NIST Awards $24 Million in Grants for New University Research Facilities

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded grants totaling more than $24 million to three universities to provide cost-shared support for the construction of new scientific research facilities. The winning projects were chosen from 93 applicants in a special competition announced last spring.

The three awards include:

• $10.98 million to the University of California at Berkeley for the build-out and outfitting of a Center for Integrated Precision and Quantum Measurement, part of a larger project to construct a new building for the school's physics and astronomy departments;
• $11.998 million to the University of California at San Diego for the construction of a Marine Ecosystem Sensing, Observation and Modeling (MESOM) Laboratory at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography; and
• $1.267 million to the University of Florida for the construction of an Aquatic Animal Health Facility, an expansion of a planned new Aquatic Pathobiology Laboratory.

The special construction grants program provides cost-shared funding for the construction of new buildings or the expansion of existing buildings for the sciences as they relate to the mission of the Department of Commerce and its agencies, including NIST, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

For more details, see "NIST Awards $24 Million in Grants For New Research Facilities Dedicated to Quantum Measurement, Marine Ecology."