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Feature Stories

As the nation’s laboratory for measurement science, standards and technology, NIST has stimulated U.S. innovation and economic competitiveness through its world-class work in many areas of national importance. The following features provide big-picture views of the many research fields that NIST has helped to advance.

Many different rectangular pieces of webby material are all wrapped up in a big ball. The pieces are each colored differently so that you can tell them apart in the bunch. These are meant to represent a graphene melt.

Materials by Design

A dash of artificial intelligence, a pinch of human ingenuity and a huge helping of collaboration... read about NIST's role in the recipes of Materials Genome Initiative.
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Close-up, cropped view of display of one of the NIST time server boxes

NIST's Remote Time and Frequency Measurement Service

NIST provides laboratories around the world with convenient, continuous access to top-quality time and frequency measurements. These services compare the performance of a customer’s instruments and products to the U.S. standards maintained by NIST.
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Giant metal tubs are being opened and white vapor is puffing up into the face of one researcher who is in a protective suit with hood, gloves and eye protection. In the background, several other suited researchers discuss something.

Staying Chill, Even When Disaster Strikes

When most people prepare for a hurricane, they buy food and water. But when scientist Amanda Moors sees one of those big, red, pinwheel-shaped storms appear on the weather map, she buys liquid nitrogen.
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SRM Featured Image

Measurements Matter

The government has acronyms for seemingly everything. At NIST, one even has a registered trademark: SRM® is the “brand name” of our certified reference materials, the generic term for these vital tools.
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Ariel view of National Fire Research Facility

Built to House an Inferno

The new National Fire Research Laboratory aims to make buildings better and safer. The expanded facility can hold structures up to two stories tall and contain fires up to 20 megawatts of peak energy—that’s equivalent to a small home engulfed by fire!
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Detective X Featured Story Teaser Image

Who Was Detective X?

In the gangster era of Prohibition and the Great Depression, a physicist at the National Bureau of Standards, now NIST, brought modern ideas to the then-emerging field of forensic science.
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