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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2024. An Assessment of the Divisions of the Physical Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Located in Boulder, Colorado: Fiscal Year 2023. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/27338.

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1
Introduction

Each year since 1959, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to conduct an assessment of one or more of its measurements and standards laboratories, of which there are currently six. For fiscal year 2023, NIST asked the National Academies’ Laboratory Assessments Board to review the Material Measurement Laboratory (MML), the NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR), and segments of the Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML). This report contains an assessment of the four PML divisions located on the NIST Boulder campus: the Applied Physics Division, the Time and Frequency Division, the Quantum Electromagnetics Division, and the Quantum Physics Division, conducted by the Panel on Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Physical Measurement Laboratory. Companion reports review the MML and NCNR (NASEM 2023a, 2024, respectively).

The PML divisions covered in this review were last reviewed in 2018, 5 years ago (NASEM 2018). The rapid evolution of technology over the past 5 years, particularly in quantum physics, makes it very appropriate that the PML Boulder divisions be reviewed to ascertain how they have responded to the challenges that have emerged over the past 5 years in a critical technology sector and whether they have appropriate support for their challenging tasks.

The stakeholders of PML are extremely diverse. PML sets the definitive U.S. standards for nearly every kind of measurement in modern life, sometimes across more than 20 orders of magnitude in value. Exact and repeatable measurements are essential to industry, medicine, the research community, and government. These sectors depend on PML to develop, maintain, and disseminate the official standards for a wide range of quantities. The PML divisions at the NIST Boulder campus are at the technological cutting edge of modern quantitative physical science and are absolute world leaders in their fields. It is vital to the PML stakeholders and to the nation’s security that they remain so.

STATEMENT OF TASK

The panel closely followed the statement of task, reprinted below, although it did find some issues of safety concerns that it felt were necessary to bring to the attention of NIST leadership. Also, as is explained below, issues of facility decay were of enough urgency that they merited special attention.

The National Academies shall appoint a panel to assess independently the scientific and technical work performed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Physical Measurement Laboratory. The panel will review technical reports and technical program descriptions prepared by NIST staff and will visit the facilities of the Physical Measurement Laboratory. Visits will include technical presentations by NIST staff, demonstrations of NIST projects, tours of NIST facilities, and discussions with NIST staff. The panel will deliberate findings in closed sessions and will prepare a report summarizing its assessment findings and recommendations.

NIST has requested that the laboratories be assessed against the following broad criteria:

Assess the organization’s technical programs.
1. How does the quality of the research compare to similar world-class research in the technical program areas?

Page 5 Cite

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2024. An Assessment of the Divisions of the Physical Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Located in Boulder, Colorado: Fiscal Year 2023. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/27338.

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1. Is the quality of the technical programs adequate for the organization to reach its stated technical objectives? How could it be improved?
Assess the portfolio of scientific expertise within the organization.
1. Does the organization have world-class scientific expertise in the areas of the organization’s mission and program objectives? If not, in what areas should it be improved?
2. How well does the organization’s scientific expertise support the organization’s technical programs and the organization’s ability to achieve its stated objectives?
Assess the adequacy of the organization’s budget, facilities, equipment, and human resources.
1. How well do the facilities, equipment, and human resources support the organization’s technical programs and its ability to achieve its stated objectives? How could they be improved?
Assess the effectiveness by which the organization disseminates its program outputs.
1. How well are the organization’s research programs driven by stakeholder needs?
2. How effective are the dissemination methods and technology transfer mechanisms used by the organization? Are these mechanisms sufficiently comprehensive?
3. How well is this organization monitoring stakeholder use and impact of program outputs? How could this be improved?

CONDUCT OF THE ASSESSMENT

The panel conducted its review in person in Boulder, Colorado, for 3 days, May 23–25, 2023. This assessment covers the four PML division located at Boulder, Colorado, and considers developments since the previous assessment of these divisions in 2018. PML staff and NIST directorate staff provided substantive and informative presentations. The presentations were augmented with tours of PML facilities and discussions between NIST staff and the panel. NIST staff provided written responses to queries generated by the panel. The panel was divided into 4 sub-panels. After an opening plenary session with general presentations and discussions, the panel broke out into its sub-panels to work independently, receiving briefings, engaging in discussions, and going on tours. By design, each sub-panel was focused on the division or office that it assessed. There was a final working plenary where the panel deliberated as a whole and then a session for it to confirm its understandings with PML leadership.

The panel relied on the experience, technical knowledge, and expertise of its members. The panel focused on the research and materials that the leadership of PML chose to present and used a largely qualitative approach to conducting the assessment. Omission of any particular PML project from this report should not be viewed negatively. The report is focused on the work that PML is currently undertaking, and any opportunities and challenges related to that work. NIST has a separate review body, the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology, that addresses the question of what PML or any other laboratory at NIST should be doing. As such, discussions on whether PML is pursuing the right kinds of research is outside of the purview of this review.

USE OF THE 2023 NIST CAPITAL FACILITY NEEDS REPORT IN THE PANEL’S WORK

The assessment panel found issues regarding the facilities similar to the report An Assessment of the Material Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2023 (NASEM 2023a), which is operating in parallel to this panel. This report is also adopting the full description of the problems identified in Technical Assessment of the Capital Facility Needs of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NASEM 2023b). Box 1-1 summarizes that report and its findings and recommendations.

Page 6 Cite

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2024. An Assessment of the Divisions of the Physical Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Located in Boulder, Colorado: Fiscal Year 2023. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/27338.

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BOX 1-1
Technical Assessment of the Capital Facility Needs of the National Institute of Standards and Technology

In February 2023, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released the report Technical Assessment of the Capital Facility Needs of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NASEM 2023b, the “Capital Facility Needs report”). The committee that authored this report was tasked to assess National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) facilities and utility infrastructure, review and assess plans and projects to reinvigorate NIST’s facilities and utility infrastructure, the cost estimates for doing so, and the factors that NIST should consider in developing a comprehensive capital strategy for the facilities and utility infrastructure at NIST’s campuses in Boulder, Colorado, and Gaithersburg, Maryland. The committee engaged with the Department of the Interior, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to learn about their methods and metrics for assessing facility conditions and maintaining their facilities.

The condition of NIST’s facilities and utility infrastructure has been a concern since 2002 when the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (VCAT) issued a report calling NIST’s facilities condition and the related funding situation “alarming” and “critical.” Over the following 20 years, VCAT returned consistently to this theme with increasingly dire language. Eventually, the conference report accompanying the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 (P.L. 116-260) requested that NIST “contract with an independent entity to develop a report that assesses the comprehensive capital needs of NIST’s campuses.” In response, NIST’s Office of Facilities and Property Management approached the National Academies to conduct a study based on a successful study and report completed for NIH in 2019 (NASEM 2019). The result was the Capital Facility Needs report (NASEM 2023b).

The committee that authored the Capital Facility Needs report visited both the Boulder, Colorado, and Gaithersburg, Maryland, campuses. It discovered that many NIST facilities are inadequate to support the world-leading research that is NIST’s mission. Both the quality and the reliability of power can be problematic, resulting in slowed work, lost work, and unnecessary time spent recalibrating sensitive instruments. Inadequacies in basic environmental controls can result in laboratories that are too hot or cold, too humid, or not humid enough, and lack proper vibration insulation. In one 1950s-era Boulder laboratory, the gaps between the windows and frames allow dust to blow straight into the laboratory. Roof leaks have destroyed multi-million-dollar pieces of equipment, such as tunneling electron microscopes in both Boulder and Gaithersburg. A water leak in Gaithersburg resulted in permanent damage to the world-leading Kibble balance that tied the standard kilogram to the speed of light. There are many more instances and stories. In all, the committee found that the NIST research staff loses between 10 to 40 percent of its working time fighting against facility inadequacies, also consuming research money to do so. Things have reached the point where NIST researchers will not be able to continue their world-class research no matter their efforts. This is already impacting the ability to recruit and retain staff and the willingness of foreign researchers to do work at NIST. At risk is also NIST’s international credibility and influence and its ability to support national security, U.S. international competitiveness, medical therapeutics, and a wide range of other activities upon which users in the U.S. government, industry, and academia rely.

In the course of its work, the committee found that NIST’s internal facility and property management policies are not responsible for this situation. Rather, the cause is more than two decades of erratic, unpredictable, and inadequate funding for NIST’s construction of research facilities budget, which includes facility sustainment, restoration, modernization, and

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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2024. An Assessment of the Divisions of the Physical Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Located in Boulder, Colorado: Fiscal Year 2023. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/27338.

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expansion. Exacerbating this problem is congressionally directed pass-through funding for things like building laboratories on university campuses that are not used by NIST. This pass-through funding is not revenue neutral to NIST, costing staff time and money to administer, draining even more much needed money from NIST’s facilities coffers.

In short, the committee found that the situation requires serious and sustained attention, particularly from leadership levels above NIST. The committee also endorsed the coordinated recovery plan drafted by NIST’s Office of Facilities and Property Management and recommended its continued refinement and shortening it to complete it in 12 years. Critically, the committee identified the need for significant and sustained funding to address NIST’s facilities and utility shortcomings and bring them to the standard necessary for modern metrology. This funding is the critical piece of the recovery plan. The committee recommends $420 million to $550 million per year in funding for NIST’s construction of research facilities budget over at least 12 years. As shown in Table 1-1-1, this includes $120 million to $150 million per year for safety, capacity, maintenance, and major repairs funding to address the more than $800 million deferred maintenance backlog and bring existing facilities to an acceptable condition and keep them there. It also includes $300 million to $400 million per year over at least 12 years for the construction and major renovations budget to upgrade, renovate, and build the new laboratories with the new capabilities needed to conduct modern metrology research.

TABLE 1-1-1 Overview of NIST Facility and Infrastructure Funding Needs

Funding Component	Amount Needed Annually
Construction and major renovations (CMR) Safety, capacity, maintenance, and major repairs (SCMMR) Total needed for construction of research facilities (CRF)	$300 million to $400 million $120 million to $150 million $420 million to $550 million

NOTE: CRF funding is the sum of CMR and SCMMR funding.
SOURCE: NIST (2022).

The picture is not unremittingly bleak. NIST has already begun to modernize laboratories as its current budget allows. These new laboratories are state of the art and enable the cutting-edge world-leading research that is NIST’s mission. As an example, one NIST research group—after waiting 18 months to be relocated into a new, modern laboratory—won the 2021 Physics World Breakthrough of the Year award for a previously unprecedented demonstration of the quantum entanglement of microresonators. NIST’s staff is world-class and capable of producing amazing results, results that will serve the nation and inspire the next generations of researchers, provided they are given the facilities and tools needed to do their work.

SOURCE: NASEM (2023b).

STRUCTURE OF THIS REPORT

The report consists of eight chapters. Within the common structure of each chapter, each sub-panel had the flexibility to implement a substructure that it believed made the most sense for the information that it wanted to convey. This results in different substructures among the chapters. Any issue that the panel believed applies to PML as a whole, or is of particular import, is addressed with a key recommendation. These are presented in the Summary, in the chapters in which they appear, and in the final recommendation summary chapter.

After this introductory chapter, which presents an overview of the importance of PML to the nation’s stakeholders, the charge to panel as delivered by the National Academies, and the process by which the

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Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2024. An Assessment of the Divisions of the Physical Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Located in Boulder, Colorado: Fiscal Year 2023. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/27338.

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assessment was carried out, the next chapter (Chapter 2) provides background on and an overview of the four PML divisions reviewed in this report. This is followed by four chapters that are each devoted to a sub-panel review of one of the four divisions assessed in this review (Chapters 3–6). After the assessment chapters is a chapter that presents the recommendations from the fiscal year 2018 PML assessment report, PML’s responses to those recommendations, and an assessment of those responses. The final chapter (Chapter 8) gives a more detailed analysis of the key recommendations drawn from the divisional reviews.

Special Considerations

There are two items that need to be addressed to fully understand this report.

Comparison to International Research Efforts

One of the questions in the statement of task (item 1.a) is “How does the quality of the research compare to similar world-class research in the technical program areas?” The panel was impressed with the quality of research conducted at PML and found it to be generally world-class or world-leading. As with all other assessment topics, this is based on the panelists’ individual and cumulative expertise and experience. However, within the time constraints of this project, there was not time to engage in extensive additional research. Therefore, the report might have fewer concrete examples in regard to this item of the statement of task than the others. Any lack of examples should not be taken as a lack of quality.

Safety

Also, the panel makes observations and a recommendation on safety. It was very careful in doing so. Safety is not part of the formal charge to the panel, and so the panel was not composed to conduct a rigorous safety review. Accordingly, the report notes some things that the panel observed that are of concern to it and makes a high-level safety Key Recommendation 4 to draw attention to the panel’s concerns and suggest a path forward within the limits of the scope, information available to the committee, and the panel’s collective expertise. Due to these limitations, the panel took a relatively light touch on this matter.

REFERENCES

NASEM (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine). 2018. An Assessment of Four Divisions of the Physical Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2018. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25281.

NASEM. 2019. Managing the NIH Bethesda Campus Capital Assets for Success in a Highly Competitive Global Biomedical Research Environment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25483.

NASEM. 2023a. An Assessment of the Materials Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2023. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26048.

NASEM. 2023b. 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.

NASEM. 2024. An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Center for Neutron Research: Fiscal Year 2023. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Page 9 Cite

Suggested Citation:"1 Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2024. An Assessment of the Divisions of the Physical Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Located in Boulder, Colorado: Fiscal Year 2023. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/27338.

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NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). 2022. “NIST Facilities Summary for Representative Trone.” Point Paper. Office of Facilities and Property Management. June.