A Look Back at the Past 3 Years’ Accomplishments, by NIST Director Laurie E. Locascio

So much has changed since I walked onto the Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) almost three years ago to begin my term as its director and under secretary of commerce for standards and technology.  

We were all still feeling the impacts of the pandemic, and I arrived to a mostly empty campus with darkened, quiet hallways. It was a little shocking to feel so little life on the campus where I had previously spent decades as a researcher and then as director of the NIST Material Measurement Laboratory.

While the hallways were quiet, NIST’s staff members were still hard at work. The pandemic had forced many of them to adjust to home workspaces or to minimize their time on campus. Today our campuses in Gaithersburg and Boulder, Colorado, are thriving once again, as are our multiple joint institutes and collaborations.

Now, thanks to the thought leadership and hard work of so many at NIST, we have an AI Risk Management Framework, the NIST AI Innovation Lab, the AI Safety Institute and many collaborations and projects that are working to ensure we get the most from this technology, while helping to promote its safe and effective use. And in 2025 we plan to launch a new Manufacturing USA institute focused on transforming manufacturing with AI.

Throughout our labs, we have come up with creative ways to apply AI to improve our research and our operations. We have brought together industry, academia, civil society and government agencies to help us understand how to drive AI innovation without causing harm to people, society and the planet.  

Three years ago, inflation was high, and we still couldn’t get the things we needed. Supply chains were disrupted, and there were not enough semiconductor chips to power the goods and services we use every day. Three years ago, semiconductor manufacturing was a distant memory in the U.S.  

Today, we have incredible investments in U.S. manufacturing that will help our nation once again lead in semiconductors. Many, many people worked incredibly hard to establish the CHIPS for America program and keep it focused on the goal of building up a new U.S. semiconductor manufacturing base and a robust semiconductor R&D ecosystem. Without a doubt, that ecosystem depends on measurements from NIST.

Tens of billions of dollars have been awarded that will support manufacturing facilities and research and development. This includes a CHIPS Manufacturing USA institute focused on digital twins that will allow us to build, design and collaborate on semiconductor research in the virtual world. The collaboration establishing this institute has already generated industry investment that is more than three times our federal investment, for a total of $1 billion for this important technology.

All of these efforts and investments will have an incredible and lasting impact on revolutionizing manufacturing capacity in our country. They will help to ensure that we never again experience the shortages we faced during the pandemic. And they are bringing new, good-paying technology jobs to so many parts of the country.  

Three years ago, we did not have a strategy for U.S. government participation in standards development. Now NIST is reinvigorating U.S. standards efforts as we implement the U.S. government National Standards Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technologies that was released by the White House last summer.

Today, that strategy and the implementation plan we developed in partnership with the private sector is driving forward the success of our industries. Trillions of dollars of trade rely on our ability to convert American innovation into international standards. And our work will help the U.S. stay engaged and continue to lead the world in the face of a rapidly evolving and highly competitive international landscape.

While NIST is not a standards development organization, our experts participate in and provide technical leadership to thousands of national and international committees. Their work demonstrates our strong commitment to our mission: to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness.

When I arrived almost three years ago, the pandemic had made us acutely aware of how vulnerable our society is to infectious diseases. The experts at NIST stepped up to help the nation respond. We provided the test materials needed to assure the quality of measurements of SARS-CoV-2, so that accurate diagnostic kits could be made and distributed by the millions.

Following on that success, we released a test material for Mpox in record time  and followed that by producing a test material for bird flu. These materials help to speed development of the tests that detect disease and the vaccines that protect us — and will help us to fight the next pandemic.

The world has changed so much in the past few years — but not just from COVID.

We are now experiencing hurricanes and wildfires that are bigger and more damaging than ever before. According to NOAA, higher ocean temperatures are fueling more intense Atlantic hurricanes. And as we increasingly build communities in natural areas, fires within these communities are becoming more dangerous and more costly than ever before.  

NIST’s Disaster and Failure Studies program is working hard to make our communities more resilient, including through the Hurricane Maria and Champlain Towers South investigations. And I know that just like with the Joplin tornado investigation, World Trade Center investigation and other incredibly complex investigations and studies that we have conducted, we will produce trusted recommendations that will make our homes and buildings safer to prevent future devastation.  

We have also studied wildfires and developed guidance to make homes and communities safer by mitigating the hazards of sheds, fences and mulch beds where communities meet wildlands. We’ve shared lessons learned from the 2018 Camp Fire in California, including strategies for protecting lives when there is not enough time to safely evacuate all residents.

In the last three years, NIST has also improved the nation’s cybersecurity posture. We released the very first post-quantum cryptography standards that will prepare the nation to protect our encrypted data from future quantum computers.  

We updated our Cybersecurity Framework with the participation of over 100 countries, making it a globally important cybersecurity document that has been translated into many languages, including Ukrainian. And we have updated guidelines for digital identity and face recognition analysis, making it safer and more efficient to do business or board an airplane. We have worked to support the need to grow the nation’s cybersecurity workforce — and spurred the development of a White House strategy to address this need.

NIST plays an important role as the nation’s measurement institute, or NMI, providing unique measurement services such as standard reference materials, data and calibrations. All of these are used by industry to innovate and to ensure the quality of their products and services. I am excited to say that NIST is once again poised to change the way the world measures, preparing for an international agreement on redefinition of the second.

Years of research into the phenomena of quantum physics have given us the tools to better understand how the universe works and to control and manipulate matter at the smallest scales and coldest temperatures.  

NIST is pushing the envelope in quantum science, improving timekeeping and navigation. And in these last three years, we have announced improvements in quantum sensing that are helping to better detect radio signals and defects in transistors, and to measure gravity, ultralow pressures, acoustic vibrations, and even general relativity at the millimeter scale.

These advancements can help us better understand where floodwaters will flow. They can lead to better medical diagnostics and treatments. They are advancing communications technology.  

NIST is always looking ahead to the next innovation and how critical improvements in measurement science can get us there. I like to remind myself that the navigation system that I rely on so often is a result of quantum research conducted at NIST decades ago. And I’m excited to see what ubiquitous essential technology results from the fundamental research happening in a NIST lab today.

In other areas of work, NIST has found better ways to help our planet through improved monitoring of greenhouse gases, ways to convert heat to electricity, and more. NIST has made our first responders safer and more effective through better communications tools and practices.

They say when you do a good job, you are often rewarded with more work. And that has absolutely been true for NIST. We have seen this with the many new challenges Congress and the Biden-Harris administration have sent our way.

NIST has been tasked with helping to detect forever chemicals like PFAS and microplastics. We have been tasked with detecting new illicit drugs like tranq that appear on our streets and harm our people. We have been tasked with aggressive timelines to make our digital world more secure and to secure the nation’s supply chains. We have been tasked with leading an effort to make biomanufacturing safer and more efficient so that we can get the innovative therapies that we need when our health fails.

And for all of these tasks, NIST has performed as our nation’s leaders knew we would: We have excelled in every respect.

All of the incredible work performed every day at NIST helps American companies grow, improves our economy and supports the quality of life that we in the United States have grown to love. There is no better mission than that.  

Through all the years I have worked at NIST (almost 35 now), I have been so grateful for the wonderful people around me. They are dedicated to their work, whether it is adding a decimal point to a measurement or improving an administrative process.

Time after time I have seen the people of NIST live up to its values of excellence, perseverance, integrity and inclusivity. And I know they will keep doing so long after I have left NIST.

The work done here is of incredible value to the nation, and it has been my honor and my privilege to have served as the 17th director of NIST.