NIST Frontiers is a lecture series by and for the NIST staff, organized by the NIST Chapter of Sigma Xi to help bring our staff together to learn about and be inspired by their colleagues. NIST Frontiers features NIST's own researchers talking about their cutting-edge work. Sigma Xi has reimagined the NIST Frontiers events to feature NIST researchers sharing their work in an engaging short talk format, designed for all staff (technical and nontechnical alike) to learn from and enjoy!

2025 Lecture Series

Adam Wunderlich
“Enhancing Spectrum Utilization Through Measurement Science”
Modern wireless technologies like mobile phones, Wi-Fi, and satellite systems depend on a limited resource called the radio frequency spectrum to communicate information.  Measurement science plays a key role in advancing technologies and shaping policies that ensure the spectrum is used efficiently and effectively.

Ann Chiaramonti Debay
“Every Atom Counts: Analyzing Materials One Atom at a Time”
The performance of engineering materials, from the processor in your phone to the bridge you drove over on your way to work, is determined by the precise control of atoms. Atom probe tomography is a technique that takes apart materials one atom at a time. I’ll explore the history of atom probe, recent NIST impacts, and our future plans.

2024 Lecture Series

Samantha Maragh
“Making Changes in Life: Genome Editing Technology is Now”
Genome editing technologies (e.g., CRISPR/Cas systems), have revolutionized biotechnology and medicine, enabling the previously impossible in biological cells. This presentation will explore this new frontier and the role of the NIST Genome Editing Program in realizing the promise of this exciting sector.

Paul Patrone
“Less is More: A Mathematical Perspective on Measurement”
From the outside, mathematical analysis appears indecipherable. Yet behind the symbols resides an elegant and platonic perspective that draws power from generality. Join me for a journey through the study of microfluidics, biometrology, COVID, and AI as I show how the mathematician’s eye sheds new light on, and ultimately unifies these fields. 

Victoria Yan Pillitteri
“Don’t Risk it All! Managing Cybersecurity Risk”
Risk is all around us, and we hope that the decisions we make — both big and small — will manage those risks to an acceptable level. But how do you translate a complex series of data-driven decisions into effective cybersecurity risk management? In this talk, we explore the foundations of managing cybersecurity risks, developing standards and technical guidelines for a field where the only constant is change… and understand how NIST is innovating to meet the evolving needs of a challenge that impacts us all.

Wei Zhou
“Playing with Pore Chemistry to Sift Molecules”
Materials with ordered pores are useful for many applications, from sifting small gas molecules to delivering drugs. In this talk, we will discuss the interesting design principles of these materials and how pore chemistry can be rationally tuned for different purposes. We will also show how neutrons can be used as a valuable probe to reveal the secrets of these materials.

Katy Keenan
“MRI: from pretty pictures to measurement device”
MRI offers impressive visualization inside the body. It is a challenge, though, to use MRI as a measurement device. At NIST, we’ve responded to the needs of the pharmaceutical industry and medical community to develop tools for quantitative MRI. Learn about the impact we’ve had and what the future might hold.

Scott Ledgerwood
“From Chaos to Clarity: Human-Centered Design for Emergency Situations”
Join me for a discussion on how user-centered design methodologies can transform chaotic moments into clear, actionable steps for first responders. During this session, attends will learn about the challenges and opportunities in designing interfaces that cater to the unique needs of first responders.

Marc Levitan
“Surviving the Whirlwind: Design of Buildings for Tornadoes”
There is a common perception that tornadic winds are so intense that buildings can’t practically be designed to resist them. However, 97% of tornadoes have maximum speeds of 135 mph, less than design speeds for hurricanes. In this talk we will explore tornado hazards and NIST-led advances in engineering design to resist these powerful storms.

Jessica Reiner
“Understanding Exposure: Reference Materials Aiding Biomonitoring”
Biomonitoring offers information about human exposure to a multitude of environmental chemicals and their metabolites, body burden of chemicals, and people’s nutritional status. While some laboratories use state of the art technology and instrumentation, others use older, established methods. Reference materials support challenges across different platforms, helping generate biomonitoring data that is intercomparable among laboratories.

2023 Lecture Series

Matthew Hoehler
“Visualizing Fire in (Infra)red, White, and Blue”
Fire has profoundly shaped how and where humans live. As our understanding of fire has evolved, so has how we live. This visually entertaining presentation explores the development and deployment of optical technology at NIST to understand fire behavior and its impact on our built environment. 

Callie Higgins
“3D Printing: Making the World Better”
From printing replacement parts for deep-space travel to printing replacement parts for, well, you, 3D printing has captured society's collective attention. For years these concepts, while exquisite, had been pipe dreams, but we are now at a nexus where these dreams are becoming reality. Here at NIST, we're fueling these advancements by facilitating the requisite collaboration between academia, industry, and government.

Kristen Greene
“From Brain to Bytes: Championing the Human in Information Technology”
Did you know NIST has cognitive and social scientists? We do! Social science research methods abound—come learn about a few and how they’re applied to tackle a variety of high-profile national research priorities. From passwords and email phishing to public safety communications technology, understanding human cognition and human behavior can help improve measurement of information technology.

Katie Weigandt
“When Science Gets Real: Industrial Applications and Heterogenous Materials”
Neutron scattering has been used to characterize the nanostructure of materials for decades, but measuring imperfect samples, or even simple materials under extreme yet real world conditions remains challenging. Recent advances in flow-SANS and the development of a far field interferometer instrument seek to address these challenges by enabling scattering during industrially relevant flows, and tomography with nanoscale structural information on heterogeneous and hierarchical materials.

Alexey Gorshov
“Quantum Sensing and Quantum Computing”
Quantum mechanics has a lot of peculiar features such as quantum superposition, quantum entanglement, and the huge size of the many-body Hilbert space. In this talk, we will discuss how these peculiar features can be harnessed to create powerful quantum technologies such as quantum sensors and quantum computers.

Aly Artusio-Glimpse
“Quantum-Enabled DC to THz Electrometry”
Atoms excited to high energy Rydberg states are metrology-grade detectors with sensitivity to an extremely wide range of radio frequency electric fields. We use these atomic systems to not only measure electric field strengths with excellent uncertainty, but also to replace classical systems in a wide swath of applications from reception of phase, amplitude, and frequency modulated signals to non-invasive power measurements to calibrated voltage measurements and even detection of black body radiation to one day improve the accuracy of our atomic clocks.