NIST 2018 Awards Recognize ITL Staff for Outstanding Performance

Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Service

Mark Levitan, Emil Simiu, EL; Adam Pintar, ITL
AWARD CITATION:  Awarded for achievements in science and engineering. The group is recognized for technical innovations to develop new maps of U.S. extreme wind speeds, used for the design of structures. The underpinning analysis was the first to realistically account for risk consistency, multiple storm types, and regional variation of wind climate. The team also worked to ensure that the new maps were incorporated in the American Society of Civil Engineers' national standard for the design of buildings and other structures for wind loads. This greatly improved the science basis of the standard, enabling safe and more economical designs for buildings and infrastructure. 

Bronze Medal

Michael Nelson, Katrice Lippa, MML; Blaza Toman, ITL
AWARD CITATION:  Lippa, Nelson, and Toman are recognized for the development of rigorous analytical methods and data-evaluation processes for the determination of chemical purity, and for transfer of this technology to the private sector for the development of a new class of primary Standard Reference Materials. Knowledge of chemical purity is essential for accurate amount-of-substance measurements and for establishing the metrological traceability of these results to the International System of Units (SI). The team’s processes are applicable to a range of NIST’s measurement services, with applications that extend from healthcare delivery to forensic purity assessment of seized drugs. 

Dennis Leber, ITL; David Schmitt, Ann Virts, EL; James Filliben, ITL; Elena Messina, Roger Bostelman, EL
AWARD CITATION:  The team is recognized for exceptional leadership in founding the ASTM Committee F45 on driverless automatic guided industrial vehicles, and for providing the technical basis of the committee’s first four performance standards for automatic/automated/autonomous unmanned ground vehicles (A-UGVs). A-UGVs are used to automate delivery of parts, tools, supplies, and other materials in applications such as manufacturing, warehousing, and medical delivery. A-UGV capabilities have been evolving rapidly, but there were no standard methods for describing or assessing A-UGV performance and capabilities. The team's outstanding efforts have enabled significant progress in addressing these gaps in just two years.

Peter Mell, ITL
AWARD CITATION:  Mr. Mell is recognized for technical advances in computer-network defense methods used in government and industrial systems. His insight and creativity led to vastly improved algorithms used in the field of intrusion detection and access control. Specifically, he (a) developed an improved network scan-detection algorithm that the U.S. Army Research Laboratory has deployed in an operational network; (b) conducted a novel analysis of network anomaly-detection leading to a new understanding of intrusion detection; and (c) developed improved algorithms for scalable access control. This work has provided both practical (fielded) advances in network intrusion detection, and advances in the science of network defense.

Jacob Rabinow Applied Research Award

Donald Porter and Michael Donahue, ITL
AWARD CITATION:  Drs. Donahue and Porter, of the ITL Applied and Computational Mathematics Division, are recognized for their initiative to improve the state of the art in nanomagnetic modeling, the computational simulation of magnetic phenomena at the nanoscale, within the research community. They have very carefully engineered a software tool that is usable, flexible, adaptable, and extensible. It is now the most widely used nanomagnetics modeling system in the world. More than 2,500 journal articles (11 in Science and Nature) and 18 U.S. patent applications reference use of their system, attesting to the magnitude of its impact on U.S. innovation.

Edward Bennett Rosa Award

Falco, Marvel, Muralikrishnan, Shilling, Franaszek, Cheok, Rachakonda, Bostelman, Saidi, EL; Ya-Shian Li-Baboud, ITL
AWARD CITATION:  The team is recognized for outstanding leadership and technical excellence in initiating and developing performance test methods that have been adopted as international standards for 3D imaging systems used in a wide range of critical applications. The team identified the need for measurements and standards for a burgeoning new sensing technology, convened the stakeholders, and formed a new ASTM standards committee. The team's rigorous experiments, analyses, and crafting of test methods and artifacts provided the technical foundations for the first-ever standards that measure key performance aspects of 3D imaging systems, guiding system improvements and enabling users to compare different systems and reduce adoption risks.