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KC Morris (Fed)

Life Cycle Engineering Group Leader

KC Morris leads the Life Cycle Engineering Group in NIST's Engineering Lab. Her research interests are in Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing, and techniques for design, testing and evaluation of systems and standards. She brings a background in computer science, information modeling, and knowledge representation to solve digital engineering and manufacturing challenges in the manufacturing sector while ensuring that new practices lead to more competitive and sustainable manufacturing. KC currently leads the NIST effort towards standards for transitioning manufacturing to a circular economy. She participates as

During the 116thCongress (2018-2020) KC served as an ASME Congressional Fellow where she led the bipartisan House Manufacturing Caucus on behalf of the Republican co-chair Congressman Tom Reed. Earlier in her career, KC was a key contributor to the foundational implementation standards for product data exchange (ISO 10303, a.k.a. STEP – the Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data) and leader of the XML Testbed project that provided tools to support the development of information standards based in XML for integration within manufacturing supply chains and across the federal government.

Awards

  • 2022 AAAS Fellow, for her efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications in service to society.
  • 2021 SME Fellow, for her high-level achievements that move our vital industry to the next level.
  • 2020 US Department of Commerce, Bronze Medal Award, for outstanding contributions and leadership in standards for Sustainable Manufacturing that enable industry to improve manufacturing efficiency.
  • 2020 ASTM E60 Award of Special Service, for the extraordinary effort in developing and maintaining the suite of Sustainable Manufacturing Standards, April 2020.
  • 2018 EL Communication Award, for the NIST publication “Current Standards Landscape for Smart Manufacturing Systems,” June 2018.
  • 2016 ASME Best Paper Award, at ASME/IDETC/CIE 2016 Conference for “Using Industry Focus Groups and Literature Review to Identify Challenges in Sustainable Assessment Theory and Practice”
  • 2005 US Department of Commerce, Bronze Medal Award, for building XML schemas to support multi-party collaboration of work processes for the life cycle of facilities equipment
  • 1996 US Department of Commerce, Bronze Medal Award, for the development of the NIST STEP Class Library. The tech transfer impact has been worldwide as this Library has been used by many research and development projects in the US and internationally since its release
  • 1993 US Department of Commerce, Bronze Medal Award, for contributions leading to the acceptance of the ISO STEP standard

News

Publications

Standards as Enablers for a Circular Economy

Author(s)
KC Morris, Vincenzo Ferrero, Buddhika Hapuwatte, Noah Last, Nehika Mathur
A successful transition to a circular economy (CE) will require global participation, but the path to that transition will follow many unique routes depending
Created October 9, 2019, Updated November 13, 2023