NIST Awards UM $15.5 Million in Stimulus Funds for Fellowships

Grant boosts UM stimulus awards above $52 million

College Park, Md. -- The U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced Friday that it is awarding $15.5 million to the University of Maryland to develop and implement a national NIST measurement science and engineering fellowship program. The new fellowship program was funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

"This grant will continue to strengthen ties between NIST and the University of Maryland throughout the entire scope of science and technology," said Professor Daniel Lathrop, principal investigator for the grant. "It will also employ a highly talented pool of fellows to work with NIST to advance the institute's goals in support of measurement science and engineering in the United States," said Lathrop, who is director of the university's Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics and a professor in both the department of physics as well as the department of geology.

According to University of Maryland Vice President for Research Mel Bernstein the new grant brings to more than $52 million the amount of federal recovery act funding the university has received to date, primarily from NIST, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. "This funding -- by helping to build the careers of young scientists and engineers, and supporting a broad range of innovative research -- will significantly assist short and long term job creation. By advancing basic understanding in areas ranging from early childhood development to quantum physics, it will lay the foundation for new treatments, new products and new technologies," Bernstein said.

Maryland's NIST-funded fellowship program will bring some 50 fellows per year over three years to work at NIST laboratories in Gaithersburg, Md., and Charleston, S.C. The new program will be administered by the university's Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, under its director and the program's principal investigator Lathrop. Maryland's co-principal investigators for the fellowship program are Robert Briber, professor and chair of the department of materials science & engineering, and Ellen Williams, distinguished professor of physics. Undergraduate and graduate students from Maryland and other universities are eligible and encouraged to apply, and the University of Maryland also will recruit nationally to fill the senior scientist and postdoctoral research fellowships. The program is presently in the initial organizational phase but interested candidates can visit the website for more information.

NIST Director Patrick Gallagher said: "These new, high-quality training opportunities at NIST in measurement science will bolster our nation's science and technology infrastructure, which is critical for innovating and competing in today's global economy."

According to a NIST release, the new Maryland-administered fellowship program will provide new research collaborations for NIST scientists and further develop a future scientific talent pool with extensive training in measurement science and engineering. The institute's funding of the Maryland program "will ensure that the recruited fellows are closely tied to the research needs and interests of each NIST laboratory."

"This grant to the university for the NIST Recovery Act Fellowship program will create jobs and support top level students and scientists drawn from a national pool to work at NIST to advance the science and technology crucial for maintaining US leadership in the world economy," said university co-PI Briber. "And the program reflects and highlights the close interactions between the University of Maryland and NIST."

A Host of NIST-UM Partnerships
The fellowship program grant is the second major recovery act grant the university has received from NIST and the latest in many connections and partnerships between the two institutions. In January NIST awarded the university $10.3 million in stimulus funds to build a 21,000-square-foot Laboratory for Advanced Quantum Science that will be located within the university's planned Physical Sciences Complex.

The university is home to, and a partner with NIST in, the Joint Quantum Institute. Founded in 2006, JQI already is widely recognized as a leading center of quantum science research. In 2008 the National Science Foundation awarded the Joint Quantum Institute $12.5 million over five years to create and operate a Physics Frontier Center at the University of Maryland.

Although, the university and NIST have a long history of collaboration, the connections between the institutions have greatly increased since they signed an agreement in 2003 to broadly expand research collaborations and professional linkages. One of the first major new partnerships to come from that agreement was the UM-NIST Center for Nanomanufacturing and Metrology, a joint venture created to advance the science and technology of manufacturing products based on the unique properties achieved at the scale of a nanometer (one billionth of a meter).

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