse gases, methods to convert warmth to electrical energy, and extra. NIST has made our first responders safer and simpler by means of higher communications instruments and practices.
They are saying while you do job, you might be typically rewarded with extra work. And that has completely been true for NIST. We have now seen this with the various new challenges Congress and the Biden-Harris administration have despatched our approach.
NIST has been tasked with serving to to detect perpetually chemical compounds like PFAS and microplastics. We have now been tasked with detecting new illicit medication like tranq that seem on our streets and hurt our individuals. We have now been tasked with aggressive timelines to make our digital world safer and to safe the nation’s provide chains. We have now been tasked with main an effort to make biomanufacturing safer and extra environment friendly in order that we are able to get the progressive therapies that we’d like when our well being fails.
And for all of those duties, NIST has carried out as our nation’s leaders knew we’d: We have now excelled in each respect.
The entire unimaginable work carried out day-after-day at NIST helps American corporations develop, improves our financial system and helps the standard of life that we in america have grown to like. There isn’t a higher mission than that.
By all of the years I’ve labored at NIST (virtually 35 now), I’ve been so grateful for the fantastic individuals round me. They’re devoted to their work, whether or not it’s including a decimal level to a measurement or bettering an administrative course of.
Time after time I’ve seen the individuals of NIST stay as much as its values of excellence, perseverance, integrity and inclusivity. And I do know they’ll preserve doing so lengthy after I’ve left NIST.
The work achieved right here is of unimaginable worth to the nation, and it has been my honor and my privilege to have served because the seventeenth director of NIST.
