NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has made five awards totaling nearly $500,000 to support standards education in undergraduate and graduate curricula. The disciplines supported by this year’s awards include infrastructure improvement and resilience, building information modeling, nanomaterials engineering, aerospace, robotics, and sustainability.

“Investing in the next generation of standards leaders can help ensure U.S. technology leadership worldwide,” says Gordon Gillerman, director of NIST’s Standards Coordination Office. “Not only are standards important to innovation, safety, and a fair marketplace, a standards-savvy workforce is critical to the U.S. leadership in international standards development.”

Since it began in 2012, NIST’s Standards Services Curricula Development Cooperative Agreement Program has received 225 applications and made 46 awards totaling nearly $3.7 million. Funding supports curricula development to integrate content on documentary standards and standardization processes into courses, modules, seminars, and learning resources. This includes sustainable approaches that can be replicated and built upon by other educational programs. 

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