Katrice presently serves as the Chief of the Office of Weights and Measures (OWM) in the Physical Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). OWM is responsible for ensuring the traceability of state weights and measures standards to the SI and develops device test procedures and conducts training for legal metrology inspectors, laboratory metrologists and weights and measures officials. In partnership with the National Conference on Weights and Measures (NCWM), OWM provides guidance on model weights and measures laws and regulations as published through NIST Handbooks that are adopted by state and local weights and measures programs. OWM also serves as the U.S. representative to the International Organization of Legal Metrology (OIML) to support U.S. manufacturers through the promotion of harmonized international standards and regulatory practices.
Since completing her Ph.D. in environmental chemistry in 2001, she has spent her professional career at NIST in a variety of roles as a research chemist, senior scientific advisor, and as the leader of the Organic Chemical Metrology Group. That Group develops and promotes Standard Reference Materials (SRMs) and data products for organic species in clinical diagnostics and metabolomics, food nutritional labeling, food safety, natural products, and chemical manufacturing and forensics project areas. She has expertise in implementing interlaboratory comparisons and Quality Assurance Programs (QAPs), developing quantitative NMR techniques for characterization of pure substances, in addition to advancing metrologically-sound organic chemical analysis methods for ensuring chemical traceability.
Katrice has held leadership positions in a number of Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) to strengthen the role of accurate, trusted chemical measurements in assuring our quality of life and strengthening the national economy and international trade. This has included the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) Consultative Committee of Amount of Substance (CCQM), the Chemical Metrology Working Group of the Inter-American Metrology System (SIM), and the IUPAC Working Group on SI Value Assignment of the Purity of Organic Compounds.
While at NIST, Katrice has been awarded a Department of Commerce Bronze Medal for the development of the “first of its kind” Primary Standard for quantitative nuclear magnetic resonance (qNMR) spectroscopy, and the Allen V. Astin Measurement Science Award for the successful NIST Vitamin D metrology.