An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Measurement and Standards Laboratories Fiscal Years 2004-2005 (2005) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
1 Institutional Assessment
1 Institutional Assessment
Pages 5-16
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 5... ...
. Assuming this role has required that it become a more entrepreneurial, outward-looking, customer-focused research organization with core competencies and the agility to respond quickly and effectively to emerging national needs.
|
From page 6... ...
Public safety and environmental protection are among the most obvious of the new national concerns to which NIST must now respond. It has been relatively easy for NIST to undertake those public safety projects that are identified as related to "homeland security" because of the governmental and public interest in the topic.
|
From page 7... ...
. The strategic focus on homeland security appears to be making particularly effective progress, in all likelihood because of the opportunities and strong sense of urgency and focus created by the intense public interest in the subject and the availability of funding.
|
From page 8... ...
Thus, for example, the very useful ongoing effort in ITL to develop standardized medical records, which might well be viewed as part of a health focus, has almost no connection to work such as characterizing the biocompatibility properties of polymer surfaces, which is being carried out in MSEL, or protein-folding dynamics studies in the Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory (CSTL)
|
From page 9... ...
In health-related areas, CSTL and MSEL are collaborating on developing combinatorial approaches to identifying and optimizing the biocompatible properties of polymer surfaces for use in tissue scaffolds. The PL's Ionizing Radiation Division is involved in diagnostic medical imaging, and CSTL's Analytical Chemistry Division has ongoing work in microfluidic separations as well as cell-based assays and immunoassays.
|
From page 10... ...
The practice in the past, and continued in this assessment cycle, was to review Boulder programs (when appropriate) as part of the individual laboratory reviews, either through separate subpanel visits to Boulder or by videoconferencing (as was done, for example, in this cycle in reviewing the quantum computing program in ITL)
|
From page 11... ...
At the same time, its physical distance from the Gaithersburg operation cuts down on the opportunities for day-to-day interactions between laboratory colleagues at the two sites and introduces challenges to effective joint management. Thus, the Board is raising the question of whether it would not be appropriate to undertake a comprehensive review of the Boulder operation to determine whether some strategic choices might be made to restructure Boulder's efforts to build on its comparative advantages and minimize its inherent disadvantages.
|
From page 12... ...
The Board suggests that NIST undertake a comprehensive development of its Web site to make it a useful resource for the public by providing a more easily searchable set of databases, a navigable reference library, and a hyperlinked connection to related sites. Because of the range of information that NIST has to offer, such a site should not depend on a single kind of search tool or only on an alphanumeric organizational structure.
|
From page 13... ...
. In Figure 1.1, aggregate data are presented for staffing trends for the seven Measurement and Standards Laboratories for the past decade.
|
From page 14... ...
They are as follows: 1. NIST has undergone a remarkable transformation in little more than a decade and a half from an organization devoted to producing excellent science and standards in an orderly, incremental fashion using a single-principal-investigator mode of operation to an entrepreneurial, outward-looking, customer-focused research organization whose core competencies and newly developed agility have responded quickly and effectively to emerging national needs.
|
From page 15... ...
The Board recommends, however, that criteria be developed and/or more clearly communicated to staff concerning the circumstances under which patent protection is to be sought for NIST products. It is important both for NIST staff and for collaborators from other institutions to have a consistent perspective on intellectual property issues or to develop procedures that recognize and respect institutional differences so as to smooth the collaborations.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.