An Assessment of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory Fiscal Year 2010 (2010) / Chapter Skim
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5 Polymers Division
5 Polymers Division
Pages 41-53
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From page 41... ...
It would perhaps be best to articulate the mission in the following terms: "The mission of the Polymers Division ties into NIST's overall mission as restricted to measurement sciences involving polymeric materials and complex fluids." The Polymers Division consists of 31 permanent technical staff (includes 2 NIST fellows) , 19 NRC postdoctoral researchers, 2 term employees/students, and 67.6 NIST associates (see footnote 1)
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From page 42... ...
The division's programs are very highly leveraged with CRADAs, MTAs, interagency agreements, international research collaborations, an extremely active NRC postdoctoral program, and a highly successful national and international visiting scientist program. In project after project, examples of measurement methods that are on the leading edge and that are also being applied and/or transitioned to the business sector are evident.
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From page 43... ...
The use of the facilities is generally managed on an ad hoc basis, with primary care performed by the users of the given equipment. The division has core competencies in areas as diverse as controlled biopolymer interfaces, combinatorial methods and fabrication, scaffold fabrication, optimal imaging and characterization, nonlinear optical spectroscopy, mechanical and adhesion property testing, polymer synthesis, microfluidics, mass spectroscopy, chromatography, x-ray and neutron characterization and reflectivity, electron microscopy, quantitative calorimetry, solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)
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From page 44... ...
Three major advances were described: broadband three-dimensional chemical imaging of biological tissue, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) -derivatized water-soluble quantum dots for functional bioimaging, and standards for dental materials and tissue engineering scaffolds.
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From page 45... ...
This systematization of standardized arrays combines innovative science with unique imaging. This capability has been extended to provide Reference Materials Scaffolds, a unique service to academic and industrial research laboratories, very much in line with the NIST mission.
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From page 46... ...
Recommendation: The outstanding technical progress in the Bioimaging and Protein Preservation areas should be leveraged to grow these programs with additional staff and resources. Characterization and Measurement Group The Characterization and Measurement Group (composed of 7 permanent technical staff, 4 postdoctoral researchers, and 6.8 NIST associates [see footnote 1]
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From page 47... ...
Recommendation: A rescoping of the effort is needed; a redefinition of the vision is in order; a set of objectives, goals, and milestones needs to be established; and the researchers in this effort must work in a quasi-unified manner toward this common goal. Electronic Materials Group The Electronic Materials Group is composed of 7 permanent technical staff, 5 postdoctoral researchers, 11 NIST associates (see footnote 1)
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From page 48... ...
Key facilities and instrumentation to which the group has access and developed include x-ray measurement capabilities, materials measurements, and a newly developed organic electronics processing laboratory. The group has been successful in obtaining close to $2 million for setting up an organic photovoltaic test facility and femtosecond laser-based nonlinear optical spectroscopy for thin-films analysis.
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From page 49... ...
The Processing Characterization Group The Processing Characterization Group comprises 7 permanent technical staff, 4 NRC postdoctoral researchers, 10.2 NIST associates (see footnote 1) , and 1 administrative support member.
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From page 50... ...
The motivation statement is vague, and it does not capture that complex fluids can comprise a rich variety of systems including colloidal suspensions, surfactant mixtures, polymeric liquids, and biomolecular assemblies. This rich variety should make an interesting pathway for industry and academic collaboration.
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From page 51... ...
Recommendation: The Polymers Division should look for ways to maintain the size and scope of the semiconductor electronics effort to continue to have an impact on this important industry. Finding: The current division structure does not clearly align staff with core capabilities.
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From page 52... ...
The acquisition of a mid-sized HPC facility managed by division scientists would permit local users to explore larger systems than those accessible on their personal computers without the overhead of requesting time on off-site HPC facilities or the need to ensure that they satisfy the parallelization requirements for said off-site resources. If managed properly, it would also enable the development of codes that scale across a larger number of processors within an environment that is more conducive for fast coding than that which can be found in typical off-site HPC facilities.
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From page 53... ...
Recommendation: The Polymers Division should focus more on systematically pushing the boundaries of its budgets and its core competencies and less on addressing short-term administrative turnover and other exigencies.
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