Joint Colloquium Distinguished Lecture Series
Research opportunities at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
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Wednesday, November 4, 2009 |
Abstract:
From automated teller machines and atomic clocks to mammograms and semiconductors, innumerable products and services rely in some way on technology, measurement, and standards provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Founded in 1901, NIST is a non-regulatory federal agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce, whose mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.
As one of the major research components of NIST, Information Technology Laboratory accelerates the development and deployment of information and communication systems that are reliable, usable, interoperable, and secure; advances measurement science through innovations in mathematics, statistics, and computer science; and conducts research to develop the measurements and standards infrastructure for emerging information technologies and applications. Collaborative partnerships with customers and stakeholders in industry, government, academia, and consortia are important means to achieve these goals.
Today we will provide an overview of ITL work in areas as diverse as cybersecurity, cryptography, data access, usability, complex systems, and computational science. We will also describe technical opportunities within NIST and ITL for both students and researchers.
Biography
Ronald F. Boisvert leads the Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division of the Information Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Purdue University in 1979 and has been at NIST since then. His research interests include numerical solution of partial differential equations, mathematical software, and information services that support computational science. He contributed to the development of the original ELLPACK system for elliptic boundary value problems, the NBS Core Math Library, VFFTPACK (for vectorized FFTs), VFNLIB (for vectorized Bessel functions), the Guide to Available Mathematical Software, and the Matrix Market. He is one of the principal editors for the NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions, now under development. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software 1992-2005, and co-chair of the Numerics Working Group of the Java Grande Forum 1998-2003. He is currently Co-Chair of the Publications Board of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and Chair of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 2.5 (Numerical Software). He was awarded the U.S. Department of Commerce Silver Medal for Meritorious Federal Service in 1992, the Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award in 2000, and the Keene State College Alumni Achievement Award in 2002. He was named an ACM Distinguished Scientist in 2006, and received the IFIP Silver Core distinction in 2007.
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