(NIST: Gaithersburg, Maryland) -- The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced today that it will award up to $35 million in grants and cooperative agreements for measurement science and engineering research. Approximately 20 to 60 awards, lasting from one to three years, and ranging from $500,000 to $1.5 million, will be funded by these grants, which are part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“The Recovery Act provides a unique opportunity to expand scientific research in the pursuit of economic prosperity,” says Gary Locke, Commerce Secretary.

NIST is looking for proposals that advance the state of knowledge and practice of measurement science in six identified research areas of critical national importance:

• Energy;
• Environment and climate change;
• Information technology and cybersecurity;
• Biosciences/health care;
• Manufacturing; and
• Physical infrastructure.

State-of-the-art measurement science provides the infrastructure that industry and science need to develop and commercialize new technologies. The air conditioning and refrigeration industry, for example, has saved millions of dollars over the past 20 years due to NIST’s work on the measurement of the thermophysical properties of alternative refrigerants (i.e., alternatives to ozone-depleting compounds).

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