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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 beneath secretary of commerce for requirements and know-how.
We have been all nonetheless feeling the impacts of the pandemic, and I arrived to a principally empty campus with darkened, quiet hallways. It was a bit surprising to really feel so little life on the campus the place I had beforehand spent a long time as a researcher after which as director of the NIST Materials Measurement Laboratory.
Whereas the hallways have been quiet, NIST’s workers members have been nonetheless exhausting at work. The pandemic had pressured a lot of them to regulate to residence workspaces or to reduce their time on campus. Right this moment 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, because of the thought management and exhausting work of so many at NIST, we have now an AI Risk Management Framework, the NIST AI Innovation Lab, the AI Safety Institute and plenty of collaborations and tasks which might be working to make sure we get essentially 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 targeted on remodeling manufacturing with AI.
All through our labs, we have now give you artistic methods to use AI to enhance our analysis and our operations. We now have introduced collectively business, academia, civil society and authorities businesses to assist us perceive the best 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.
Right this moment, we have now unbelievable 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 ascertain the CHIPS for America program and maintain it targeted on the objective of build up a brand new U.S. semiconductor manufacturing base and a strong semiconductor R&D ecosystem. Definitely, that ecosystem depends upon measurements from NIST.
Tens of billions of {dollars} have been awarded that may help manufacturing services and analysis and improvement. This features a CHIPS Manufacturing USA institute targeted 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 business funding that’s greater than thrice our federal funding, for a complete of $1 billion for this vital know-how.
All of those efforts and investments can have an unbelievable and lasting affect on revolutionizing manufacturing capability in our nation. They are going to 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 elements 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 National Standards Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technologies that was launched by the White Home final summer time.
Right this moment, 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 capability 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 shouldn’t be a requirements improvement group, our consultants take part in and supply technical management to 1000’s of nationwide and worldwide committees. Their work demonstrates our sturdy 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 conscious about how susceptible 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 could possibly be made and distributed by the tens of millions.
Following on that success, we launched a check materials for Mpox in file time and adopted that by producing a check materials for chook flu. These supplies assist to hurry improvement of the assessments that detect illness and the vaccines that shield us — and can assist us to battle the subsequent pandemic.
The world has modified a lot prior to now 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. According to NOAA, larger 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 pricey than ever earlier than.
NIST’s Disaster and Failure Studies program is working exhausting to make our communities extra resilient, together with via the Hurricane Maria and Champlain Towers South investigations. And I do know that identical to with the Joplin tornado investigation, World Trade Center investigation and different extremely complicated investigations and research that we have now performed, we are going to produce trusted suggestions that may make our properties and buildings safer to stop future devastation.
We now have additionally studied wildfires and developed steerage to make properties 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 Fire in California, together with methods for shielding lives when there’s not sufficient time to securely evacuate all residents.
All of this work continues NIST’s unbelievable contribution to fireplace analysis, together with 50 years of improvements for the reason that Federal Hearth Prevention and Management Act of 1974. By way of the a long time NIST has performed a key position in making properties, clothes and furnishings safer — serving to to scale 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 standards that may put together the nation to guard our encrypted knowledge from future quantum computer systems.
We up to date our Cybersecurity Framework with the participation of over 100 international locations, making it a globally vital cybersecurity doc that has been translated into many languages, together with Ukrainian. And we have now up to date tips for digital identity and face recognition analysis, making it safer and extra environment friendly to do enterprise or board an airplane. We now have labored to help the necessity to develop the nation’s cybersecurity workforce — and spurred the event of a White Home technique to deal with this want.
NIST performs an vital position because the nation’s measurement institute, or NMI, offering distinctive measurement providers akin to standard reference materials, knowledge and calibrations. All of those are utilized by business 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 best way the world measures, making ready for a world 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 regulate 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 signals and defects in transistors, and to measure gravity, ultralow pressures, acoustic vibrations, and even general relativity on the millimeter scale.
These developments may also help 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 at all times looking forward to the subsequent innovation and the way essential enhancements in measurement science can get us there. I wish to remind myself that the navigation system that I depend on so typically is a results of quantum analysis performed at NIST a long time in the past. And I’m excited to see what ubiquitous important know-how outcomes from the elemental analysis occurring in a NIST lab as we speak.
In different areas of labor, NIST has discovered higher methods to assist our planet via improved monitoring of greenhouse gases, methods to convert heat to electricity, and extra. NIST has made our first responders safer and more practical via higher communications instruments and practices.
They are saying once you do an excellent job, you’re typically rewarded with extra work. And that has completely been true for NIST. We now have seen this with the various new challenges Congress and the Biden-Harris administration have despatched our method.
NIST has been tasked with serving to to detect eternally chemical substances like PFAS and microplastics. We now have been tasked with detecting new illicit drugs like tranq that seem on our streets and hurt our individuals. We now have been tasked with aggressive timelines to make our digital world safer and to safe the nation’s provide chains. We now have been tasked with main an effort to make biomanufacturing safer and extra environment friendly in order that we will get the revolutionary 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 now have excelled in each respect.
All the unbelievable 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 the USA have grown to like. There isn’t any higher mission than that.
By way of 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 reside as much as its values of excellence, perseverance, integrity and inclusivity. And I do know they are going to maintain doing so lengthy after I’ve left NIST.
The work executed right here is of unbelievable worth to the nation, and it has been my honor and my privilege to have served because the seventeenth director of NIST.
