7
The Physical Measurement Laboratory’s Responses to the Recommendations of the 2018 Assessment Report

Five years ago, in 2018, this report’s predecessor report, An Assessment of Four Divisions of the Physical Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2018 (NASEM 2018; hereafter “FY 2018 Assessment”) offered four key recommendations to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) regarding the operation of the Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML) and, in particular, the four PML divisions that have been reviewed again in this report: the Applied Physics Division, the Quantum Physics Division, the Quantum Electromagnetics Division, and the Time and Frequency Division. Two of the recommendations were aimed generally at all four of the PML divisions in the review, while the other two were intended for specific divisions. The 2018 report also offered some observations about what might act to improve specific divisions that did not rise to the level of recommendations.

In preparation for visits from the committee working on this current report, NIST staff provided descriptions of how NIST and PML had responded to the recommendations in the 2018 report. The responses are reproduced below (unedited, without citations)—organized into responses to the two general recommendations and then responses to recommendations and observations relating to each of the four divisions.

GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS

APPLIED PHYSICS DIVISION

QUANTUM ELECTROMAGNETICS DIVISION

TIME AND FREQUENCY DIVISION

QUANTUM PHYSICS DIVISION

REFERENCE