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Blaza Toman (Assoc)

Blaza Toman was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She studied Mathematics and Statistics, earning a Ph.D. in Statistics from the Ohio State University in 1987 with a specialization in Bayesian Optimal Design. She taught statistics at the graduate and undergraduate level at Rutgers University and at the George Washington University, and was a consultant to several medical device companies on Bayesian clinical trial design and analysis. She became a member of the Statistical Engineering Division at NIST in 2000. Her main research interests remain Bayesian statistical methods.

At NIST, she became interested in uncertainty assessment for measurements in the physical sciences, and more generally in statistical methods relevant to metrology. She collaborates with scientists in many fields and with her colleagues in the Statistical Engineering Division developing statistical methods and software for robust uncertainty quantification and experimental design. One of her other interests is analysis of  interlaboratory studies and key comparisons.

 

Technical Areas of Research and Consulting:

  • Uncertainty Quantification
  • Experiment design (in particular, Bayesian optimal experimental design)
  • Bayesian statistical analysis
  • Key Comparison Experiment analysis

Awards

W. J. Youden Award in Interlaboratory Testing, the American Statistical Association, 2009.

Silver Medal, Department of Commerce, 2011, for participation in the response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Silver Medal, Department of Commerce, 2016, for work related to the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) for fire modeling.

Bronze Medal, Department of Commerce, 2018, for development of rigorous analytical methods and data-evaluation processes for the determination of chemical purity.

Bronze Medal, Department of Commerce, 2019, for development and implementation of a measurement assurance strategy to improve comparability and reliability of cell-based assays.

Bronze Medal, Department of Commerce, 2021, for the design and development of a robust, SI-traceable, photocatalytic activity measurement system, which includes a new international documentary standard and a new value assignment to NIST Standard Reference Material 1898, Titanium Dioxide Nanomaterial.

Bronze Medal, Department of Commerce, 2022, for the development of high-pressure reference isotherms of nanoscale porous adsorbents.  

Publications

Certification of Standard Reference Material® 1595a Tripalmitin

Author(s)
Michael Nelson, Jerome Mulloor, Brian Lang, Blaza Toman, Antonio Possolo, William Perry, Alicia Lyle
Standard Reference Material (SRM) 1595a Tripalmitin is a high purity chemical substance having a certified value for purity, expressed as a mass fraction. It is

Reference Isotherms for Water Vapor Sorption on Nanoporous Carbon: Results of an Interlaboratory Study

Author(s)
Huong Giang Nguyen, Blaza Toman, Roger D. van Zee, Carsten Prinz, Matthias Thommes, Riaz Ahmad, David Kiska, Jamie Salinger, Ian Walton, Krista Walton, Darren Broom, Mike Benham, Humera Ansari, Ronny Pini, Camille Petit, Jürgen Adolphs, Andreas Schreiber, Toshihiro Shigeoka, Yuko Konishi, Kazuyuki Nakai, Matthias Henninger, Thomas Petrzik, Can Kececi, Vladimir Martis, Thomas Pasche, Enzo Mangano, Stefano Brandani

Methods for the SI Value Assignment of the Purity of Organic Compounds (IUPAC Technical Report)

Author(s)
David L. Duewer, Katrice Lippa, Brian Lang, Blaza Toman, Michael Nelson, Kenneth W. Pratt, Steven Westwood, Yoshitaka Yoshitaka Shimuzu, Takeshi Saito, Beatrice Lalerle, Xinhua Dai, Stephen Davies, Marina Ricci, Annarita Baldan, Stefan Sarge, Haifeng Wang, Ralf D. Josephs, Michal Mariassy, Dietmar Pfieffer, John Warren, Wolfram Bremser, Stephen L.R. Ellison, Ting Huang, Ales Fajgelj, Lindsey Mackay, Robert Wielgosz
Metrological traceability to the SI of the result of an analysis for an organic compound is achieved through a calibration hierarchy anchored in a primary
Created October 9, 2019, Updated February 1, 2024