9

Facilities, Equipment, and Personnel

Because this assessment was entirely remote, with no in-person components, the panel was not able to visit any of the Communications Technology Laboratory’s (CTL’s) facilities in person. This imposed limitations, despite CTL’s willingness to engage, provide information, and answer questions. Something vital is missed when a panel cannot interact closely and informally with the researchers at a laboratory under assessment, walk the halls, and see things first-hand. This has made it a challenge to say much about the condition of CTL’s facilities and equipment, as well as CTL’s personnel situation. As a result, different panel members received differing levels of information on the topics of facilities, equipment, and personnel. To avoid having large differences in how each chapter addresses these topics, the panel believed that it is best to consolidate the material here in a stand-alone chapter.

FACILITIES

While the panel’s ability to say anything meaningful about CTL’s facilities is limited, CTL made it clear that some of its laboratories and other facilities are in buildings that prevent CTL researchers from reaching their full potential (e.g., Building 24), while the Public Safety Communications Research group is doing very good work in a newly renovated building (Building 3). The contrast between the two buildings is the contrast between researchers whose facilities hinder their work, and researchers whose facilities enable their work.

Building 24, on the Boulder, Colorado, campus, which houses several testbeds and laboratories used by the Radio Frequency Technology Division, reportedly has a facilities condition rating of −8 on a scale where 72 out of 100 is considered unacceptable. In addition, the network bandwidth of the entire building, which houses offices for approximately 20 staff members and 12 research laboratories, is only 1 Gb/s. The National Broadband Interoperability Testbed and the Antenna Communication and Metrology Laboratory, both in Building 24, produce data files ranging from 1-30 TB. This results in employees moving data from laboratories to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) network by walking hard drives to another building. This seems inefficient and imbalanced with the level of research being conducted. Furthermore, the various facility issues with loss of power and inability to keep stable temperatures within measurement chambers due to underlying utility infrastructure and various age-related facility issues have caused delays and reduced availability of services, as noted even by a random review of temporarily unavailable measurement services on CTL’s website.

Key Recommendation 12: CTL should immediately prioritize its budget allocations to rectify the Building 24 issues by making improvements or relocating its work to an improved facility.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, CTL established some new facilities and capabilities. It created a new 5G Coexistence Testbed consisting of commercial-grade 5G New Radio millimeter-wave technology in Building 3, which reportedly is in good condition. In general, it appears that there are multiple testbeds and laboratories that work well. CTL’s Spectrum Technology and Research Division reported about work done at the beginning of the pandemic to allow the remote conduct of measurements without needing to be onsite—a capability that is expected to automate measurement campaigns making them more efficient and extensive in the future. This capability also likely increases the ability to collaborate with a wider range of researchers, some of whom may not be able to travel to the CTL laboratories.

Based on the information provided during this remote assessment, it appears that Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) laboratory facilities and equipment are adequate for their mission. The PSCR team moved into a new building with laboratory facilities in Boulder, Colorado, in 2018. Recently, the PSCR team partnered with FirstNet to establish the Public Safety Immersive Test Center. This facility is located in the FirstNet Authority’s Boulder, Colorado, facilities. The Public Safety Immersive Test Center includes a high-end virtual reality system to test and measure potential advancements in user interfaces as well as location-based services. The PSCR team also has a partnership to use the National Guard’s Muscatatuck Urban Training Center to field test technologies developed as part of the ongoing First Responder Smart Tracking prize challenge. The Muscatatuck Urban Training Center comprises about 1,000 acres and provides a realistic multi-domain urban and rural training environment. This training center provides the opportunity for first responders to coordinate their training with the National Guard, which conducts emergency response missions in disaster situations.

Recommendation 9-1: CTL should evaluate the partnership with the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center for long-term continuation, particularly because of the opportunity to coordinate first responder and National Guard training that is central to its mission.

While the panel does not have any details, the condition of CTL’s facilities generally has budgetary implications. Unaddressed current facility needs cause scientific work efficiencies to suffer if researchers need to waste time and research money working around facility issues. Addressing new and unknown future challenges will require sufficient facilities funding to ensure that CTL’s facilities are capable of meeting future needs. This need creates an interdependency between funding for technical work and funding for the maintenance, renewal, and construction of facilities even though they have separate funding sources to ensure that CTL’s laboratories are capable of accomplishing the mission. The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (P.L. 117-167) appears to include funding for improving NIST’s facilities.

The condition of the capital facilities on NIST’s Boulder, Colorado, and Gaithersburg, Maryland, campuses is treated in detail in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report Technical Assessment of the Capital Facility Needs of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.¹

EQUIPMENT

For the Radio Frequency Technology Division, focusing on efforts to upgrade laboratory equipment, which was slowed due to the pandemic, continues to be the highest priority. Efforts that were put in place during the pandemic will be essential to help CTL maintain its leadership position. The restructuring that includes the Innovations in Measurement Science project for inter-laboratory collaboration, which focuses on important emerging areas, will also provide a great opportunity for CTL to identify equipment needs that address both fundamental and interdisciplinary research more effectively. In 2020, the Radio

___________________

¹ National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2023, Technical Assessment of the Capital Facility Needs of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/26684.

Frequency Technology Division conducted a quality assessment that showed increased attention to using the quality management system, which manages the quality assurance of calibrated measurements.

Two major equipment challenges were reported to the panel. First, the time scale of purchases is reported to be painfully slow for items above $10,000. Second, the advanced nature of the spectrum sharing and sensing research often requires equipment that is not yet commercially available. The panel hopes that the process of acquiring necessary equipment can be sped up, but such considerations are outside the scope of recommendations to be made in this assessment

PERSONNEL

CTL has successfully completed a reorganization that brings together the diverse groups involved in smart infrastructure and manufacturing from across the organization to help bolster its research, experimentation, and standardization missions. These groups have common themes in the areas of cyber-physical systems that can benefit from organizational proximity and shared laboratory test infrastructure. This includes 71 staff across five different groups.

In the edge-to-edge quality assurance project under 5G/6G Core Networks, staffing restrictions could be a significant impediment to further progress. The groundwork seems to have been established for a strong foundation to build on, but the program has not yet been fully funded, which could be a serious challenge. They have been investigating several related topics, including machine learning-based software-defined network routing, end-to-end quality assurance when network slices use virtual network functions, and multi-tier task offloading, but, due to the limited personnel, progress has been modest. One opportunity would be for increased collaboration with the Next-Generation Wireless group. It is easy to conceive of projects that could involve close cooperation between the two teams to create an antenna-to-core networks span.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, CTL took multiple actions to minimize the impact of restrictions on in-person work. Particularly for the Radio Frequency Technology Division, which requires hands-on activity to support testing and characterization of radio frequency components, virtual work could be problematic. However, the use of technology and teamwork was commendable. First, CTL requested the ability to redistribute their employee limit between the two CTL campuses (Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Boulder, Colorado) to allow a higher percentage to be in person at Boulder where most of the hands-on work is done. Second, they prioritized setting up remote equipment so that employees working remotely could participate via cameras. This included an increase in automation as well, allowing for in-person staff to maximize their productivity.

The PSCR team is comprised of a mix of permanent and term employees. Currently less than 30 percent of the staff are permanent employees. Term employees generally come from other government organizations and universities. The large percentage of term employees is reflective of the short-term nature of the PSCR funding. It has also been challenging for PSCR to recruit top talent with the uncertain funding situation.

Like much of the scientific job market, the Smart Infrastructure and Manufacturing Division is experiencing challenges in recruiting and retaining key staff to support its work. Some research areas (e.g., smart connected manufacturing systems and the Industrial IoT) have had key senior personnel leave for other opportunities. Hence, even though the total number of staff may remain more or less level, departures can cause temporary setbacks in project implementations and outputs. In particular, it can take years to build the needed stature within standards communities to drive agendas and impact standards development.

NIST cannot compete with industry based on salary. However, the prestige of NIST and the favorable working environment have enabled the recruitment of very strong talent with a good record of accomplishment in the field. The Wireless Networks Division, which staffs the next-generation wireless program, has an even better retention record than the rest of NIST. This is a great accomplishment. NIST strongly supports the culture of teleworking, which allows for a distributed workforce and flexibility to

remain anywhere in the country and still contribute strongly to NIST’s core research and measurement work mission via telework. Furthermore, working with the Office of Personnel Management to get special pay rates for NIST researchers is another opportunity to help with the recruitment and retention of talent at NIST.

The geographic distribution of Smart Infrastructure and Manufacturing Division work across Maryland and Colorado may present a unique opportunity for recruiting and retention, providing two geographic regions within which to employ personnel. Additionally, further partnerships with national laboratories, Manufacturing USA Institutes, and other related organizations working in smart infrastructure and manufacturing can help them amplify their impact and catalyze a larger network of people and laboratories.

Cybersecurity is a common theme to advanced communications capabilities. Generally, recruiting and retaining science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) personnel is a problem common in both the government and industrial sectors. Scholarship for Service programs like the National Science Foundation’s CyberCorps and the Department of Defense Cyber Scholarship Program are capacity-building programs with a focus on cybersecurity. These programs offer opportunities to recruit personnel with additional expertise in security, privacy, and usability in those domains. As cybersecurity becomes increasingly integrated with personal and public safety, this initiative has become more closely aligned with CTL’s work. Scholarship for Service recipients in graduate programs are a potential source of interdisciplinary cybersecurity research personnel.

Recommendation 9-2: CTL should explore integration with the Scholarship for Service programs.

DEVELOPING A DIVERSE WORKFORCE

There are opportunities for CTL, and NIST more broadly, to reach out to underrepresented communities to generate interest in CTL’s work and develop a more racially, ethnically, and gender-diverse workforce. Finding ways to identify and connect select projects to the broader community’s needs can establish relevance and importance in diverse communities. Products could then be developed with accessible language using communications experts to share with the broader community in ways that offer insight into the future of communications. An example of how effective this could be is seen in decades of James Bond movies, with his communication spy watch preparing the public for today’s Apple watch. In the same way, NIST could connect today’s advanced communication technologies to future products that matter to younger generations. This would be exciting to the youth and college students who could consider working at NIST in this area. Lessons learned from the pandemic on remote access could be leveraged to provide remote demos to stimulate the imagination and demystify what happens at NIST in general, and CTL more specifically, by shedding insight into its structure, the things it does, and its importance to communications.

Key Recommendation 13: As its workforce continues to grow and mature, CTL should find ways to showcase select important technologies developed in the course of its work as part of its diversity strategy. These efforts should make use of popular culture and lay language to appeal to the broadest base possible.

Technical societies have been developing extensive young professional programs, which can serve as a resource to help CTL and NIST seek new talent. Some of these societies have also been developing diversity programs to support workforce development and broadening participation in undergraduate and graduate education that may be helpful. One example is Project Connect, which targets microwave engineering and has been hosted at the International Microwave Symposium for the past 9 years. Within academia, finding ways to expand or evolve NIST’s current programs with minority-serving institutions, such as historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-serving institutions, could be

used to connect students to graduate programs with research skills of high interest to CTL or form joint projects for undergraduate and graduate students. Lastly, HBCUs graduate a significant number of the minority undergraduate bachelor degrees in engineering. While some have reached R2 status over the past few decades, research has grown on those campuses in engineering, and reaching R1 status is a number-one priority for many of the schools with science and engineering programs. CTL could explore working directly with HBCU campuses in graduate education on research topics of mutual interest that would also allow CTL to be a part of developing the next generation of engineers and scientists who will broaden participation. In addition, NIST could partner with organizations like Project Connect and Advancing Minorities’ Interest in Engineering, which includes the deans of 15 of the HBCUs with accredited engineering programs, to establish initiatives that develop a broad pipeline and student access across multiple campuses simultaneously.

Key Recommendation 14: As part of the CTL diversification staff strategy, CTL should encourage and partner with technical staff to develop a strategic plan that leverages existing and potential opportunities available for growing and training the talent pool within the desired areas of expertise with the help of professional societies and minority-serving institutions campuses. Examples of these opportunities include partnering with historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, Project Connect, and the Advancing Minorities’ Interest in Engineering organization.