Two researchers at
the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have been
nominated for prestigious Service to America medals. The finalists are
contenders for two of the eight awards, including Federal Employee of
the Year, that will be presented on Sept. 15, 2010, at a ceremony in
Washington, D.C.
Physicist Till Rosenband has been nominated
for the “Call to Service Medal,” which recognizes professional
achievements by young, up-and-coming federal employees. Rosenband was
nominated for inventing the world’s most precise timekeeping device, an
entirely new type of atomic clock based on quantum computing research.
(See “NIST
‘Quantum Logic Clock’ Rivals Mercury Ion as World’s Most Accurate
Clock,” NIST Tech Beat, March 18, 2008, at http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2008_0318.htm#clock.)
Current versions of the experimental clock are in principle 30 times
better than the current atomic clock standard for time and would gain or
lose only one second in three billion years.
Physicist Joshua Bienfang has been nominated
for the Science and Environment Medal, which recognizes a significant
contribution to the nation by a federal employee in science and
environment research (including biomedicine, economics, energy,
information technology, meteorology, resource conservation and space).
Bienfang has used quantum physics and telecommunications technologies to
demonstrate encryption services at record speeds in a system whose
security is based on the properties of quantum objects, in this case,
photons. (See “System
Sets Speed Record for Quantum Encryption,” NIST Tech Beat,
May 7, 2004, at http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2004_0507.htm.)
The Service to America Medals are presented
annually by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service to
celebrate excellence in our federal civil service. See the complete
list of 2010 Service to America Medal finalists at http://servicetoamericamedals.org/SAM/finalists10/.
