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Environment

NIST Changes With The Times

Measurement agency gets facelift with new director, more focused mission

by David J. Hanson
April 5, 2010 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 88, Issue 14

PUSHING CHANGE
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Credit: © Robert Rathe
NIST’s Gallagher has plans to make his agency more efficient and responsive.
Credit: © Robert Rathe
NIST’s Gallagher has plans to make his agency more efficient and responsive.

Dealing with change has kept scientists and engineers at the National Institute of Standards & Technology busy over the past few years—and more change is in their future. With a new stream of funds coming to the agency in recognition of its importance to U.S. economic competitiveness, NIST is taking on a greater and more prominent role within the government than it has in the past. And under its new director, Patrick D. Gallagher, the agency is planning a major reorganization of its management and laboratory functions to better respond to this new role.

Technology is becoming a key part of finding solutions to the important problems the government is working to solve, Gallagher explains in a recent interview with C&EN that focuses on the changes happening at the agency. “And Congress is looking at us increasingly to find those solutions,” he says.

Gallagher’s role in changing NIST to meet these growing demands is recognized by Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), chairman of the House Science & Technology Committee. “As technologies have evolved, so NIST has to evolve,” Gordon said at a committee hearing last month. “I am in complete agreement [with Gallagher] that the NIST structure needs to better reflect the needs of the private-sector communities it serves.”

NIST is a nonregulatory agency within the Department of Commerce, and its main function is to promote U.S. competitiveness by advancing measurement science and technology. It was founded in 1901 as the National Bureau of Standards (NBS); the name change to NIST came in 1988. Its headquarters is located on its main campus in Gaithersburg, Md., and it also has a laboratory in Boulder, Colo. NIST employs about 2,900 scientists, engineers, technicians, and staff, and has a 2010 budget of $854 million. It also received about $600 million from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Gallagher, 46, was confirmed as the 14th director of NIST on Nov. 5, 2009, but he was on the job as the acting director for the agency for more than a year before that. He is a physicist and materials scientist who worked in the laboratory at NIST’s Center for Neutron Research, which he headed. As a research scientist, Gallagher is sort of a throwback to the time of the old NBS when its directors were more likely to have risen from in-house posts.

“Until the 1980s it was pretty traditional for the director to be selected from within,” Gallagher notes. “Then as new programs were added, particularly large grant programs such as the Advanced Technology Program, we started a period where the NIST director was selected from outside the agency.”

The Advanced Technology Program, or ATP, is a widely praised effort started in 1990 to help companies bridge the gap between basic research and product development. It was replaced a couple of years ago by the Technology Innovation Program (TIP), a smaller grant program with a similar mission. But ATP—together with the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Program begun in 1990 to help manufacturers implement new technologies, and the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award started in 1987 to honor managerial efficiency in manufacturing—gave the research at NIST a lot more visibility and raised the agency’s profile both with the public and Congress.

KEY ROLE
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Credit: Peter Cutts Photography
Gallagher believes in NIST’s importance in improving U.S. competitiveness.
Credit: Peter Cutts Photography
Gallagher believes in NIST’s importance in improving U.S. competitiveness.

“NIST’s mission has always been uniquely focused on the interplay between technology and industry,” Gallagher says. “Originally, it was all about measurements and making sure industry had the calibration tools and systems to support manufacturing and commerce. That role has evolved as technology evolved and NIST was seen as the natural home for a broader set of innovation-related programs.

“Today, the nation’s discussion about the role of R&D has matured into this innovation framework, and I think it fits NIST very well,” Gallagher explains. “The agency has four programs that go all the way from supporting basic science, particularly measurement science, to improving the production of goods and services through the manufacturing and Baldrige programs.”

The result of these changes is that NIST is positioned to contribute stronger support to the U.S. economy through technology and research than it had in the past, Gallagher believes.

The realization that this expanded NIST is a place that can make direct contributions to improving the economy has not gone unnoticed by Congress. The agency was specifically named in the America Competes Act of 2007, along with the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, as one of the government’s physical science agencies that could improve innovation in the U.S. through science and engineering. As a result, the law authorizes large budget increases for the three agencies with a stated goal of doubling each one’s budget over 10 years. But Gallagher says the America Competes Act has done more than just increase NIST’s budget; it has given the agency a better focus and direction.

“Competes was important to NIST because it specifically reauthorized the agency in the context of this innovation agenda. It was the first legislative articulation of the idea that our public investments in science and technology have an important goal in promoting economic growth,” Gallagher says. He adds that the law provided a context for research at NIST that focuses on the development of new technologies to help manufacturing.

For instance, among the changes for NIST in the bill was the creation of TIP to replace the older ATP. “TIP is different because it allows universities to participate, it is less focused on commercialization and more on proof-of-concept work, and it focuses on critical national needs,” Gallagher says.

To deal with such challenges, Gallagher says a different outlook for NIST is required, one that includes changes to make the agency more efficient. “When a new director comes in is the time to take a look at an agency’s structure,” he says. “I have been given an enormous responsibility by the President to make sure NIST is effective and has impact. Part of that responsibility is to make sure the organization” is structured properly. To this end, Gallagher has set in motion a reorganization plan to strengthen the agency’s management and help it more effectively carry out its mandates without negatively affecting its workforce.

“I have proposed two specific changes to the organization. First, I have proposed eliminating the deputy director’s position and replacing it with three associate directors, each with distinct responsibilities over program elements,” Gallagher says. “There would be an associate director for laboratory programs, in charge of the old NBS function. Then there would be an associate director for innovation and industrial services, basically the person responsible for the newer programs in the innovation framework such as TIP and MEP. The third associate director is for management resources, which is administrative and operational support.” Gallagher notes this change has already been given a nod of approval from the secretary of the Department of Commerce and the White House and is waiting only for final approval by Congress.

The second change, for which the details are still being worked out in discussions with the agency staff, is a reorganization of the laboratory structure. NIST presently has eight laboratories in its science program, and Gallagher notes that they are set up according to disciplines in a university-like manner—a physics lab, a chemistry lab, several engineering labs, and a cross-cutting measurements services lab. NIST also has two user facilities, the neutron facility and the Center for Nanoscale Science & Technology; Gallagher’s planned shifts will not affect these facilities.

“I would take the eight labs and realign them into four. This would create two measurement science laboratories and two technology laboratories,” Gallagher explains. “One of the measurement labs would be the physical science lab and it would have responsibility for keeping the basic measurements of time, mass, length, and the dissemination of those types of physical measurements. This would include our calibrations services lab, accreditation services, and so forth.

“A new materials measurement laboratory would have responsibility for our programs to support how you measure materials and for materials reference activity. This includes a lot of our chemistry, biological materials, material engineering programs, and metallurgy ceramics. It would not only do research but also handle tasks like the certified reference materials program,” Gallagher says.

“The two technology laboratories,” he continues, “would be the information technology lab, which we currently have, and a physical technology center called the engineering lab, which would support efforts in a variety of technological sectors. The engineering lab includes work in areas such as the fire program, the building and structure program, and our industrial automation programs.”

Gallagher points out that it is in the technology areas that legislation such as the America Competes Act has given NIST research an expanded mission. For example, in the information technology area, he says the law gives the agency responsibility for developing cybersecurity standards for the federal government, providing support for electronic voting, and developing standards for electronic health and medical records. “And there is a similar long list of specifics in the engineering lab,” he says.

“We consider this a mission-based alignment,” he adds. “From the research side, I don’t think it’s going to have a major impact because one of the beauties of NIST is that it already has a broad mission to support cutting-edge research. In fact, the real change is going to be on the leadership of the new labs because the scope of their responsibilities has expanded. They won’t just have management of a select research portfolio, but they will have to effectively carry out a specific portion of our mission. It will give them a lens with which to look at the research programs. I think it will also facilitate multidisciplinary work because the management will not be so focused on who is doing what research, they will focus more on carrying out a set of mission-related programs and activities,” he explains.

The work on this reorganization is expected to take a couple more months, Gallagher adds, and he doesn’t think he will be ready to send a plan to Congress before the summer. “It’s a complicated package because you have to describe where everybody goes and how everything is mapped out. We’re fortunate that we are doing this at a time when the agency is growing. We don’t need to eliminate any positions, and there is no need for a reduction in force.” Gallagher says.

He believes that the changes will allow the agency to continue its historical role of performing long-term basic research and be better at responding to the short-term activities it is being called on to perform. “It gives me a management team that shares my problem of how to optimize all the things, what is the right mix, and how to respond to the short-term things without undermining our long-term roots,” he says.

And Gallagher is very aware of NIST’s long record of accomplishments. “We don’t want to lose the baby with the bathwater,” he cautions. This “is a 109-year-old agency that has been able to do well and thrive. That consistency comes from having a mission focus that has not been diluted. I don’t want to lose the focus we have on precision measurement and excellence and staying at the forefront. I think these are the keys that open us up to other opportunities.”

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