IIST students traveled to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) headquarters in Gaithersburg, Maryland on January 25th, 2017. The visit was part of a series of visits sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and coordinated by the IIST program and CPS Career Services. NIST’s mission is “to promote US innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.
Students began their visit with a brief overview of some of the projects that NIST has completed, such as their atomic clock, Standard Reference Peanut Butter, and 9/11 World Trade Center Towers Investigation. Students then met with Dr. Ram Sriram, the Chief of the Software and Systems Division of the Information Technology Laboratory, to hear about the important role of information technology in health care informatics and the innovative projects that NIST is undertaking in this field. In 2015, the United States spent nearly $3 trillion dollars on health care, almost a fifth of the nation’s GDP! Properly implemented health information technology could result in significant savings and improved health care. Students had the opportunity to view demonstrations of Dr. Peter Bajcsy’s work in mapping terabyte-sized images of human tissue and recreating 2D and 3D models of the cells in the tissue over a period of time; as well as, Dr. Antonio Cardone’s work with the National Institute of Health (NIH) in determining the effect of an Alzheimer’s drug by experimenting with 3D models of altered proteins in protein-to-protein reactions.
Founded in 1901, and now part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, NIST is one of the nation's oldest physical science laboratories. Today, NIST measurements support the smallest of technologies-nanoscale devices so tiny that tens of thousands can fit on the end of a single human hair-to the largest and most complex of human-made creations, from earthquake-resistant skyscrapers to wide-body jetliners to global communication networks.