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A researcher in a lab coat and safety glasses poses next to a large piece of lab equipment.

The Insulation That Melts in Your Walls — and Could Reduce Your Energy Costs

January 30, 2025

Wherever humans go, we take some form of insulation with us to keep us at just the right temperature. But just because the idea is old doesn’t mean that there haven’t been innovations. One of those innovations could lower your energy costs.

Four men are protected by a net structure as they look away from the camera toward a drone flying in a large high-ceilinged room with street signs on the walls.

Drones in Disaster Zones: How Advanced 3D Mapping Technology Can Help First Responders Save Lives

January 6, 2025

Megan King

NIST is working to help emergency workers have more information in a crisis by encouraging the development of advanced drones at an affordable price.

Photos of everyday objects like an iron, a gas can and a laptop along with high-tech items like an atomic clock and a mass balance. Label reads: 10 Ways NIST Impacts Your Daily Life.

From Safer Skies to Fewer Fires: 10 Ways NIST Impacts Your Daily Life

December 10, 2024

Robin Materese

If you’ve ever had a medical test, flown on an airplane, or needed to check the time, NIST’s work affects your life every day.

Photos of Marc Levitan and Long Phan are part of a collage of tornado images labeled: Tornado Resiliency Building Code Research

NIST Research Is Setting the Standard to Help Buildings Withstand Tornadoes

May 6, 2024

Brian Gutierrez

Two NIST researchers have been recognized for their work to create new standards for buildings that can better withstand tornadoes.

A man in safety gear crouches to examine a damaged wall inside a building after an earthquake.

The Highs and Lows of Studying the Aftermath of One of Turkey’s Deadliest Earthquakes

October 16, 2023

Matthew Speicher

Our goal at NIST is to not only document and learn from disasters, but to also spur innovation and make recommendations to help lessen the impact of the next disaster.

Collage includes four historical photos of Black men in military and office attire on background of gold, green, black and red.

From the Space Shuttle to Structural Engineering, NIST’s Tuskegee Airmen Left a Lasting Legacy in Service and Science

February 3, 2023

Megan King

Four of these men are now known to have continued their careers at NBS, though colleagues at the time didn’t know about their co-workers’ historic past.

Jazalyn Dukes poses in front of a display that reads "Engineering a Safer World."

How My Childhood Fascination With Bridges Helped Me Build a Career Protecting People and Buildings From Natural Disasters

January 31, 2023

Jazalyn Dukes

NIST research engineer Jazalyn Dukes talks about what inspired her career and gives some advice to girls considering a career in structural and civil engineering.

John Kitching leans over a table in the lab, using tweezers to point to part of a chip-scale device in a clear plastic box.

NIST’s Researchers Look Ahead to High-Tech Trends in 2023 and Beyond

December 22, 2022

They study topics that impact all of us, from indoor air quality to cybersecurity.

Camila Espina Young poses outdoors for a head shot

Hurricane Maria Recollections, Software Nostalgia, The Brothers Engineering: A Sample of Stories on NIST Social Media

November 2, 2022

Riley Wilson

The work happening at NIST can often be described as more than simply “work.”

Jeffrey Fong poses smiling in front of a railing overlooking a concrete dam.

My Journey From Designing Dams to Helping Structures Live Their Longest Lives

August 2, 2022

Jeffrey T. Fong

Jeffrey Fong writes about how his personal drive for safe engineering design led him to work at NIST.

Joannie Chin stands with arms crossed, wearing safety goggles, in front of scientific equipment.

Building in a Changing Climate: A Q&A With NIST’s Joannie Chin

July 26, 2022

The director of NIST’s Engineering Laboratory discusses the role of buildings in creating and mitigating climate change.

A person in a hard hat surrounded by debris including a crushed car takes a picture of a concrete block with a phone.

NIST’s Investigations of Structural Disasters: What We Do and Why They Can Take Years to Complete

February 17, 2022

Tanya Brown-Giammanco

My Background in Disasters It seems as though I was born to be a disaster researcher. I can vividly remember seeking shelter during tornado warnings in the basement at friends’ or relatives’ houses, or in the church at the end of our street as a young child living in Wichita, Kansas. When I was 9

Close-up of a map showing a city called Lumberton

The Trials and Triumphs of a Small City’s Hurricane Recovery Could Help Other Communities Bounce Back

January 14, 2022

Jennifer Helgeson, Maria Dillard

In September 2018, a North Carolina city’s long road to recovery from Hurricane Matthew two years earlier became even longer. Lumberton, a small but diverse city of 21,000 people, 96 kilometers (60 miles) inland from the coast, unfortunately found itself in Hurricane Florence’s sights. The Lumber

A white telescope dish is surrounded by wooded mountains in autumn colors.

In Case You Missed It From NIST: 2021 Edition

December 8, 2021

While the pandemic still grips the world, researchers at NIST continue their work on COVID-19 related research, as well as the wide range of other science and technology topics NIST is known for. We have pulled together a selection of stories, videos and other content from around NIST to let you see

multi panel collage of the robocrane, a large three sided pyramid structure of struts and wires holding a platform in the middle. To the right are images of the robocrane welding, joining pipes and cutting an I beam.

Creating and Commercializing the NIST RoboCrane

October 27, 2021

Nicholas G. Dagalakis

The RoboCrane — now hard at work at the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear cleanup sites — is a good example of a successfully commercialized technology invented at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). I’ll try to tell that story in this blog. In the early 1980s, the manufacturing

collage of images from the WTC disaster, a blueprint of an airplane, a representation of one of the towers, the word modeling

Analyzing the Aftermath of the Twin Towers Aircraft Impacts

August 12, 2021

Steven W. Kirkpatrick

I consider myself lucky to have been able to perform contract engineering research and consulting for my entire career. The work environment has been somewhere between industry research and academia. I’ve had opportunities to work with recognized experts at universities, national laboratories, in

a collage showing images of a crowd of people, an elevator, the word evacuation, a stairwell with the stairs marked as 1.5 meters wide, an icon of a telephone with the numbers 911, and a camera

Inside the Towers on 9/11: My Story of Investigating the WTC Evacuation

August 11, 2021

Jason Averill

The kickoff meeting On Nov. 1, 2002, in a small conference room on the Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the trio of outside experts ( Dennis Mileti, Guylene Proulx and Norman Groner) hired to work on evacuation and emergency communication

collage showing rubble from the collapse of the towers, a mock up of a section of the towers, scientists looking at structural steel and the words Building and Fire Codes

20 Years Later: NIST's World Trade Center Investigation and Its Legacy

August 5, 2021

S. Shyam Sunder

The collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was one of the worst-ever building disasters in recorded history — killing 2,749 people. More than 400 emergency responders were among those killed, the largest loss of life for this group in a

collage of images of the 9/11 disaster, some are shaped like puzzle pieces, there is a representation of frames of film

Putting Together the Big Picture for the World Trade Center Disaster Investigation

August 4, 2021

Kathryn Butler

Imagine assembling a jigsaw puzzle of more than 14,000 pieces without an image on the box showing what the final picture will look like. Imagine that important pieces were missing and needed to be searched for. And imagine that this puzzle was four-dimensional, involving time as well as space. This

collage of blueprints for buildings and an airplane, a pile of rubble, a live fire test of a simulated office, and the word Reconstruction

Reconstructing the Fires That Brought Down WTC 1, 2 and 7

August 4, 2021

Richard G. Gann

Everyone has a story about where they were when they heard about the disaster universally called “9/11.” Mine begins in Ottawa, Canada. As chance would have it, I was there for a meeting of the Fire Safety Engineering Subcommittee of the International Organization for Standardization. One of the

cartoon of a young woman at her desk speaking by webcam with another person.

The NIST Summer Undergraduate Fellowship Program Goes Virtual

January 27, 2021

Brandi Toliver

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) designed the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Program to inspire undergraduate students to pursue careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) through a unique research experience that supports our mission

A burning workcart. There are sensors set up all around it, and the clock on the floor reads 13:59.

The New NIST Fire Calorimetry Database Is Available to Answer Your Burning Questions

December 8, 2020

Matthew Bundy

Several centuries ago, scientists discovered oxygen while experimenting with combustion and flames. One scientist called it “fire air.” Today, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), we continue to measure oxygen to study the behavior of fires. The NIST National Fire Research

partially knocked down fence in the foreground, a wildfire in the background

Knocking Down Fences for Fire Research

October 9, 2020

Rik Johnsson

Wildfires don’t stop where the wilderness ends. They burn through communities and neighborhoods, destroying property and taking lives. In 2018, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection alone reported 7,948 wildfire incidents, burning almost 2 million acres across the state and

Resilient Cedar Rapids: Rebuilding Better Pays Off

August 7, 2020

Juan Fung

Many cities in the United States have experienced or will experience devastating losses caused by a natural disaster. In the aftermath of a disaster, the question communities grapple with is how to invest in recovery. Understandably, the focus tends to be on building back as quickly as possible. But

white office building with a wedge top among other skyscrapers

Blown Away: Revisiting a Famous Engineering Case

June 19, 2019

Dat Duthinh

One of the undergraduate engineering courses that left a deep and lasting impression on me was a course on innovation and aesthetics in engineering taught by David Billington at Princeton University. So, when I read the story of a skyscraper in New York City that had to undergo secret emergency

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