National Academies Press: OpenBook
« Previous: 4 Technical Adequacy
Suggested Citation:"5 Portfolio of Scientific Expertise." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. An Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2021. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26418.
×

5

Portfolio of Scientific Expertise

NCNR USER PROGRAM

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Center for Neutron Research (NCNR) is dedicated to providing neutron beams for use by the scientific user community in keeping with the scope and mission of its parent agency, NIST. NCNR supports a large user program. Twice per year, there is an open call for user proposals, which are submitted via an online portal. In addition to the five instruments operated by CHRNS, NCNR directly runs user programs for six instruments: two 30-meter Small-Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) instruments; a Disk Chopper Spectrometer (DCS); a Multi-Angle Grazing Incidence K-Vector (MAGIK); an Ultra Small Angle Neutron Scattering (uSANS); and a thermal Triple Axis Spectrometer (TAS), BT-7. Proposals are peer-reviewed by three to five external referees for technical merit and by the NCNR beam scientists for feasibility. Proposals are required to include a list of recent publications from previous beamtime allocations. The proposals are then ranked, and awards of beam time are made by the Beam-Time Allocation Committee (BTAC). Proposals not awarded beamtime are returned to the user with comments received from the referees and the BTAC to improve subsequent submission.

NCNR also grants access to the community to six other instruments through a collaborative access mechanism: High Resolution Powder Diffractometer (BT-1); Spin Polarized Inelastic Neutron Spectrometer (SPINS); Horizontal sample Reflector (H-Refl); Double Axis Residual Stress Texture Single Crystal Spectrometer (DARTS); TAS (BT-4); and Polarized Beam Reflectometer (PBR). There are not sufficient staff and resources to run full user programs on these instruments. Some of the science programs at these instruments are highly productive and impactful (for example, the BT-1 instrument). Some of the instruments are undergoing upgrades (DARTS), and others are slated to be replaced (SPINS and H-Refl).

Accomplishments

The NCNR user program continues to enjoy enormous success in terms of productivity, scientific impact, and user satisfaction. It serves a broad base of U.S. researchers from academia, industry, government laboratories, and NIST as well as a limited number of international users. It is generally quite successful at broadening the user base through recruitment of new users, as well as serving existing users. Publication rates and impacts are high compared to international user facilities.1 The average publication rate per instrument-operating day is around 1.5 papers and around 20 papers per year for most

___________________

1 D. Neumann, NIST, 2021, “Overview of the Neutron Condensed Matter Science,” presentation to the Panel on Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research, July 20.

Suggested Citation:"5 Portfolio of Scientific Expertise." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. An Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2021. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26418.
×

instruments, with the powder diffraction and fully supported SANS instruments producing far more (up to 80 per year). More than 2 percent of NCNR papers in the past decade have been labeled as “highly cited” (in the top 1 percent in a given field) by Clarivate, which publishes Web of Science, so NCNR papers are having above average impact. Further, in a citation study by the Canadian group Science-Metrix,2 NCNR appears as the leading neutron facility in terms of average of relative citations (ARC). In this metric, the world average number of citations is 1.0, and 1.2 would be 20 percent more citations than the average. As noted in Chapters 2 and 4, NCNR scores nearly 2 (1.95) on this scale, with other world neutron facilities in the range 1.03 to 1.57 (for the period 2000–2017). The report also contains the quote “NCNR is … the only institution examined to have displayed consistently high performances across most indicators.” In its mission to support U.S. industry, NCNR was a key contributor to a number of technological breakthroughs in this period too, including gels for oral drug delivery, use of shear-thickening fluids in impact resistant applications, additives to jet fuel, and ion exchange membranes.

Challenges and Opportunities

In terms of numbers of users,3 the facility has maintained its strong numbers from the previous period (which came after the expansion), maintaining 25 percent more users on average than the period 2006–2010 before the expansion. Both COVID and the unplanned shutdown will affect these numbers moving forward.

The collaborative access mode instruments present both risks and opportunities. They are in this category because NCNR has insufficient staff to run fully fledged external user programs on them, which might be considered as a missed opportunity. On the other hand, it gives an opportunity to react quickly and be flexible enough to support scientific opportunities as they emerge. A case in point is the work of the group of Prof. Subramanian (Oregon State University) on inorganic dyes.4

Despite its high scientific impact, no upgrades are planned for BT-1. A mail-in program is run on BT-1 that increases access beyond the collaborative mode experiments. Given its importance to the program and a lack of investment, it would be good to have a plan for this instrument.

Balancing support of existing users versus recruiting new users presents a challenge for the instrument scientists to navigate, as new users require quite a bit more instrument scientist handholding. Given the overall low staffing levels at the instruments compared to international norms, the staff does a remarkable job. However, the activity of broadening and training new users is likely to be negatively affected by reduced staffing levels that are discussed elsewhere in this report.

CHRNS

The Center for High Resolution Neutron Scattering (CHRNS) is an NIST-NSF partnership that provides user support, education, and outreach to the academic scientific community.5

The partnership is highly impactful and an important contributor to the NCNR mission of serving the neutron scattering needs of the community—in this case, the academic research community. It provides additional user support for experiments, develops and maintains additional special environments for instruments and user-facing software, and runs educational and outreach programs, with emphasis on

___________________

2 Science-Metrix, 2018, “Bibliometric Study on CNBC’s Scientific Publications, 1980–2017,” https://www.science-metrix.com/sites/default/files/science-metrix/publications/sm_cnbc_final_report_2018.pdf. Accessed December 8, 2021.

3 D. Neumann, NIST, 2021.

4 M. Subramanian, Oregon State University, 2021, “Pigments,” presentation to the Panel on Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research, July 20.

5 D. Neumann, NIST, 2021.

Suggested Citation:"5 Portfolio of Scientific Expertise." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. An Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2021. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26418.
×

broadening participation of underrepresented groups. It is also instrumental in developing and commissioning new instruments. The instruments that specifically are part of the CHRNS program are the Neutron Spin Echo Spectrometer (NSE); Multi-Axis Crystal Spectrometer (MACS); Very Small Angle Neutron Scattering (vSANS), High-Flux Backscattering Spectrometer (HFBS); and Chromatic Analysis Neutron Diffractometer or Reflector (CANDoR). The program is run as a cooperative stewardship model, which is working very well and meeting the challenges of multi-agency activity.

Accomplishments

The partnership is viewed favorably by all stakeholders It operates more than 10 percent of the neutron scattering user instrumentation in the United States for less than 2 percent of the cost, and the instruments in the program are undoubtedly world leading. NIST views the partnership as central to making its user program mission successful and is a strong supporter. The scientific community recognizes that the NSF investment is highly leveraged and the resulting programs of high value to the community, as shown by the fact that the grant was recently renewed for an additional 5 years. The user community gives very strong anecdotal feedback about the program. Last, the science produced is highly impactful, as measured by the publications per supported instrument.

Challenges and Opportunities

The unplanned February 2021 shutdown presented a challenge to the partnership insofar as it is built around support for user experiments. Other activities of CHRNS, such as instrument and software development and the education and outreach programs, can proceed (and even be prioritized given the loss of beamtime), and this has been done. Furthermore, to mitigate the loss of beam access, NIST has reimbursed NSF financially for undelivered beamtime. A potential challenge is that it is not completely clear how long NIST can continue to do this if the unplanned shutdown becomes very long.

The staff and academic partners plan to use the outage to accelerate the move to time-resolved studies.6 Preliminary results on MACS are very exciting, as described elsewhere, but also developing capabilities on CANDoR and vSANS and upgrading sample environments for this purpose is an appropriate response to the challenges of the loss of neutrons. There is a significant investment in software for data analysis in the renewal, with a push toward an infrastructure for Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse of Digital Assets (FAIR) data access. This is hoped to exploit the opportunity to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) for data analysis. A challenge here is that formal ties to strong applied math and ML groups were not evident to the reviewers. There are other Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) activities at NIST in the area of materials data analytics, but the interactions with NCNR also do not appear to be highly developed. The NCNR management is aware of this, and some of those activities, such as data standards and dissemination, are a moving target and not the current focus in NCNR/CHRNS. But it may also be a missed opportunity.

nSoft

nSoft is an industrial consortium designed to engage industry in neutron scattering.7 Member companies pay $25,000 per year to participate in this program, which focuses on the development of

___________________

6 C. Brown, NIST, 2021, “Overview of the Structure and Dynamics of Materials,” presentation to the Panel on Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research, July 20.

7 R. Jones, NIST, 2021, “The nSoft Consortium,” presentation to the Panel on Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research, July 20.

Suggested Citation:"5 Portfolio of Scientific Expertise." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. An Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2021. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26418.
×

advanced measurements of industrially relevant soft materials and manufacturing processes. nSoft supports roughly three full-time employees (FTEs) of NIST staff, which is covered by NIST funds. The consortium has complete control over the 10-meter SANS and arranges beamtime on other instruments for member companies, as well as providing support for those experiments. All nSoft research is nonproprietary (any company, whether in nSoft or not, may obtain proprietary beamtime for proprietary research on a full-cost-recovery basis). However, proposals for nSoft research projects that are to be performed on nSoft’s beamlines do not pass through the normal user proposal review process; instead, they are approved by nSoft personnel. This procedure overcomes significant impediments to industrial use of national facilities—for example, by reducing the time required to get beamtime. The intent is to be more useful to the industrial sector, which often has to deal with significant time constraints.

Beyond running the 10 m SANS instrument, moving forward nSoft is targeting capabilities in rheology, more complex formulations, and higher throughput—sample preparation to data analysis—and increased remote working, which is a great advantage for industrial partners.

Accomplishments

In response to a recommendation of the previous committee,8 nSoft has more clearly defined9 success metrics: number and length of memberships and number and quality of impacts. On average, the membership was 11 per year in this review period, with an average duration of membership of 4.3 years. Publication rate seems to be reasonable for such an activity at around 10 per year. There is also an activity to capture “impact stories,” which go beyond the publication metric to capture business impacts of the open research.

Challenges and Opportunities

nSoft has determined targets for its success metrics moving forward. It would like to target support for automation and mail in for 20–25 members, new capabilities mentioned above, lengthening membership through better integration into member internal processes, doubling the publication rate and better collaborative capture of impact stories.

In response to member wishes, nSoft is developing an autonomous formulation lab,10 which is an exciting development and shows the synergy of such an industry/NIST partnership, which can then develop shared capabilities that are responsive to industrial priorities.

A recommendation to look into a hard-matter version of nSoft was attempted but not successful. The bottleneck is the NIST (or other government agency) base funding that underpins nSoft. New funding of $1.5 million per year is needed. At a time of budget constraints, this is a challenge. Although significant effort was expended in this direction during the review period without success, an “nHard” consortium would still be a worthwhile goal moving forward if the right susceptibilities can be found in the system.

___________________

8 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, 2018, An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Center for Neutron Research: Fiscal Year 2018, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25282/an-assessment-of-the-center-for-neutron-research-at-the-national-institute-of-standards-and-technology.

9 R. Jones, NIST, 2021.

10 Y. Hernandez, NIST, 2021, “Highlights of the Activities of the User Services,” presentation to the Panel on Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research, July 22.

Suggested Citation:"5 Portfolio of Scientific Expertise." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. An Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2021. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26418.
×

UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIPS

Accomplishments

NCNR has cooperative agreements with a number of universities, including the University of Delaware, the University of Maryland, the University of Indiana, and Carnegie Mellon University. Other universities may apply for their own cooperative agreement when calls for proposals are announced. The agreements provide NCNR funding to universities for the support of technical staff, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students engaged in neutron science and instrumentation at the NCNR. Technical staff, including beamline scientists and software developers, hired under this program help run the NCNR facility and are stationed at NCNR.

Most graduate students are stationed at their host universities, except for an extended stay at NCNR sometime during their Ph.D. research. Students benefit by having a rich research experience with extensive time and interactions with NCNR staff and facilities. Faculty involved in these agreements have the advantage of having an on-site representative from their group at NCNR. They serve the NCNR mission by increasing the scientific impact of the facility as well as attracting high-quality new projects and personnel into neutron scattering and into NCNR.

There are also strong interactions with other parts of NIST, including the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research, the Chemical Sciences Division, the Materials Measurement Laboratory, the Biomolecular Labeling Laboratory, and Radiation Physics, among others. These are mutually synergetic overlaps where the synergy aids each entity to better meet its mission, and they are to be encouraged. The interactions are already strong and deep, with significant inputs from NIST partners in the scientific impacts of the center and also in its running. Recently, there have been 187 researchers from other parts of NIST, constituting 6 percent of all research participants.11

Challenges and Opportunities

It would be beneficial for NCNR to consider increasing the number of these agreements, as long as they are meaningful, to further diversify the academic engagement and scientific impact of the center.

NIST STAFF

NCNR fields a staff of 202, down from 217 in 2018, of which 85 are in condensed matter science, 47 in reactor operations and engineering, 36 in research facility and operations, and 34 in the center office (CO).12 The CO functions include health physics, the user office, IT, and industrial safety among other functions.

Accomplishments

There are fewer than five affiliated technical staff/instrument scientists per instrument to serve/collaborate with users. In addition, NCNR scientists have active research programs of their own. For comparison, the world’s largest neutron user facility, the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), requires seven technical staff/instrument scientists per instrument. NIST has maintained leadership in neutron metrology

___________________

11 D. Neuman, NIST, 2021, “Science at the NCNR,” presentation to the Panel on Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research, July 20.

12 R. Dimeo, NIST, 2021, “Overview NCNR,” presentation to the Panel on Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research, July 20.

Suggested Citation:"5 Portfolio of Scientific Expertise." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. An Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2021. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26418.
×

methods, despite having a low flux reactor, through ensuring that the staff has time to use the instruments in research programs aligned with the NIST mission and to perform methodological research and development.

NCNR has been successful at recruiting and retaining a high-quality staff, and this is one of the key factors in the good productivity and outsized scientific impact. This occurs through partnerships with universities as well as postdoctoral programs. There is a very successful postdoctoral program that is quite diverse and results in a relatively high number of placements into NCNR staff and academic positions at the end of the postdoctorate.

Challenges and Opportunities

Successful scientific output depends critically on the expertise of the scientific staff and their time available to support users and drive research. Reductions in staff numbers owing to funding-induced unfilled positions is leading to increased pressure on scientific staff time for administrative and technical support activities and will lead to diminished scientific output.13

This will also impact the mission to expand the user base and increase its diversity, which takes additional staff time and attention. A challenge may also arise if pressures on staff owing to expanded support duties may affect morale and make it more difficult to recruit and retain the best people. Strong existing collaboration networks provide an opportunity for further development but require the staff to have time to engage. There are strong feedbacks in a system like this, and the NCNR may be approaching a tipping point where the feedback goes negative and staff loss and difficulty in recruiting become acute. The tipping point has not yet been reached but may be if the current staffing trajectory continues for too long.

While COVID and the unplanned shutdown present major challenges, NCNR management has produced an effective and well thought out response. Development project timetables have been accelerated, deferred maintenance in the special environments group is being addressed, software and remote access issues are being addressed, as well as taking the opportunity for “back catalogue” data analysis and manuscript writing. The management is coordinating these activities so that there is a rather strategic response that will leverage the outcomes. They have also worked with other facilities to try to mitigate beamtime loss, although this is difficult because other facilities remain oversubscribed.

In the virtual meeting, there was no opportunity to meet staff in closed discussions, but there is a sense that communication between management and staff is good and handled effectively, and that junior staff is receiving good mentorship.

The findings, conclusions, and recommendations on instrument staffing can be found in Chapter 3.

Finding: The NCNR user program continues to enjoy enormous success in terms of productivity, scientific impact, and user satisfaction. Publication rates and impacts are high compared to international user facilities. The Center for High Resolution Neutron Scattering (CHRNS) is a longstanding impactful NIST-NSF partnership that provides user support, education, and outreach to the academic scientific community, and has been renewed for another 5 years. The number of proposals to use beamtime were oversubscribed by roughtly a factor of 2, and supported users continued to rise to roughly 3,000 per year in 2020.

Finding: NCNR sponsors highly effective partnerships, cooperative agreements, and consortia for academia and industry as well as intra- and interagency collaborations.

___________________

13 R. Dimeo, NIST, gave an update on staffing and noted that there has been an 18-member staff reduction since 2018.

Suggested Citation:"5 Portfolio of Scientific Expertise." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. An Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2021. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26418.
×

Conclusion: It would be beneficial for NCNR to consider increasing the number of partnership meaningful agreements to further diversify the academic engagement and scientific impact of the center.

RECOMMENDATION: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Center for Neutron Research (NCNR) should consider developing and strengthening its connections to university-based engineering research groups with links to industry as a mechanism for increased usage of the engineering diffractometer and other industry-relevant instruments, and potentially as a mechanism for support for additional staffing.

Suggested Citation:"5 Portfolio of Scientific Expertise." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. An Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2021. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26418.
×
Page 36
Suggested Citation:"5 Portfolio of Scientific Expertise." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. An Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2021. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26418.
×
Page 37
Suggested Citation:"5 Portfolio of Scientific Expertise." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. An Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2021. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26418.
×
Page 38
Suggested Citation:"5 Portfolio of Scientific Expertise." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. An Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2021. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26418.
×
Page 39
Suggested Citation:"5 Portfolio of Scientific Expertise." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. An Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2021. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26418.
×
Page 40
Suggested Citation:"5 Portfolio of Scientific Expertise." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. An Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2021. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26418.
×
Page 41
Suggested Citation:"5 Portfolio of Scientific Expertise." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. An Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2021. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26418.
×
Page 42
Next: 6 Dissemination of Outputs »
An Assessment of the Center for Neutron Research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2021 Get This Book
×
Buy Ebook | $14.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

At the request of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has, since 1959, annually assembled panels of experts from academia, industry, medicine, and other scientific and engineering communities to assess the quality and effectiveness of the NIST measurements and standards laboratories. The NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR) is one of six major research organizational units consisting of five laboratories and one user facility at NIST. It is one of only three neutron scattering user facilities in the United States, with 30 instruments, supporting roughly one-third of the U.S. neutron scattering instruments and users. This report assesses the scientific and technical work performed by the NCNR, as well as the portfolio of scientific expertise within the organization and dissemination of program outputs.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!