NISTIR 7169

February 2005

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

Carlos M. Gutierrez, Secretary

Technology Administration

Phillip J. Bond

Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology

National Institute of

Standards and Technology

Hratch G. Semerjian, Jr., Acting Director

CONTENTS

Director’s Foreword 1

ITL at a Glance 4

ITL Research Blueprint 6

Accomplishments of our 

Research Program 7

Foundation Research Areas 8

Selected Cross-Cutting Themes 26

Industry and International Interactions 36

Publications 44

Conferences 47

Staff Recognition 50

About ITL

For more information about ITL, contact:

Information Technology Laboratory

National Institute of Standards and Technology

100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8900

Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8900

Telephone: (301) 975-2900

Facsimile: (301) 840-1357

E-mail: itlab@nist.gov

Website: http://www.itl.nist.gov
I

n today’s complex technology-driven world,

the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) at

the National Institute of Standards and

Technology has the broad mission of

supporting U.S. industry, government, and

academia with measurements and standards that enable

new computational methods for scientific inquiry, assure 

IT innovations for maintaining global leadership, and 

re-engineer complex societal systems and processes

through insertion of advanced information technology.

Through its efforts, ITL seeks to enhance productivity

and public safety, facilitate trade, and improve the

quality of life. ITL achieves these goals in areas of

national priority by drawing on its core capabilities in

cyber security, software quality assurance, advanced

networking, information access, mathematical and

computational sciences, and statistical engineering. 

Information technology is the acknowledged engine for

national and regional economic growth. The push for its

adoption in all sectors is overwhelming. The insertion of

advanced technologies at national or global scales, like

biometric identification for entry into the United States

or electronic patient records to effectively decrease

medical errors, often disrupts established social

processes and interacts with other complex societal

systems in unpredictable ways. ITL researchers have

developed detailed protocols and operational standards

that mitigate anticipated discrepancies in their

operation, and established assessment criteria and test

data sets for validation of industrial products. Specific

challenges are addressed through several legislative

mandates, ITL has been charged to lead the nation in

utilizing existing and emerging IT to meet national

priorities that reflect the country’s broad based social,

economic, and political values and goals. In 2004, 

ITL continued to fulfill its extended charge under the

Federal Information Security Management Act to

develop cybersecurity standards, guidelines, and

associated methods and techniques. Charged under

other legislation, such as the USA PATRIOT Act and

the Help America Vote Act, ITL is addressing the major

challenges faced by the nation in the areas of homeland

security and electronic voting. 

In the past decade, advances in computing and

communications technologies have unleashed the

power of the Internet and forever changed the

landscape for commerce and government. ITL 

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

1

D IRECTOR’S F OREWORD

Dr. Shashi Phoha, 

Director, Information

Technology Laboratory
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

has played an important role in facilitating this

transformation. In 2004, we continued our efforts by

establishing test beds to formulate and evaluate first

responder indoor localization techniques for building

safety. In collaboration with the ANSI accredited

standards organization Health Level 7 (HL7), ITL also

led the development of electronic health records and

messaging standards that promote a secure and reliable

healthcare environment. Last year also saw ITL

champion the successful establishment of national and

international biometric consensus standards bodies. ITL

will continue to contribute in numerous other ways to

enable the transition of information technologies to

meet today’s challenges.

Information is not a physical entity but, similar to the

physical world, appropriate metrology is needed to

guide its broad application. Within NIST’s traditional

role as the overseer of the National Measurement

System, ITL is addressing the hard problems in IT

Measurement Research. ITL formulates metrics, tests,

and tools for a wide range of subjects such as

information complexity and comprehension (to cope

with information overload), high confidence software (to

cope with information reliability), space-time

coordinated mobile and wireless computing (to cope

with information availability), as well as, issues of

information quality, integrity, and usability. These hard

problems are some of the Grand Challenges identified

in the FY 2004 Interagency Coordination Report by the

National Information Technology Research and

Development (NITRD) that seeks to accelerate progress

towards national goals. In 2004, ITL made strides

toward these goals by drafting public key management

schemes and guidelines for authenticated encryption

modes that will improve the security of systems within

and outside the Government. ITL also reached out to

federal agencies and industry through development of

security guidelines in areas where they were most

needed, such as, personal digital assistant (PDA)

forensics, Windows XP, Voice-over-Internet-Protocol

(VOIP), smart card technology and many others. ITL

worked with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to

release test suites for XML that have become the de

facto metric for assessing quality of the XML products

that enable electronic commerce. These efforts highlight

the broad influence that our software testing and

security programs are having on assessment and

accreditation of new products and technologies and on

making information secure throughout the Government;

helping to ensure continuity and safe operation of the

national information infrastructure that underlies

economic competitiveness and homeland security. 

ITL is also engaged in preparing the nation for the next

phase of the Information Revolution. Drawing on the

two great revolutions of the twentieth century, Quantum

Physics and Computer Science, NIST has formulated its

Quantum Information Program to transform both

computing and secure communications. In

collaboration with NIST’s Physics and Electronics and

Electrical Engineering Laboratories, ITL is exploiting

quantum mechanics, the strange behavior of matter on

the atomic scale, for making cryptographic codes that

are unbreakable even by the supercomputers of

tomorrow. This technology can also be exploited to

break cryptographic codes in seconds that could not be

cracked in a million years by the most powerful binary

computers. The need for the U.S. to stay at the forefront

of this technology is critical to future homeland security.

In 2004, we established quantum computing and

communications test beds to demonstrate the exchange

of sifted quantum cryptographic keys at the rate of

3.5Mbps—two orders of magnitude faster than the

previous record, and, realized the first experiment to

reliably “teleport” quantum states between atoms as

reported in the June 17, 2004 issue of Nature. 

These and other ITL efforts will shape the next

generation of information technology and cybersecurity.

2
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

ITL seeks to scale new frontiers in Information

Measurement Science to enable international social,

economic, and political advancement. Issues of trade,

public health and safety, energy, pollution and

transportation span across national boundaries and

depend heavily on the critical IT infrastructure. Lack of

objective measurements often hinders the universal

applicability of U.S. technology and acts as a trade

barrier, limiting the reach of U.S. commerce. In 2004,

ITL collaborated and partnered with industry, academia,

and other NIST laboratories to advance science and

engineering, setting standards and requirements for

unique scientific instrumentation and experiments, data,

and communications. ITL also enabled breakthroughs in

research through immersive visualization in areas such

as tissue engineering and nanostructures. ITL continues

to lead the way in enabling innovations in

interdisciplinary sciences and ensuring their

international applicability.

I am proud to also highlight many outstanding

achievements of ITL’s talented staff members and crosscutting interdisciplinary research programs. ITL

researchers have taken leadership roles and served with

distinction in both national and international standards

development committees promoting the interests of

many essential U.S. industries. 

Thank you for your interest in the Information

Technology Laboratory. Please take a few minutes to

review this document and visit our website at

www.itl.nist.gov to learn more about how ITL is

enabling the future by innovating the IT measurement

and standards infrastructure. 

Dr. Shashi Phoha, Director

Information Technology Laboratory

E-mail: itlab@nist.gov

3
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

OUR CORE PURPOSE

Enabling a better future through information technology

(IT).

OUR MISSION

To support U.S. industry, government, and academia by

enabling new computational methods of scientific inquiry,

assuring IT innovations for maintaining global leadership,

and re-engineering complex societal systems and

processes through insertion of advanced information 

technology.

OUR VISION

To be the global leader in developing the relevant 

measurement science for advancing information 

technology and bringing its benefits to society.

OUR MANAGEMENT TEAM

Shashi Phoha, ITL Director

Kamie Roberts, Acting ITL Deputy Director, Associate

Director for Federal and Industrial Relations

Bradley Alpert and Jack Wang, Acting Assistant Directors

for Boulder

Kendra Cole, Senior Management Advisor

Ronald Boisvert, Chief of Mathematical and

Computational Sciences Division

David Su, Chief of Advanced Network Technologies

Division

Edward Roback, Chief of Computer Security Division

Martin Herman, Chief of Information Access Division

Mark Skall, Chief of Software Diagnostics and

Conformance Testing Division

Nell Sedransk, Chief of Statistical Engineering Division

4

ITL AT A GLANCE

Kamie Roberts,

Acting ITL 

Deputy Director
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

OUR RESOURCES

highly qualified professional and support staff of

313 (includes part-time, students, and faculty

appointments), and 147 guest researchers (as of

September 30, 2004)

total authorization for fiscal year 2004 budget of

$71.9M, all sources (as of September 30, 2004)

research and operations facilities in Gaithersburg,

Maryland, and Boulder, Colorado

opportunities for cooperative research and interaction with industry and academia

OUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

reference data sets and evaluation software

standards

proof-of-concept implementations 

advanced software quality assessment tools

automated software testing techniques

tests, test tools and methods

statistical model-based testing

specialized databases

electronic information on the web

mathematical and statistical consulting services

OUR CUSTOMERS

U.S. industry

federal agencies

academia

NIST staff and collaborators

research laboratories

IT users and providers

industry standards organizations

OUR RESEARCH PROGRAM

Our research program is rooted in the development of

relevant measurement science for guiding the advancement and insertion of information technology in societal

processes. The following chart presents the ITL Research

Blueprint, the framework by which we describe our

research program. The spectrum of ITL contributions

connects IT Insertion, IT Transition, IT Measurement

Research, and Information Measurement Science to our

technical focus areas and our customers. 

5
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

6
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

7

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

OF OUR RESEARCH PROGRAM

ITL computer scientist Ross Micheals demonstrates a NIST-developed system for studying the performance of

facial recognition software programs. The system takes a person's photo with nine cameras from different angles.

The photos are then analyzed by commercial facial recognition systems to see whether using many highresolution digital photographs can improve performance. NIST will use results from the research in support of its

Congressional mandate under the USA PATRIOT Act to certify the use of biometrics such as digitized photos and

fingerprints in passports and visas.

© Robert Rathe
FOUNDATION RESEARCH AREAS

SECURITY

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

SECURITY TECHNOLOGY

F

ederal agencies and private sector organizations are

selecting cryptographic security components and

functionality for protecting their data, communications, and operations, from ITL’s comprehensive

cryptographic toolkit, which includes a wide variety of

cryptographic algorithms and techniques for protecting

the integrity, confidentiality, and authenticity of information resources. Program areas include cryptographic

standards, key management, public key infrastructure

(PKI), identity management, e-authentication, and 

agency e-government support. The website is

http://csrc.nist.gov/CryptoToolkit/index.html.

Our accomplishments in FY 2004 included many significant draft documents, standards, and validation tests. We

wrote a draft key management schemes document and

guidelines on a recommendation for authenticated encryption modes for public review. We

revised the Digital Signature Standard (DSS) in

preparation for public review and comment and

developed validation tests for authentication, the

Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA), the Secure

Hash Algorithm (SHA), the Keyed-Hash Message

Authentication Code (HMAC), and American

National Standards Institute (ANSI) X9.62, Public

Key Cryptography for the Financial Services

Industry. We conducted a successful workshop

on Random Number Generation (RNG) and

developed a draft RNG Standard (ANSI X9.82.) 

In the area of e-authentication, we published our

guideline on electronic authentication and initiated development on a NIST recommendation 

on password usage. We developed credential

service providers accreditation criteria and

supported the integration of the Federal Bridge

Certification Authority with governmentwide e-authentication efforts. We sponsored a workshop to discuss

requirements, terminology, components, and metrics of

knowledge-based authentication (KBA) and developed a

white paper on metrics for KBA. We also provided leadership for international biometric data interchange and

interoperability standards, including the common

Biometric Exchange Formats Framework (CBEFF) 

specification and guidelines (see Biometrics). 

Our work in cryptography is making an impact within and

outside the federal government. Strong PKI and cryptography improve the security of systems and the information

they process. IT users also enjoy the enhanced availability

in the marketplace of secure applications through cryptography, PKI, and e-authentication. See

http://csrc.nist.gov/pki.

8

John Kelsey (left), Annabelle Lee, Nelson Hastings (seated), and John Wack

examine e-voting security issues in support of the Technical Guidelines

Development Committee. 
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

SYSTEMS AND NETWORK SECURITY

We continued our robust technical program to

protect information systems and the networks

that connect them. Our technical guidelines and

standards, publications, ITL Bulletins, checklists,

online resources, and specifications address a

wide range of critical systems and network

security areas. Federal agencies rely on the NIST

technical guidelines, which are frequently cited

and reused by industry on a voluntary basis. 

In FY 2004, we published technical guidance on

personal digital assistant forensics, developing

security checklists, securing Windows XP,

mapping types of information and information

systems to security categories, computer security

incident handling, network security testing, voice

over Internet protocol (VOIP) security, card technology, and IT security products and services.

Eleven ITL Bulletins were published on security matters

spanning technical, managerial, and operational security

issues; these bulletins are widely read inside and outside

of the federal government. 

The Multi-mode Authentication Framework effort implemented several authentication mechanisms including

Picture Password, a Smart Multi-Media Card mechanism,

a Bluetooth Smart Card mechanism, and a Wireless

Proximity Beacon mechanism. We developed extensions

to an open source windowing software for Linux handhelds (i.e., OPIE) that support multi-mode authentication

and a common interface for authentication modules. We

provided forensics investigators with draft guidelines,

documentation, and proper techniques for investigating

digital handheld devices. We developed a standard access

control model and mechanism capable of being configured in support of any attribute-based access control

policy (to include policy combinations) and the ITL-developed RBAC Standard, ANSI INCITS 359-2004, was

adopted as a national standard. 

Other accomplishments included the development of 

a proof-of-concept implementation of a secure routing

protocol based on Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector

(AODV) over IPv6, further reinforced by a routing

protocol-independent Intrusion Detection and Response

system for ad-hoc networks. The online ICAT vulnerability

database was enhanced and now contains about 7,000

9

Mark Wilson (seated), Joan Hash, Tanya Brewer-Joneas, and David Griffith discuss ITL's SPAM Technology Workshop held on February 17, 2004.

entries. ICAT enables system administrators to identify

flawed systems and to find the patches. We provided the

technical specifications for a new suite of international

smart card standards. On the national level, ITL led the

establishment of a new ANSI task group to develop a

national standard for smart card interoperability. Both

work efforts are based on NIST InterAgency Report 6887,

Government Smart Card Interoperability Specification

(GSC-IS), v2.1. Websites are http://csrc.nist.gov/

publications/, http://icat.nist.gov/icat.cfm, 

http://smartcard.nist.gov, and http://csrc.nist.gov/rbac/. 

MANAGEMENT AND ASSISTANCE

An important component of our computer security

program is our outreach, expert assistance, policy, and

guidelines for federal agencies, industry, and small and

medium-size businesses. We direct our new guidelines

development efforts where they are most needed, in areas

identified by such advisory groups as the Information

Security and Privacy Advisory Board, which we support.

We also host the Federal Computer Security Program

Manager’s Forum quarterly meetings to provide insight 

to and receive feedback from the federal community.

In FY 2004, we developed several significant new

guidance documents, including security considerations 

in the information system development life cycle, a

resource guideline for Implementing the Health Insurance

Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Security Rule,
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

and Integrating Security into the Capital Planning and

Investment Control Process. Based on agency feedback,

we reinvented our Computer Security Expert Assist Team

(CSEAT) as the Program Review for Information Security

Management Assistance (PRISMA, http://prisma.nist.gov)

to better serve federal agencies that request security

program reviews. We also improved and maintained our

Computer Security Resource Center (CSRC), one of the

most visited websites at NIST: http://csrc.nist.gov.

Our support of small and medium-sized businesses

continued. We updated the small business corner of our

CSRC website. We grew community college and Small

Business Development Corporation participation to the

national level, making NIST a viable information security

resource for existing, localized, small business support

infrastructure. We also launched a NIST Small Business

Administration InfraGard Small Business Resource Group.

The website is http://sbc.nist.gov/.

SECURITY TESTING AND METRICS

Our security testing and metrics program provides our

customers with a proven set of IT security services based

on sound testing methodologies and test metrics. Program

components include the Cryptographic Module Validation

Program (CMVP), Cryptographic Module Testing

Laboratory accreditation, the Cryptographic Algorithm

Validation Program (CAVP), the National Information

Assurance Partnership (NIAP), and certification and

accreditation of information systems.

The CMVP provides federal agencies in the United States

and Canada with confidence that a validated cryptographic product correctly implements government

cryptographic standards (http://csrc.nist.gov/cmvp). 

In FY 2004, the CMVP validated over 200 individual 

cryptographic modules and assisted in the technical

accreditation of three new Cryptographic Module Testing

(CMT) Laboratories. Two CMT laboratories were reaccredited, as were three common criteria laboratories. We

continued our work in the International Organization for

Standardization for the international adoption of Federal

Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2, Security

Requirements for Cryptographic Modules. We supported 

a national level review of NIAP called for by the White

House in the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace. 

In response to a mandate under the Federal Information

Security Management Act of 2002, we produced FIPS

199, Standards for Security Categorization of Federal

Information and Information Systems, and a guideline for

the Security Certification and Accreditation of Federal

Information Systems. We also published a draft of

Minimum Recommended Security Controls for

Information Systems guideline and initiated the draft 

of a companion validation document.

ITL’s information security program is making a significant

impact, especially in the increased security of IT systems

through the availability of tested products. Our program

also creates business opportunities for security product

vendors, testing laboratories, security consultants, and

small businesses. 

10

(From left) Marianne Swanson, Ray Snouffer, Peggy Himes, Curt Barker,

Gary Stoneburner, Ron Ross, Stu Katzke, Joan Hash, Arnold Johnson, and

Annabelle Lee (not pictured) review the many draft security requirements

being developed by ITL in response to Congressional assignments in the

Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) of 2002. 
Trusted, high-quality software is often

taken for granted and not noticed

until it fails. Software with bugs

causes software to be unreliable and often

means hidden security vulnerabilities.

Software quality relies on precise, testable

software standards, followed by the development of conformance test suites and

tools to help vendors build high-quality,

interoperable implementations that meet

the needs of the users. 

ELECTRONIC COMMERCE

The impact of software errors is enormous

because virtually every business now

depends on software for the development,

production, distribution and after-sales

support of products and services. To facilitate electronic commerce, ITL is developing

software testing tools and methods that

improve quality, conformance to standards,

and correctness. Projects include XML

Core, XML Schema, XML Query, and Linux. We lead the

conformance testing efforts for all of these projects, developing and maintaining the test frameworks and test suites.

To improve the development process, we are building an

automated method for generating tests based on XML

technologies. In FY 2004, we completed and released

new tests for XML, Namespaces, XInclude, XML Schema,

and XML Query. With the World Wide Web Consortium

(W3C), we jointly issued public releases of these test

suites. Our test suites have become the metric by which

XML products are measured and have been incorporated

into several commercial products. 

We continued our W3C conformance advisory role, by

co-chairing the W3C Quality Assurance (QA) Interest

Group and participating in the QA Working Group (WG).

We served as editors and major contributors to the QA

Guidelines; the W3C WGs used the QA Guidelines to

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

11

FOUNDATION RESEARCH AREAS

SOFTWARE

From left) Sydney Henrard, Rob Snelick, Len Gebase, and Clare Witte help

improve interoperability of healthcare systems by developing a conformance

testing framework for exchanging health information.

improve their charters, operational processes, and specifications. Additionally, we developed tools to facilitate the

creation of a conformance clause within a specification, 

a W3C Charter, and a QA process document. We applied

the guidance we developed on writing better specifications to other standards areas, such as healthcare. Our

expertise contributes to higher-quality specifications and

test suites.

A related project is the development of a consistent test

framework for electronic business XML (ebXML). Working

with the Organization for the Advancement of Structured

Information Standards (OASIS), we developed an ebXML

Test Framework Specification 2.0 and conformance tests

for messaging and registry services. To support this framework, we developed a prototype implementation. 
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

Another area of interest is our smart card testing,

including basic services interface (BSI) testing and card

edge testing for the Government Smart Card (GSC)

program. We developed four test suites and are transitioning them to the Joint Interoperability Test Command. 

The impact of our conformance testing program is 

significant. Many software developers use our test suites,

resulting in bug fixes to XML implementations and specifications. The test methodologies that we develop influence

others, including Open Source Linux, OASIS,

SourceForge, Apache, the Korean B2B Interoperability

Testbed (KorBIT), the European Telecommunications

Standards Institute (ETSI), and the Government Smart

Card-Interoperability Specification (GSC-IS). Our XML

Tester Tool has been adopted by industry. ITL conformance tests continue to influence all XML software

solutions, which are used by millions of consumers. 

The websites are http://www.nist.gov/xml, http://ebxmltesting.nist.gov, and http://smartcard.nist.gov.

HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

In partnership with the healthcare industry, government

agencies, and academia, ITL seeks to improve the quality

of healthcare, reduce costs, and provide essential services

through the use of information technology. In particular,

we have focused our efforts on messaging standards and

technologies that move clinical information from system

to system, electronic health record standards, and 

standards awareness. Working closely with the ANSIaccredited Health Level 7 (HL7) Standard Development

Organization, we focused on HL7 conformance, HL7

registry, and electronic health record systems (EHR-S). In

FY 2004, we continued to develop HL7 conformance

definitions through our role as Conformance Special

Interest Group co-chair and continued to support the HL7

registry, which has become an integral resource in HL7.

We began an effort to develop conformance tests for HL7

v2 profiles and are developing the initial conformance

criteria for the EHR-S. Additionally, we are developing

conformance tests and tools for the Institute of Electrical

and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1073 Medical Device

Communications standard. See

http://www.nist.gov/ehealth.

Achieving the vision of integrated healthcare environments requires the integration of many clinical,

administrative and IT standards. In FY 2004, we collaborated with HL7 and the Healthcare Information and

Management Systems Society’s (HIMSS) Integrating the

Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) project and developed a

registry implementation that provided critical infrastructure services at the HIMSS 2004 Demonstration and

Conference. We continue to work with IHE, co-authoring

the Cross-Enterprise Clinical Documents Sharing profile,

which enables the sharing of clinical documents across

health enterprises. To support this and other IHE profiles,

we developed a prototype implementation, which will

serve as the cornerstone of next year’s HIMSS

Demonstration. 

We actively participate in the ANSI Health Informatics

Standards Board, eGOV Consolidated Health Informatics,

and the American Telemedicine Association (ATA). With

the ATA, we conducted a series of workshops to identify

standards needed to provide ocular care through telecommunications technology, resulting in an ATA Technical

Standard that identifies the appropriate standards, clinical

protocols, and administrative guidelines as well as

describing the methodology for developing a portfolio of

standards. To advance awareness of healthcare standards,

we developed a prototype web-based Healthcare

Standards Landscape where information on healthcare

standards, and organizations developing, promoting, or

using these standards can be searched. In FY 2004, we

refined the prototype, added new information, and 

made it publicly available for trial use. The work is being

supported by the Agency for Health Research and Quality.

The website is http://hcsl.sdct.nist.gov/.

COMPUTER FORENSICS

Sound computer forensics practices are key to finding and

delivering court-admissible evidence when computers are

used in the commission of a crime. Our computer forensics program consists of the National Software Reference

Library (NSRL) and the Computer Forensics Tool Testing

(CFTT) project. Both projects are coordinated by the NIST

Office of Law Enforcement Standards and supported by

the National Institute of Justice, the Federal Bureau of

Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, and

the Department of Defense. Additional research is done in

partnership with the National Archives and Records

Administration.

The NSRL is a reference data set of file signatures (hashes)

of commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) files, which can be

used during examination of digital evidence to identify

pertinent files and eliminate others. The NSRL data set can

12
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

eliminate 40-95 percent of COTS files from

examination and save hundreds of staffhours. In FY 2004, we continued to update

and populate the NSRL, adding 25 million

file signatures for a total of 43 million. Our

CFTT project provides a measure of assurance that the tools used in computer

forensics investigations produce accurate

results. We developed a specification, test

methodology, and test software for hard disk

write blocking. We delivered test reports to

the National Institute of Justice, including

four versions of the Royal Canadian

Mounted Police tool and two versions from

PD Block. We also completed research to

support specification and test software for

deleted file recovery, string searching, and

an expanded disk imaging specification.

Our NSRL and CFTT projects have been

used in terrorist investigations, including the Moussaoui

case and thousands of law enforcement cases. Both

projects have received international recognition. The

websites are http://www.nsrl.nist.gov/ and

http://www.cftt.nist.gov/.

GRID COMPUTING SYSTEMS

By connecting hundreds or even thousands of computers

together to work on a single project, computer scientists

are more frequently using a technique called grid

computing to do previously intractable computations.

Grid computing systems enable dynamic composition of

distributed, heterogeneous resources to perform highly

compute-intensive tasks, such as those found in genomics,

engineering design, and financial services. Initiated in 

FY 2004, this project examines current grid standards and

systems to improve how computer grids react to volatile

conditions. By developing computerized models, we will

develop a set of metrics to measure and evaluate robustness and reliability and determine how vulnerable grid

networks are to failure. Understanding how grid systems

function in volatile environments is critical to the

commercial success of this technology. The website is

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div897/docs/gridcomputing.html.

TEST METHOD RESEARCH

To improve the development of specifications, software

tests, and software quality, ITL develops tools and techniques to automate the labor-intensive process of software

testing. Our Adaptable and Automated Testing Tools

13

Alden Dima (left) validates the National Software Reference Library Reference

Data Set 2.5 and hands it off to Doug White.

project provides methods for automatically generating

tests from specifications and their profiles. This involves

the development of test environments that produce selfadapting tests suites that are dynamically created and

factor in unique characteristics for defined subsets of a

given specification. In FY 2004, we initiated two efforts,

Test Accelerator and Adaptable Methods for Testing. The

Test Accelerator focuses on building a flexible and extensible test development environment that can generate tests

from any specification that can be transformed into our

XML-based test language. The Adaptable Methods for

Testing focuses on the development of a testing tool and

framework to generate self-adapting tests for specification

profiles and trading partner agreements that are created at

the implementations level. This work is being applied to

our conformance test development efforts for XML, Linux,

Medical Device Communication, and HL7 conformance.

See http://www.nist.gov/xml/ and

http://www.nist.gov/ehealth/.

Another area of interest is object oriented (OO) component testing. The goal is to improve software quality,

reduce testing costs, and develop reliability estimates that

software correctly adheres to its specification. Using our

component integration test method, we automated the

process of representing the OO specification in databases

and generated executable tests. We also developed a Java

rapid prototype machine to simulate implementation of

the OO specification. See http://www.itl.nist.gov/

div897/docs/software_test_statistical.html. 
FOUNDATION RESEARCH AREAS

NETWORKS

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION

As the Internet becomes an essential part of day-today business operations, security, stability, and

availability of Internet services are critical issues to

the health of our nation's economy. Expediting the development and deployment of standardized Internet infrastructure protection technologies has been one of ITL’s

major focus areas in networking. We are developing

public specifications to secure the Internet naming infrastructure through our Domain Name System Security

(DNSSEC) project. Another effort is the development of

standards for the protection of both content and resources

in the Internet routing infrastructure, in particular, the

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).

ITL leads the Internet Engineering Task Force

(IETF) in the development of several technical

specifications for DNSSEC, all of which have

reached IETF standards Request for Comments

(RFC) status. We also work with industry and the

Department of Homeland Security to expedite

the deployment of these new standards. These

include developing test and measurement framework, tools, and reference data sets for emerging

DNSSEC implementations, and for evaluation of

the performance impact of security services in

large-scale deployments. We also evaluated the

BGP threat models and mitigation techniques,

and developed simulation and analysis tools to

characterize the performance and behavior of

BGP under attack in large network configurations. The website is

http://www.antd.nist.gov/iipp.shtml.

COMMUNICATIONS AND

NETWORKING TECHNOLOGIES

FOR PUBLIC SAFETY

The reliability and interoperability of communications

equipment during emergencies caused by man-made or

natural disasters is a critical issue for government agencies

in charge of emergency response and public safety. ITL

works closely with industry, the first responder and public

safety user communities, government agencies, and standards-developing organizations to develop modern, interoperable communications and networking standards in

this area. The work includes standards not only for voice

communications, but also for a number of other communications and networking capabilities particularly suited to

emergency response and public safety operations.

ITL developed a guide on public safety communication

technologies that addresses the current, future, and transitional aspects of the use of wireless technology in public

14

Members of the Domain Name System (DNS) Security project devise test and

measurement techniques, reference data and technical specifications to

improve the robustness of this key component of Internet infrastructure.

Pictured (from left) Ramaswamy Chandramouli, Kevin Mills, Steve Quirolgico,

Scott Rose, and Doug Montgomery.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

safety communications. The goal is to

collect a wide range of useful information

about public safety communication technologies in one volume. To expedite development of standards, we participated in the

activities of standard organizations, such as

Project MESA. We also investigated the

transmission of multimedia information in

emergency situations using ad hoc network

technologies, and developed a real-time

simulation tool to evaluate video communications over ad hoc networks under various

channel conditions.

In a July 2003 meeting at NIST, about two

dozen fire/police chiefs from across the

country identified the capability to locate

and track movements of first responders

inside a building and outdoors within onemeter accuracy as the single most important

technology needed for emergency response

operations. Therefore, it is crucial to have a

neutral, unbiased party to test and evaluate

indoor localization techniques and emerging

products to sort the facts from the hype. It is

also essential to initiate the development of

standards for indoor localization. 

ITL set up a testbed to develop first responder indoor

localization solutions, test and evaluate such solutions,

and facilitate development of standards for indoor localization. We developed testing methodologies and

produced some guidelines, a recommended set of test

scenarios, and a common set of performance metrics for

performance evaluation of localization techniques. The

website is http://www.antd.nist.gov/comm_net_ps.shtml.

WIRELESS NETWORK PROTOCOL FOR

HEALTHCARE ENVIRONMENTS

Our main objectives in this project are to assist industry in

the development of a universal and interoperable wireless

interface for medical equipment, expedite the development of standards for wireless technologies, and promote

their use in the healthcare environment.

Our current focuses are to understand what existing and

emerging wireless technologies can be used in a healthcare environment; to identify related interoperability,

15

security, coexistence, and performance trade-off issues;

and to propose protocol changes and devise effective

solutions to mitigate these problems. 

Working in close collaboration with the Institute of

Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1073 Standard

Working Group chartered to develop medical device

communications and the U.S. Food and Drug

Administration, we developed theoretical and simulation

models for two candidate Wireless Personal Area Network

(WPAN) technologies including the Bluetooth and the

IEEE 802.15.4 specifications. We evaluated their performance for several realistic healthcare scenarios and

contributed our results to the IEEE 1073 working group.

ITL contributions will constitute the basis of standard

requirements on the use of wireless communications for

medical devices. For more information about this project

activity, see http://www.antd.nist.gov/Health.shtml.

Nader Moayeri (center left) and Dominik Kaspar (center right) follow the

movements of Camillo Gentile (left) and Kamran Sayrafian-Pour (right) using

a localization system built by the team to enable tracking of first responders

as they move inside buildings.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

RESILIENT HIGH-SPEED NETWORKS 

ITL’s work in this area focuses on developing and evaluating

resilient protocols for very high-speed network switching

and control architectures. The efforts in making networks

more robust consisted of both preventive and reactive

measures developed for mitigating physical network failures

and cyber attacks and recovering from them. 

ITL researchers investigated statistical learning algorithms

for detecting anomalies in traffic patterns and effectively

demonstrated their use in new and very high-speed network

hardware architectures. We also devised a novel theoretical

model for evaluating network recovery protocols and determining the optimal mixture and type of resource allocation

needed in order to achieve a desired resiliency level. 

Working with the IETF, we released several measurement

and evaluation tools to the public domain, including a new

version of the Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching

(GMPLS)/Lightwave Agile Switching Simulator (GLASS). For

more information on recent results and publications, please

visit http://www.antd.nist.gov/agile_switch.shtml.

INTERNET TELEPHONY /

SIGNALING

Another area of ITL interest is the design and

evaluation of technologies to expand the capability and scope of emerging Internet Telephony

signaling standards. Projects include the design

and development of architectures and standards

for programmable Session Initiation Protocol

(SIP) signaling stacks and service platforms; the

development of security and resource control

features to enable emergency signaling and

service mobility in SIP-enabled networks; and

the evaluation of mechanisms to enable location

and context aware call control and applying SIP

in wireless ad-hoc networks. 

In FY 2003 and continuing into FY 2004, ITL codesigned a new Java Specification (JSR 32) for

specifying the interfaces to a SIP Stack. We

continued our simulation and analysis of SIP in

WANets and published research papers on

proposed mechanisms to improve the hand-off

performance for mobile users. We designed and

prototyped security and resource control mechanisms for programmable active SIP services. We are

collaborating with the Java community as experts in the

JAIN-SLEE standard (JSR 240) to apply these ideas to

emergency telecommunication support for SIP services.

We are also collaborating with open source contributors

to develop an open source service platform incorporating

these ideas. The website is

http://www.antd.nist.gov/it_voip.shtml.

QUANTUM COMMUNICATIONS TESTBED

ITL worked with other NIST laboratories in the NIST

Quantum Communications Testbed program to develop

an infrastructure for distribution of quantum encryption

keys. We developed a free space link for the quantum

channel as well as optical wavelength division channels,

and the electronic board and necessary firmware and

software for generation, distribution, and use of quantum

encryption keys. We achieved a record key exchange rate

of 3.5Mbps. (See the Quantum Information section of this

report). The website is http://www.antd.nist.gov/quin.shtml

16

Xiao Tang (upper left) verifies optical connections, Alan Mink (upper right) connects communication controllers, and Barry Hershman (lower left) configures

measurement equipment, while Tassos Nakassis (lower right) reviews code for

his error-correction algorithm, as the team prepares to test their quantum keydistribution system, which proved to be the world's fastest.
HUMAN LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY

By facilitating the creation of relevant

measurement methods and standards,

ITL is accelerating the development of

technologies that allow intuitive, efficient

access, manipulation, and exchange of

complex information. Projects in human

language technology include the Text

REtrieval Conference (TREC) series,

Advanced Question and Answering for

Intelligence (AQUAINT), Translingual

Information Detection, Extraction,

Summarization (TIDES), automatic content

extraction, machine translation, automatic

meeting recognition, the Effective,

Affordable, Reusable Speech-to-text (EARS)

project, and speaker recognition.

Initiated in 1992, our TREC series is the

premier workshop/evaluation series 

that supports the information retrieval

community. In addition to common task-based individual 

experiments, TREC provides a forum for the exchange of

research ideas and a means to accelerate technology

transfer. With participation from 103 organizations from

22 countries in FY 2004, TREC 2003 in November 2003

featured six evaluation tracks, including Genomics,

Highly Accurate Retrieval from Documents (HARD),

Novelty, Question Answering, Robust, and Web. The

newly established genomics track brought biomedical and

information retrieval communities together for the first

time. TREC provides the only test of web search relevance

and showed substantial improvement in systems’ ability 

to answer factoid type questions. We prepared for the

evaluation tracks for the TREC 2004 in November 2004,

performing a web crawl to collect a terabyte data set for

the new terabyte track designed to challenge systems to

tackle large data problems. 

Our related AQUAINT program focuses on advancing 

the state of the art of question answering to the full range

of complex questions asked by humans. In FY 2004, 

we continued to provide evaluation support for the

AQUAINT program and helped define a set of pilot 

evaluation projects. 

In support of the Defense Advanced Research Projects

Agency (DARPA) Translingual Information Detection,

Extraction, Summarization (TIDES) program, ITL provided

evaluation support for the Document Understanding

Conference (DUC) 2004. We evaluated generic headline

creation and generic summaries of 100 word length and

conducted the first cross-language summarization

evaluation using multiple Arabic documents as input to 

a 100-word summary in English. For the TIDES Topic

Detection and Tracking (TDT) project, we ran an evaluation

for topic detection, presented results in the TDT 2003

Workshop, and prepared for the 2004 evaluation. For 

the TIDES Machine Translation (MT) project, we ran an

evaluation for the MT 2004 workshop evaluating systems

that translate Chinese to English and Arabic to English,

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

17

FOUNDATION RESEARCH AREAS

INFORMATION ACCESS

(From left) David Pallett, Audrey Tong (standing), Greg Sanders, and Jonathan

Fiscus discuss results from Rich Transcription 2004, evaluating the accuracy of

automatic speech recognition systems performing speech-to-text transcriptions.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

including different domain data from previous evaluations.

For the DARPA Effective, Affordable, Reusable Speech-totext (EARS) program, we performed preliminary metadata

experiments to determine the target set of metadata to

extract, and implemented an evaluation incorporating news

program, telephone conversations, and meeting speech.

For the National Security Agency, through our Automatic

Content Extraction (ACE) project, we are advancing the

state of the art in automatically extracting content from

newswire, broadcast news, and newspapers. In FY 2004,

we conducted supporting evaluations for the ACE 2004

Workshop. For this we developed evaluation measures

and scoring software, and provided analysis of results for

Entity Detection and Recognition and Relation Detection

and Recognition. 

Our Automatic Meeting Recognition (AMR) project was

established to explore synergies between audio and

visual-based processing to automatically produce rich

transcriptions of meetings. The project tackles new

challenges in recognizing speech collected from 

multiple distant microphones and properly transcribing

simultaneous highly interactive speech in meeting

settings. In 2004, we completed distribution of a 15-hour

multimedia pilot meeting corpus and created a 90-minute

multi-site test set. We implemented community-wide

speech-to-text (STT) and speaker recognition benchmark

tests and organized the first Meeting Recognition

Workshop. 

For our speaker recognition project, we organized a

speaker recognition workshop to review evaluation

results. We wrote a chapter for a new biometrics book

and developed an evaluation plan for 2004. The website

is http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/programs.html#Human.

BIOMETRICS TECHNOLOGY

Mandated by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 and the

Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of

2002, ITL’s biometrics program focuses on fingerprint and

face recognition testing, multimodal biometrics evaluation

and system design, and biometrics standards. In 2004, 

we produced several reports on evaluations of fingerprint

matching systems for the US-VISIT, the new border

entry/exit system. (See the Biometrics section of this

report.) The website is

http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/programs.html#BIOMETRICS.

DIGITAL MEDIA AND MULTIMEDIA

TECHNOLOGY

To advance technologies for accessing and using digitaland multi-media, ITL actively participates in multimedia

standards development, video retrieval, video analysis and

content extraction (VACE), motion image quality (MIQ),

optical media testing, visualization and virtual reality for

manufacturing, and smart space technologies. In FY 2004,

we continued our leadership positions on standards

committees such as the Moving Picture Experts Group

(MPEG) and Web3D Consortium. We supplemented and

continue to maintain the NIST MPEG-7 Interoperability

Testbed, with more than 200 members. Our MPEG work

provides industry with a profile mechanism for transfer to

the marketplace.

ITL works with the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG)

and government agencies, such as the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency (NGA), to develop motion image

quality (MIQ) metrology. The lack of quality metrology 

has impeded the development of imaging systems and has

inhibited information preservation for compressed imagery.

We established a laboratory for image quality studies, and

designed and executed verification tests for the MPEG

Advanced Video Codec (AVC) and the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency (NGA) subjective testing. We continued

to design and run tests to quantify MIQ and, working with

NGA, are developing an MIQ metric. 

Video retrieval and analysis is another important focus

area. In the VACE project, we collected and provided

audio and video domain corpus for use in developing

18

Dorothy Snyder (left), Trudy Cummings, Kathy Gallo, and Pat

Flanagan provide outstanding secretarial support to the

Information Access Division.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

automatic video extraction algorithms and in building 

an understanding of content in meetings. In 2004, we

developed a draft evaluation specification and annotation

guideline for core evaluations of video analysis in

collaboration with the University of South Florida,

delivered the NIST pilot meeting corpus, and organized

the 2004 VACE evaluation workshop. 

Our visualization and virtual reality for manufacturing

project continues to progress. We serve as a member of

the Web3D Board of Directors and co-chair the Medical

Working Group within the Web3D Consortium, laying

the groundwork for medical applications in Web3D. 

In the area of digital preservation, we are making

contributions to ensure the long-term preservation 

of digital information. Our projects include a media

longevity study, development of standards, and a grading

system for archival quality for optical discs, including CDs

and DVDs. In 2004, we began a media longevity study in

collaboration with the Library of Congress. The results will

help government agencies choose the best media for their

archival needs. We organized and hosted several meetings

of the newly established Government Preservation

Working Group, a multi-agency group that will use the

longevity results and consult with industry to develop an

Archival Grade DVD specification.

In our smart space project, the division established wider

cooperative relationships with industry and government

programs and aided customer organizations in adoption

of our NIST Data Flow system. We developed unique data

acquisition hardware (NIST Mk-III Microphone Array),

which is now in use at several companies and government

projects. We continued to integrate features of the smart

space infrastructure into the ITL Meeting Room data

acquisition system. Participating in the NIST-wide project

in single molecule manipulation and measurement, we

helped develop advanced single molecule statistical

measurement techniques and published our findings. The

website is http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/programs.html#Multi.

INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY

ITL is providing metrics, standards, and test

methodologies to improve the usability of interactive

systems. Projects include Industry USability Reporting

(IUSR), usability and accessibility of voting systems, Novel

Intelligence from Massive Data (NIMD), human robot

interactions, the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions

(DLMF), and accessibility standards.

19

As part of our IUSR project, our Common Industry Format

(CIF), adopted as a national standard in 2001, is now in

use by several companies for their usability testing. As

part of the ITL voting standards effort, IAD performed a

study and prepared a report, "Improving the Usability and

Accessibility of Voting Systems and Products," which was

submitted to Congress by the U.S. Election Assistance

Commission in April 2004. We also assisted in the

determination of usability experts to serve on the

Technical Guidelines Development Committee. 

(See the Voting Program section of this report.) 

For the NIMD project, ITL facilitates the development of

user-centered metrics and evaluation methodologies for

interactive, intelligent systems and develops metrics for

assessing the program by working with researchers in the

intelligence community. In FY 2004, we conducted pilot

evaluations, updated tools for analyzing data, and assisted

in developing future tasks and a roadmap. Our research in

human robotic interactions advanced as we conducted

data collection and experienced robotic search and

rescue events. For the Digital Library of Math Functions

(DLMF), we continued to improve 3D interactive

visualization of mathematical functions. In the area of IT

accessibility, we continued our participation in the INCITS

V2 Technical Committee to help develop alternative

interfaces for people with disabilities. We also expanded

the features of the V2 interface prototype environment

using Smart Space technology, progressing toward

universal accessibility standards. The website is

http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/programs.html#Users. 

Sandy Ressler (left) and Qiming Wang discuss standards for 3D

graphics for visualizing human body dimensions.
FOUNDATION RESEARCH AREAS

MATHEMATICS

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

These collaborations exhibit tremendous variety,

with applications ranging from atomic physics to

construction engineering.

For example, ITL mathematicians have developed

a technique to compute the hard sphere entropy

constant, a fundamental quantity from the study

of lattice gases in statistical physics used to

characterize chemical systems. This computation

is equivalent to determining the number of

independent sets in a graph, a problem known 

to be intractable. However, we have developed 

a stratified sampling approach for estimating 

this quantity that is highly efficient. 

In collaboration with NIST material scientists,

we have developed an algorithm for reliably

identifying peaks in mass spectroscopy data,

a job typically done manually. The technique

operates on raw (i.e., noisy) data and is free

of adjustable parameters, two features that

distinguish it from alternative approaches and

make it ideal for metrological applications 

as well as a fast and reliable method for identifying

chemical substances in forensics applications. The

algorithm has been embedded in a web-based data

analysis service, MassSpectator, now being offered 

to the public.

We are working with NIST engineers to develop

automation methods for construction projects. 

For example, we are evaluating the use of LADAR (laser

ranging) technology for locating equipment and materials

on construction sites. In particular, we have developed

algorithms for processing a massive collection of noisy

LADAR data to determine the location and pose of an 

I-beam so that a robot crane can position itself to acquire

the I-beam with grippers.

20

ITL mathematician Dave Gilsinn (right) is working with research engineer Gerry

Cheok from the NIST Building and Fire Research Laboratory to demonstrate the

use of LADAR technology (laser ranging) for locating equipment on construction sites. He has devised an algorithm to process a LADAR point cloud to

determine location and pose of an I-beam in order for a robot crane to acquire

it with grippers.

ITLprovides technical leadership within NIST

in state-of-the-art analytical and computational methods for solving scientific and

engineering problems of interest to industry. To do this, we

collaborate closely with scientists in the NIST Laboratories

on a wide variety of projects. We also develop techniques, tools, and facilities that improve the computational science environment both at NIST and at large.

The website is http://math.nist.gov/mcsd/.

APPLIED MATHEMATICS

ITL applied mathematicians work in close collaboration

with NIST scientists in the development, analysis, and

solution of mathematical models of physical phenomena.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING

High performance parallel computing is a key enabling

technology for modern scientific discovery. We work

closely with NIST scientists to develop highly efficient

parallel computational models in a wide variety of areas

including nanostructures, cement flow, and atomic

properties. 

For example, we are working with NIST physicists to

solve the Schrödinger equation for properties of atoms in

optical traps for use in quantum computers. The solution

to such problems is extremely challenging, but using

novel adaptive grid refinement techniques suitable for

parallel computation, we are now able to produce a 

48-node eigenstate using a grid with 4.5 million vertices

in 35 minutes on a 32-processor PC cluster, a 50-fold

speedup over previous attempts.

In FY 2004, we played a leading role in a governmentwide effort to revitalize high-end computing. We cochaired one of the teams that developed The Federal Plan

for High-End Computing, which lays out a five-year plan

to improve how the federal government fosters and

exploits computing technologies for the nation’s most

demanding computational problems. 

SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION

Visualization is a critical tool for gaining understanding 

of scientific data, whether the data is the result of physical

measurements or output from large-scale computational

models. The centerpiece of our efforts in this area is a

highly capable immersive visualization laboratory

featuring two floor-to-ceiling screens, a floor-based screen,

and stereo head-tracked goggles. We are developing an

extensive suite of tools that allow us to bring up and

interact with scientific data in minutes rather than weeks.

Combining such tools with high performance computing,

we aim to achieve the goal of science at the speed of

thought.

We are applying our tools to the study of the optical 

properties of nanostructures. Recently, our visualizations

of HgS S-orbitals comprising nearly 400,000 atoms

allowed NIST physicists to identity a previously unknown

state, a significant discovery.

We are also developing new techniques of volume visualization, that is, techniques for visually exploring dense

three-dimensional data and applying them to the study of

cell growth on polymer scaffolds for applications such as

bone implants. To do this, we are working with NIST

material scientists who are collecting data using distinct

measurement techniques that reflect both functional and

structural information. These are combined in the visualization laboratory to produce evocative composite images.

See http://math.nist.gov/mcsd/savg/.

MATHEMATICAL SOFTWARE

To improve the environment for computational research

within NIST and the larger scientific community, ITL

develops tests and makes available mathematical software

and related information services. These span the range

from fundamental mathematical components to fully 

integrated problem-solving environments for particular

applications. Active projects include the following:

Sparse Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS): A

reference implementation of the interface standard

for sparse matrix software

TNT: Template Numerical Toolkit for numerical

linear algebra in C++

PHAML: Parallel Hierarchical Adaptive Multi-Level

solution of partial differential equations

OOMMF: Object-Oriented Micromagnetic

Modeling Framework

OOF: Object-Oriented Finite Element modeling for

materials with complex microstructure

21

Whitney Austin, a

participant in the

NIST Summer

Undergraduate

Research Fellowship

program from

Jackson State

University, worked

with ITL computer

scientists to develop a calibration facility for the head and

wand position tracking sensors used in the ITL Immersive

Scientific Visualization facility.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

Our web services, including the Guide to Available

Mathematical Software (GAMS), saw 4.8 million page

downloads from more than 460,000 hosts during the last

year. Software download counts during the past year

include the following: JAMA (a Java-based linear algebra

library) 9,000; TNT 8,800; OOMMF 1,800; and OOF

1,600. 

One of our popular products, OOMMF, provides

reference software for micromagnetic modeling. It has

become an invaluable tool enabling a wealth of

significant research in the nanotechnology and magnetics

communities. During the last year, 32 papers were

published in refereed journals by scientists whose work

was enabled by OOMMF. The research spans a wide

range of topics such as nanodots, nanorings, and

nanowires. More than 120 such papers have appeared

since 1999.

DIGITAL LIBRARY OF MATHEMATICAL

FUNCTIONS

ITL is leading the development of the Digital Library of

Mathematical Functions (DLMF), a comprehensive, webbased interactive reference on the special functions of

applied mathematics that are heavily used in science 

and engineering. The DLMF significantly updates and

modernizes the NBS Handbook of Mathematical

Functions, 1964, edited by M. Abramowitz and I. Stegun,

which, despite its age, remains a technical bestseller and

is among the most widely cited of all mathematical

publications. When operational in 2005, the DLMF will

provide standardized notations, definitions, and properties

for special functions. It will include interactive graphics

and a math-aware search system. The core of the DLMF 

is a mathematics database compiled by some 40 external

authors, editors, and validators. In FY 2004, all 38

chapters were accepted, and independent validation

was begun. We also completed an XML-based

translation system to enable the production of

highly interactive MathML-based web pages from

author’s LaTeX input. See http://dlmf.nist.gov/. 

22

ITL provides opportunities for recent Ph.D.s through the NIST Postdoctoral

Associateship Program administered by the National Research Council. Luis

Melara (left, seated) and David Cotrell are pursuing research in mathematical

models for materials science, while Stephen Bullock and David Song (seated)

are studying mathematical problems related to quantum computing and

communication.
ITLis advancing measurement

science and technology by

formulating and developing

statistical theory and methodology for

metrology, by collaborating on cutting-edge

interdisciplinary science at NIST, and by

providing NIST scientists and engineers with

state-of-the-art statistical expertise for research.

NIST holds a unique international role as the

only national metrology institute with a 

dedicated statistics division. Advances in 

measurement science and the changing world

picture in global economics and international

commerce put new emphasis on standards,

metrics, and traceability, and on the statistical

metrology required by each of these.

FUNDAMENTAL METROLOGY

From fundamental scientific research to highly

practical work in certifying standard reference

materials, the credibility of a measurement or

stated value depends on understanding, quantifying, and frequently certifying, its precision –

or equivalently, its uncertainty. Developing and

applying sound statistical methods for determining and

calculating uncertainty, for direct and for complex 

measurement systems, is central to statistical metrology.

Dramatic changes in measurement science demand new

statistical methodology. Rapid advances in measurement

technology and shifts in scientific focus toward the ultrasmall (e.g., nanoscience), the ultra-large (e.g., ultra-broad

band), and the ultra-complex (e.g., complex failure model

for the World Trade Center collapse) all require fundamental advances in statistical metrology.

International metrology and the complex international

metrological studies that underpin international

commerce and mutual acceptance of standards among

international trading partners require specific statistical

tools. These international intercomparisons determine

degrees of equivalence or magnitudes of systematic offset

between metrology institutes in different nations; thus

goods that meet the standard in the country of origin may

to be purchased with confidence in other nations. 

In FY 2004, NIST adopted policy statements On the

Conduct of Key Comparisons and On Statistical Principles

for Key Comparisons that originated under ITL leadership.

These documents establish requirements for credible,

sound statistical analysis of international intermetrology

institute studies. Since the number of participating

metrology institutes is quite limited for any single international intercomparison, another major ITL contribution is

the development of statistical theory and methods to

evaluate the equivalence of standards between national

metrology institutes that participate in separate, but

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

23

FOUNDATION RESEARCH AREAS

STATISTICS

Some of the members of the 3D Chemical Imaging at the Nanoscale Competence

Project stand in front of an electron microscope in NIST’s Advanced Measurement

Laboratory. Pictured are (from left) Juan Soto and Don Malec, both of the

Statistical Engineering Division (SED); John Henry Scott, Surface and

Microanalysis Science Division; Zachary Levine, Electron and Optical Physics

Division; and Abderahman Cheniour (SED Guest Researcher). 
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

linked, international intercomparisons. Additional specific

scientific problems, such as instability of traveling artifacts, were also solved, and software created or algorithms

made available electronically. In FY 2004, seven statistical

papers were published or in press, with five more still in

the refereeing process, and thirteen invited presentations

given in a variety of venues – professional statistical

society, metrology conference, industry, and academia.

These new methodologies have now been applied to ten

completed international intercomparisons and to three

pairs of linked intercomparisons. The website is

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/ projects/keycomp.htm.

In response to the increasingly electronic and/or computational aspect of science, we defined new research areas 

in FY 2004. In collaboration with industry partners, work

began on the fundamental statistical research needed to

develop methods for optimal, adaptive, semiautomated, or

automated design of experiments. This research is targeted

for implementation in chemistry (for theoretically based

simulation of an experiment or a calibration, followed by

comparative analysis of simulation and bench experiment), for application in materials testing programs (for

body armor and shielding gear), and for complex system

analysis. A second major new effort focuses on simulation, predictive measurements (virtual measurements), in

particular, on the development of principles, practices,

and methodology for uncertainty formulation and

computation.

STATISTICS FOR PHYSICAL SYSTEMS

Working with NIST scientists and industrial partners, ITL

statisticians characterize systems, instruments, and process

in mathematical terms. Widespread use of modeling and

simulation as a primary tool for scientific investigation is

increasing, and measurement systems that incorporate

both observed data and computationally generated

(virtual) data are becoming prevalent. Simultaneously

modeling both small- and large-scale behavior of a system

requires integrating statistical approaches into the often

multidisciplinary work, ab initio. 

ITL continues successful collaboration in the modeling of

experiments, the design of measurement systems, and the

analysis of results from the subatomic particle behavior,

the ultra-cold neutron lifetime studies. This series of

projects alone produced fourteen publications.

ITL shares a high profile with the Building and Fire

Research Laboratory and other laboratories at NIST, in

the analysis of the World Trade Center collapse and a

reconstruction of the collapse sequence via simulation

using multiple linked component simulations. ITL

expertise in experimental design and statistical modeling

will lead not only to the probable cause analysis but also

to a technical basis for improved building structures,

eventually in the form of practical guidelines. 

In a separate investigation and computational modeling 

of properties and behavior of structural materials, an ITL

statistician and other scientists from the NIST Boulder

Laboratories patented their method for determining the

residual stress in a structure.

BIOINFORMATICS AND HIGH-D

STATISTICS

New research efforts focus on high-dimensional modeling

software for high-dimensional data, whether these derive

from proteomics or genomics data banks, microarrays,

microsensor devices to detect parts per billion

contaminants, or single molecule images at the nanoscale.

ITL statisticians work in tandem with scientists from NIST’s

Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory to use

statistical modeling, statistical tools, and statistical

computation to reduce dimensionality and/or complexity

and to extract information as efficiently as possible from

the high dimensional data and then to assess the residual

24

Time, as recorded by atomic or mechanical clocks, is still measured

with infinitesimal drifts, long-term dependency and jitter; statistical

analysis provides the corrections.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

uncertainty. Results obtained so far include latent variable

modeling of highly multivariate responses (e.g., genomics

data) to develop biomarkers for disease and to elucidate

sources of variation, demonstration of successful

identification of contaminant(s) via mass spectrometer

“signature” at ppb concentrations, and Bayesian 2-D 

and 3-D reconstruction algorithm for chemical phase 

of a single molecule. Work to date has led to a new

collaboration with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to look simultaneously and in an

integrated way at functional performance metrics, the

basis for physical standards (NIST), and regulatory

standards (FDA) for microarrays, microarray analysis

software, and gene expression data and interpretation. 

COLLABORATION

As a core contribution to metrology and science at NIST,

ITL statisticians provide collaborative research and

support for NIST research and measurement services,

including the NIST Standard Reference Materials and

Calibration Programs. ITL statisticians bring expertise in

optimal experimental design, statistical modeling, computational intensive statistics, and data analysis to these

collaborative efforts. In FY 2004, over 90 percent of the

divisions of the NIST science laboratories sought statistical

collaboration from ITL. The writing of entirely new mass

calibration software, with customers worldwide, is one

example of NIST’s influence and ability to improve 

calibration practices at every level. Another example is

the team teaching of the Advance Mass Measurement

Workshop and the production of CD versions in English

and Spanish. Both versions include a central component

on basic statistical methods and a second component on

uncertainty calculations as part of mass calibration. The

website is http://www.nist.gov/labmetrology.htm. 

EDUCATION

ITL provides education and training that gives NIST

researchers the statistical tools necessary to improve the

quality of experimental design and data analysis at NIST.

With an average of 25-40 NIST scientists per course, ITL

statisticians conduct a full series of workshops at both

basic and advanced levels, plus short courses in

conjunction with metrology conferences or in response 

to needs of industrial consortia. New courses in FY 2004

included Data Analysis for Functional Measurements,

Estadistica para Experimentos, Statistical Methods for

Analyzing Color Differences, Introduction to

Nonparametric Regression, and e-Handbook and

DATAPLOT: An Interactive Demonstration. We also hosted

the international 2004 Spring Research Conference, which

was held under the sponsorship of the American Statistical

Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and

the Quality and Productivity Society. Additionally, summer

students in the Statistical Engineering Division (four in 

FY 2004) received an education in the form of an

apprenticeship in applied statistics, working with mentors

on NIST research projects.

Made available on the web in 2002, the NIST-SEMATECH

e-Handbook of Engineering Statistics continues to be a

top citation for web searches on “engineering statistics.”

Now available as a CD, the e-Handbook is in its fourth

printing, with 6,000 copies already distributed. Newly

available on the web, Case Studies in Statistical Metrology

are designed to acquaint students, scientists, statisticians,

and the general public with real examples in statistics for

metrology. The websites are

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/index.htm and

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898.htm. 

25

(From left) SURF student Van Molino, Andrew Ruhkin, and Stefan

Leigh teach Introduction to Markov Chains and Markov Chain Monte

Carlo for NIST scientists and engineers.
S E L E C T E D C R O S S - C U T T I N G T H E M E S

BIOMETRICS

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

ITLis assisting government and industry in the

development and deployment of biometric

technologies through evaluation, standards,

and research. Mandated by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001

and the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform

Act of 2002, our biometrics program centers around

fingerprint and face recognition testing, multimodal

biometrics evaluation and system design, and biometrics

standards.

FINGERPRINT AND FACE RECOGNITION

TESTING

ITL has been researching and developing biometric technologies for more than 30 years. In FY 2004, our

researchers led the critical evaluations of fingerprint and

face recognition technologies that resulted in a report to

Congress recommending a dual approach to screen visa

applicants and visa holders entering the 

United States. Co-authored by NIST and the

Departments of Justice and State, the report

recommends the use of ten fingerprints to positively identify visa applicants and a dual system

of two fingerprints and a face image to verify the

identities of visa holders at points of entry into

the United States. The Department of Homeland

Security (DHS) is using the results of this report

to design US-VISIT, the new entry/exit system, to

better protect U.S. borders. 

We continued to provide fingerprint interoperability standards and evaluation technology for

the Department of Justice, the FBI, DHS, developers, vendors, and law enforcement

organizations. We performed finger verification

and identification tests with very large, operational databases. We installed a Cogent system

for performing these tests and prepared for 2, 4,

6, and 8-finger testing. We consulted with DHS

to help optimize an upgrade path for US-VISIT

from 2 plain to more fingerprints. 

In FY 2004, we conducted evaluations for Fingerprint

Vendor Technology Evaluation (FpVTE) 2003, an independently administered technology evaluation of fingerprint matching, identification, and verification systems for

the U.S. Department of Justice. This evaluation was

designed to assess the capability of fingerprint systems to

meet requirements for both large-scale and small-scale

real world applications. FpVTE 2003 consisted of multiple

tests performed with combinations of fingers (e.g., single

fingers, two index fingers, four to ten fingers) and different

types and qualities of operational fingerprints; small,

medium, and large-scale tests were conducted using

systems provided by 18 participants. The results from the

FpVTE will serve as part of NIST's statutory mandate

under section 403c of the USA PATRIOT Act to certify

those biometric technologies that may be used in USVISIT. The website is http://fpvte.nist.gov/. 

26

The Fingerprint Vendor Test Evaluation (FpVTE) NIST team - (clockwise from

top left) Ross Micheals, Patrick Grother, Charles Wilson, and Craig Watson - are

shown looking at the two vs. ten fingerprint results which are critical to NIST's

USA PATRIOT Act recommendations.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

In FY 2004, we conducted testing of software development kits (SDK) based on commercial off-the-shelf fingerprint matching systems to evaluate the accuracy of

one-to-one matching used in the US-VISIT program. We

also evaluated the matching performance for the US-VISIT

IDENT systems using flat fingerprints and reported on our

studies of plain-to-rolled fingerprint matching using the

NIST algorithm testbed. The website is

http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/894.03/fing/fing.html.

Face recognition testing is another area of ITL expertise. 

In FY 2004, we helped launch the new Face Recognition

Grand Challenge, an evaluation sponsored by the

Intelligence Technology Innovation Center (ITIC), the

Technical Support Working Group (TSWG), and the FBI,

to explore more complex face recognition systems. Initial

designs of experiments were developed for the FY2005

evaluations, including comparison of matching performance of images collected in controlled and uncontrolled

indoor environments and 3D imaging. The website is

http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/894.03/face/face.html.

MULTIMODAL BIOMETRICS EVALUATION

AND SYSTEM DESIGN

We developed a testing methodology and system design

for multimodal biometrics. In FY 2004, we developed a

prototype for a multimodal biometric system that will

provide the infrastructure for collecting multimodal

biometric data and for obtaining data about collection

biometrics. Data collection will include fingerprints, iris,

and facial images for future evaluations. The website is

http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/894.03/fing/imbe04_rjm.ppt.

NIST BIOMETRIC STANDARDS PROGRAM

The program’s goal is to accelerate the development of

high-priority national and international biometric standards in support of accelerating deployments of significantly better, open systems standards-based security

solutions meeting users’ needs for strong personal

authentication. The program is responding to legislative

mandates such as the National Technology Transfer and

Advancement Act (NTTAA) and, following terrorist attacks

in the United States on September 11, 2001, to new

legislative requirements, which include the USA PATRIOT

Act and the Aviation and Transportation Security Act. 

Leadership in National and International

Biometric Standard Development Bodies

ITL is a major catalyst of biometric standards development

and implementation. Immediately after September 11,

2001, and in close partnership with other U.S.

government agencies and industry, we championed 

the successful establishment of formal national and

international biometric consensus standards development

bodies (i.e., InterNational Committee for Information

Technology Standards (INCITS), Technical Committee M1

– Biometrics, and Subcommittee (SC) 37 – Biometrics of

the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1). INCITS M1

represents the U.S. in JTC 1 SC 37. 

ITL provides the chairperson for INCITS M1 and its

Biometric Application Profiles Task Group. We also

provide technical editors for three of the M1 projects 

and a team of experts that actively participate in the

development of the M1 standards. During FY 2004, we

published NISTIR 6529-A, Common Biometric Exchange

Formats Framework (CBEFF), and offered this specification

27

Elham Tabassi and Karen Marshall discuss the acquisition of fingerprint images in ITL’s MBARK Laboratory.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

to INCITS for fast track as an ANSI INCITS standard. ITL

also initiated the development of an experimental

conformance test bed in support of the Biometric

Application Programming Interface (BioAPI) specification.

JTC 1 SC 37 has a program of work similar to INCITS M1.

In addition to providing the SC 37 chairperson, ITL

provides the convener of the Biometric Profiles Working

Group and technical editors for three of the standards

under development. Our biometric experts also

participate in SC 37 technical activities. In 2004, INCITS

recognized NIST with the INCITS Gene Milligan Award

for Effective Committee Management for its leadership

and involvement in the development of these national 

and international standards.

Approval and Adoption of Biometric Standards

During FY 2004, seven standards developed under INCITS

M1 were approved as ANSI INCITS standards. Five

biometric data interchange format standards and two

biometric application profiles were approved: (a) Finger

Pattern Based; (b) Finger Minutiae; (c) Iris images; 

(d) Finger Image-Based; (e) Face Recognition Format; 

(f) Biometric-Based Verification and Identification of

Transportation Workers; and (g) Biometric-Based Personal

Identification for Border Management.

Ongoing government programs require conformance to

some of the M1 biometric standards. Phase III - Biometric

Requirements for the DHS/TSA Transportation Worker

Identification Credential Program require, as applicable,

the Transportation Workers Biometric profile. The U.S.

Department of Defense IT Standards Registry requires the

BioAPI and CBEFF. During 2004, two organizations

adopted SC 37 standards. The International Civil Aviation

Organization included requirements for the machinereadable travel documents requirements for the facial

recognition data format; the fingerprint data formats, 

and the iris data format. CBEFF is also a requirement. 

The International Labour Office of the United Nations 

also requires some of the SC 37 standards for their use 

in a Seafarers’ ID Card: finger minutiae and finger 

image data interchange formats, BioAPI, and CBEFF.

ITL’s Biometrics Resource Center website is

http://www.nist.gov/biometrics. 

28

(Clockwise from bottom left) Patrick Grother and Mike McCabe

(Information Access Division), Fernando Podio (Computer Security

Division), and Mike Hogan (ITL Office of the Director) serve as the

key ITL contributors leading the development of the biometrics 

standards in the INCITS M1 technical committee.
S

ecuring the information technology (IT)

systems of our nation’s critical infrastructures is one of the highest priorities of the

U.S. government. Natural disasters, extensive

and prolonged power outages, the increasing

incidence of Internet hackers and viruses, the

terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the

ongoing war on terror, all contribute to a sense

of urgency about the security and reliability of

the nation’s physical infrastructures and the

information systems on which they rely.

Infrastructures such as communications

systems, electricity and other energy services,

financial services, water delivery systems, and

transportation networks have become increasingly automated and interlinked. This creates

new vulnerabilities such as equipment and

network failures, human error, weather and

other natural causes, and physical and cyber

attacks. 

Consistent with our mission and long-standing

IT security responsibilities, ITL focuses on

security standards, guidance, metrics, and

testing to help protect the information systems

of our nation’s critical infrastructures. We support federal

departments and agencies under the Federal Information

Security Management Act (FISMA) of 2002 and other

legislation that assigns to NIST responsibility to develop

security standards and guidelines for sensitive,

unclassified federal systems. Through the development 

of standards and testing programs, we are helping IT

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

29

S E L E C T E D C R O S S - C U T T I N G T H E M E S

CRITICAL 

INFRASTRUCTURE

PROTECTION

developers and vendors to build products that better

protect information systems and improve security for all

citizens. (See the Security section of this report.) These

improved products, in turn, enhance the security of the

communications and information processing backbone of

our nation’s critical infrastructures. 

ITL focuses on IT security standards and testing to help ensure the

security of our nation’s critical infrastructures.
S E L E C T E D C R O S S - C U T T I N G T H E M E S

HEALTHCARE

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

ITLand the healthcare community are working

together to successfully implement current

healthcare standards and to achieve interoperability in using them. Appropriate standards for healthcare information and systems provide the cornerstone to

achieving a healthcare infrastructure. Our healthcare

initiative (http://www.nist.gov/ehealth) seeks to advance

healthcare information standards that are complete and

testable and to provide the needed conformance tests,

interoperability tools, and techniques. In support of the

NIST Healthcare Strategic Focus Area, we concentrate our

resources in four focus areas. 

Focus Area 1. Messaging standards and technologies that

move clinical information from system to system. ITL is

collaborating with Health Level Seven (HL7), an American

National Standards Institute (ANSI)-accredited standards

organization, to improve the deployment of HL7

standards for moving patient information

between healthcare applications. We are developing a test tool that will determine if an HL7

implementation is conformant with respect to the

HL7 standard, which will ensure two healthcare

systems to be interoperable. We also developed

an HL7 Experimental Registry to further the

correctness of HL7 message definitions and 

their availability. 

To address the need for interoperability among

ventilators, monitors, IVs, and support devices in

an intensive care unit, the Institute of Electrical

and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Medical Device

Communications Working Group (IEEE 1073

WG) developed a set of standards for medical

device communications. Implementations of

these standards will enable clinicians to link

patient-connected medical devices to a computer

network, permitting comprehensive data capture

from monitoring devices. We are collaborating

with the IEEE 1073 WG to develop conformance

tests and associated tools to ensure that critical devices

properly implement the medical device standards. 

To advance the integration of many clinical, administrative, and IT standards, ITL provides prototypes 

and reference implementations of profiles created by

integrating emerging healthcare and IT standards. Under

our leadership, new profiles are being developed based

on these implementations. The web-based prototypes and

reference implementations allow full integration of

standards necessary to build a standards-based healthcare

environment. A myriad of vendors seeking to develop

healthcare products use this environment to determine

interoperability with other products. 

30

Bill Majurski, Mary Laamanen, and Andrew McCaffrey improve timely access to

patient clinical information through their clinical document registry implementation, a focal point for integrating healthcare environments.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

Focus Area 2. Electronic health record standards that

provide clinicians with all relevant patient information.

In order for clinicians to access all relevant medical information regarding a specific patient, a standard defining

the structure and context of an electronic health record

(EHR) must be established and implemented. HL7 created

the EHR System Functional Model: Draft Standard for Trial

Use, which defines the functions necessary for an EHR

system. ITL is defining conformance language and criteria

necessary for conformance and certification-related activities, thus leading the conformance effort as it moves from

conformance definition to test definition and development. Further, private industry certification bodies use our

expertise to develop EHR-product certification programs.

Focus Area 3. Guidelines and technologies that promote

a secure and reliable healthcare environment. Medical

environment requirements have life or death implications

when data is lost, corrupted, or delayed. As hospital beds

and acute-care rooms become more ‘plugged-in,’ the

move toward a wireless environment becomes more

attractive. The IEEE 1073 WG is currently defining 

standards for medical device communication focusing 

on wireless technologies that are adequate to the clinical

domain and the patient’s bedside. ITL is collaborating

with the IEEE 1073 WG to focus on the scalability issues

and the need to support multiple communicating devices

over a wireless network within a patient’s hospital room. 

Healthcare accreditation guidance is another area of

interest. NIST in conjunction with URAC (not an acronym)

and the Workgroup of EDI (WEDI) sponsors the

NIST/URAC/WEDI Healthcare Security Workgroup. The

group brings together key stakeholders from the public

and private sectors to facilitate communication and

consensus on best practices for information security in

healthcare. The group draws heavily upon information

technology (IT) security standards and guidelines developed by ITL. Ultimately, these best practices will be

integrated into accreditation criteria used by hospitals 

and other healthcare facilities. 

Focus Area 4. Awareness efforts that focus on both

security and interoperability. Telemedicine allows patients

to gain access to healthcare professionals electronically

regardless of their location, providing faster, more affordable healthcare services. ITL worked with the American

Telemedicine Association to define a portfolio of standards and guidelines to provide ocular care through

telecommunications technology. The process by which

this diabetic retinopathy portfolio of standards was developed will next be applied to electrocardiogram image

capture, storage, rendering, and management. 

To improve the integration and interoperability of IT 

standards and tools for the exchange of healthcare 

information, ITL established a repository of healthcare

standards and implementation information that can be

used by all groups and stakeholders in developing and

applying healthcare standards. Our Healthcare Standards

Landscape is a web-based framework for building and

maintaining a repository of information on relevant

healthcare standards, initiatives, organizations, and implementation efforts that enable developers and stakeholders

to readily obtain needed information that can improve

standards development, coordination, and the realization

of more compatible standards and tools. 

A final project assists the healthcare community in understanding and implementing the Security Rule under the

Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

(HIPAA). This legislation directs organizations that create,

store, and process healthcare information to operate in a

manner that keeps healthcare information secure and

maintains patient privacy. To assist readers in complying

with the legislation, we developed NIST Special

Publication 800-66, An Introductory Resource Guide for

Implementing the HIPAA Security Rule (DRAFT), available

at http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/index.html. 

31
S E L E C T E D C R O S S - C U T T I N G T H E M E S

QUANTUM INFORMATION

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

The recent marriage of quantum physics and

computer science, two of the great scientific

revolutions of the 20th century, has the potential to

radically transform future information technologies. ITL is

participating in the NIST Quantum Information program,

which aims to develop a measurement and standards

infrastructure to enable future information systems based

on the principles of quantum physics. Working in

collaboration with the NIST Physics and Electronics and

Electrical Engineering Laboratories, ITL’s goals are to

understand the potential for quantum information to

revolutionize information science, to develop and test

secure, commercial-grade quantum communications

systems and protocols, and to develop architectures and

algorithms to enable the engineering and testing of future

quantum computer systems. ITL research in this area is

supported in part by the Defense Advanced Research

Program Agency and the NIST Competence

Program. Four of ITL’s divisions participate in two

broad program areas.

QUANTUM COMMUNICATIONS

The laws of quantum physics can be exploited to

provide a perfectly secure channel for the

exchange of cryptographic keys. NIST has

developed a testbed for the demonstration and

measurement of such technologies. The testbed 

is based on a free-space optical link between 

two buildings on the NIST campus. Bits of

cryptographic key are transmitted using a beam

of single polarized photons (the quantum

channel). A second (classical) channel is also

needed to implement the B92 key distribution

protocol. The properties of quantum physics can

be exploited to detect eavesdropping on the

quantum channel, a critical property missing in

classical systems. This year we demonstrated the

exchange of sifted quantum cryptographic key at rates of

up to 3.5 Mbps, more than two orders of magnitude faster

than previously reported results. To achieve these rates,

the system runs synchronously, with clock recovery

techniques on the classical channel at 1.25 Gbps enabled

by special-purpose high-speed communication boards.

Novel techniques of forward error correction and privacy

amplification are then used to complete the establishment

of cryptographic keys at the two ends of the

communication link. When these are applied we obtain

net key generation rates of about 1 Mbps. Such highspeed real-time key generation can be used to enable

one-time pads, the only unconditionally secure method 

of data encryption. Current work is focused on increasing

key exchange rates and on exploring the potential for

multi-node network operations.

32

ITL mathematician Emanuel Knill (left) collaborated with NIST physicists

Dietrich Leibfried and team leader David Wineland to develop the first

demonstration of quantum teleportation in atoms recently published in

Nature (M.D. Barrett et al., Nature v429 p737 2004). Teleportation is

expected to be a critical operation in future quantum computers.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

In other work, we have developed two new

cryptographic key distribution schemes

based on swapping quantum entanglement.

Using two Bell states, two bits of secret key

can be shared between two distant parties

that play symmetric and equal roles. The

protocols have been shown to be robust

against common eavesdropping attacks.

Finally, we have also extended and refined

our proposed protocols for authentication

using quantum resources to provide

detection of a compromised server.

ARCHITECTURE AND

ALGORITHMS FOR QUANTUM

COMPUTERS

This year we completed a significant analysis of fault

tolerance thresholds for quantum computing which

indicate that in some cases errors may be tolerable at

much higher rates than previously thought possible. 

In particular, we proved that if all errors are detected,

scalable quantum computation with error rates well above

10% per gate is possible, at least in principle. As part of

this work, we introduced the method of teleported error

correction to simplify fault tolerant constructions.

Applying it to general independent errors, we have found

strong evidence that error rates well above 1% per gate

are tolerable. We expect that resource overheads to 

cope with such error rates may be small enough to be

realizable with foreseeable technology. The analysis has

implications for proposals such as linear optics quantum

computation. 

We also worked very closely with the NIST Physics

Laboratory to realize the first experiment in which

quantum states were reliably “teleported” between atoms.

Previous experiments had only demonstrated teleportation

in optical systems or nuclear magnetic resonance systems.

The demonstration is important because it incorporated

most of the techniques needed for scalable quantum

information processing in an ion trap system. The work

was reported in the June 17, 2004, issue of Nature.

Another important problem is the mapping of quantum

computations onto quantum computers; this is the

problem of quantum circuit synthesis. Working with

colleagues at the University of Michigan, we have

developed a highly practical approach to solving this

problem. Our work is based on a new universal quantum

circuit capable of implementing any unitary operator

(mathematically, all quantum computations may be

represented as operators of this type). The circuit has a

top-down structure that concentrates components on the

less significant qubits, and the parameters for a given

computation may be determined using standard matrix

analysis software. A theoretical analysis shows that the

universal circuit is nearly optimal, that is, the number 

of gates for any given computation may be improved 

by at most a factor of two. The circuit adapts well to

architectures in which only nearest-neighbor interactions

are possible. 

In 1985, David Deutsch, a quantum information pioneer

from Oxford University, suggested a simple algorithm

which first demonstrated a case in which a quantum

computer could outperform a classical one. We have

developed a generalization to Deutsch’s algorithm that

distinguishes between so-called concentrated maps and

one-to-one finite integer functions in a constant number

of samples (with high probability). This shows that

quantum out-performance is somewhat more robust in

this classic example. 

While routine quantum computation remains a distant

reality, we hope that our research work will help provide

a clearer pathway from physics experiments to practical

computation systems. The web page is

http://math.nist.gov/quantum/. 

33

ITL staff are working with

the NIST Physics

Laboratory to enable simulation and visualization of

optical properties of complex nanostructures.

Structures with more than

370,000 atoms have been

simulated. This image

shows the structure of a

quantum dot.
S E L E C T E D C R O S S - C U T T I N G T H E M E S

VOTING PROGRAM

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

Mandated by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) 

of 2002, ITL is working with the U.S. Election

Assistance Commission (EAC) to enhance the

capacity and performance of the nation’s voting systems

through the development and promotion of standards,

measures, and technology. Our program consists primarily

of intramural R&D and conformity assessment efforts and

outreach to the election community. Additionally, we

support the EAC’s Technical Guidelines Development

Committee (TGDC), a group of 15 members that is

chaired by the NIST Director. The HAVA-mandated duties

of the TGDC include the gathering and analysis of data

and information related to the security of computers,

human factors, voter privacy, and methods to detect 

and prevent fraud. As leader of the NIST Voting Systems

Standards project, ITL leads a diverse group across NIST

including personnel from four divisions in ITL, the

Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory, Technology

Services, and the Office of the Director. Our election

community customers include concerned citizens, the

disabled, states and counties, voting equipment vendors,

academic researchers, and independent testing laboratories. The website is http://vote.nist.gov.

On December 10-11, 2003, ITL hosted a groundbreaking

voting standards symposium. Over 300 computer

scientists, vendors, voting rights activists, Secretaries of

State, and local election officials participated in NIST's

First Symposium on Building Trust and Confidence in

Voting Systems. Participants discussed and debated

challenging computer security and usability issues related

to HAVA and the role NIST would play in the law's

implementation. ITL panel moderators briefed the

attendees on relevant expertise available to the election

community to improve public trust and confidence in

voting systems. 

On March 22, 2004, ITL facilitated the first meeting of

the EAC. The commission was created under the Help

America Vote Act to recommend new voluntary voting

system guidelines to state and local governments. 

The NIST Director chairs the Technical Guidelines

Development Committee, which will research and

recommend new guidelines to the EAC. ITL provides

technical support to the committee, notably intramural

R&D in the areas of usability, accuracy, security,

accessibility, and integrity of voting systems, protection 

of voter privacy, and remote access voting.

On April 30, 2004, the EAC submitted to both Houses of

Congress a human factors report, NIST Special Publication

500-256, Improving Usability and Accessibility of Voting

Systems and Products. ITL led the team that researched

and wrote the report to fulfill a requirement of HAVA. The

report contains ten recommendations that, if followed,

should measurably improve the usability and accessibility

of voting products and systems. The lead author reviewed

the report’s findings during testimony on May 5th at an

EAC public hearing on electronic voting systems.

34

As project leader of the NIST Voting Systems Standards effort, Allan Eustis

gave welcoming remarks as chair of the 1st NIST Symposium on Building

Trust & Confidence in Voting Systems, held on December 10-11, 2003. 
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

According to the report, the single most critical need is 

a set of usability standards for voting systems that are

performance-based and support objective measures and

associated conformance test procedures that can be used

for the certification and qualification of voting products

and systems. 

Another focus of ITL’s technical assistance program is the

security of voting software and conformity assessment. The

EAC chairman identified our National Software Reference

Library (NSRL) as one part of a five-point strategy to

improve electronic voting security for the November 2004

presidential election and beyond. The chairman stated that

the EAC should invite every voting software vendor to

submit their certified software to our NSRL to facilitate the

tracking of software version usage. NSRL is designed to

collect software from various sources and incorporate file

profiles computed from this software into a Reference

Data Set (RDS) of information. Law enforcement, government, and industry can use the RDS to review files on a

computer by matching file profiles in the RDS. The NSRL

was built to meet the needs of the law enforcement

community for rigorously verified data that can meet the

exacting requirements of the criminal justice system. 

As its chairman, the NIST Director gaveled the first

meeting of the Technical Guidelines Development

Committee to order on July 9, 2004. HAVA charges the

committee with the recommendation of new voluntary

voting system standards to the EAC. ITL scientists briefed

the committee on writing quality specifications, the 

capabilities of the NSRL and the potential for its use by

election officials to ensure voting software integrity, the

findings of NIST Special Publication 500-256, Improving

Usability and Accessibility of Voting Systems and

Products, and current interagency security testing

programs of potential value to the election community.

On September 20-22, 2004, ITL hosted public hearings of

the Technical Guidelines Development Committee to

collect data and information from stakeholders in the

election community. Over 80 people attended one or

more days of the public hearings including congressional

committee staffers, election administrators, the press, and

the public. Panels of experts offered testimony and

answered TGDC members’ questions on HAVA-related

issues including security, transparency, human factors,

privacy, and core standards requirements and testing of

voting systems. At the conclusion of each day, members of

the public testified on several issues including new voting

technologies and improving voting systems for use by the

disabled. Testimony from the hearings has been posted at

http://www.vote.nist.gov/HearingsandTranscripts.htm. 

35

Computer scientist Sharon Laskowski testified at the first

public hearing of the Election Assistance Commission

(EAC) on May 5, 2004. In her remarks, she highlighted the

findings from the NIST Human Factors Report: Improving

the Usability and Accessibility of Voting Systems and

Products. Laskowski was the lead author of this report to

Congress. 
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

ITL’s research, measurement, and

standards programs are greatly

enhanced by our interactions with

partners in industry, academia, government, and

standards developers, both at home and abroad.

Our program of work is enriched by our participation in many consortia and industry interest

groups, including the following:

AMERICAN NATIONAL

STANDARDS INSTITUTE (ANSI)

ANSI has served as administrator and coordinator

of the U.S. private sector voluntary standardization system for 80 years. Thomas Rhodes and

Lisa Carnahan serve on the ANSI Healthcare

Informatics Standards Board (HISB), while

Fernando Podio serves on the Homeland Security

Standards Panel Steering Committee. NIST/ITL is

an ANSI-accredited standards developer. Michael

McCabe is the contact for ANSI/NIST-ITL 1/2000,

Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint,

Facial, & SMT Information.

ASTM

ASTM (American Society for Testing and

Materials) is a nonprofit organization that

provides a forum for producers, users, ultimate

consumers, and those having a general interest (representatives of government and academia) to meet on common

ground and write standards for materials, products,

36

Project leader John Roberts, Information Access Division, demonstrated the

NIST Refreshable Tactile Graphic Display, developed by his team, at the NIST

booth in the joint Department of Commerce (DoC)/Department of Education

Assistive Technology Exhibit and Policy Forum. Held on July 27, 2004, at DoC

headquarters, the forum commemorated the 14th anniversary of the Americans

with Disabilities Act. Distinguished visitors to the NIST booth included the

Honorable Bob Dole. 

INDUSTRY AND

INTERNATIONAL

INTERACTIONS
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

systems, and services. Through the

participation of Nien-Fan Zhang in

Technical Committee E-11, ITL

promotes quality in statistics.

Gordon Lyon participates in

Technical Committee E-31,

International Healthcare Informatics,

Continuity of Care Record.

BIOMETRIC APPLICATION

PROGRAMMING INTERFACE

(BioAPI) CONSORTIUM 

The BioAPI Consortium is an international organization of over 100

members including IT organizations,

biometric vendors, and users. The

consortium developed the BioAPI

specification v1.1, ANSI/INCITS 358.

Fernando Podio serves on the

Steering Committee and chairs the

BioAPI External Liaisons Working Group. As an open

systems specification, the BioAPI is intended for use

across a broad spectrum of computing environments to

ensure cross-platform support. 

BIOMETRIC CONSORTIUM (BC)

The NIST/National Security Agency BC serves as the

federal government's focal point for research, development, test, evaluation, and application of biometric-based

personal identification/verification technology. It currently

consists of over 1,000 members representing over 60

government agencies, industry, and academia. The BC

holds an annual conference and technical workshops. 

The conference held September 20–22, 2004, in Crystal

City, Virginia, was one of the largest conferences worldwide dedicated solely to biometrics. Fernando Podio 

co-chairs the Biometric Consortium as well as the

Biometric Interoperability, Performance, and Assurance

Working Group. 

CROSS INDUSTRY WORKING TEAM

(XIWT)

The XIWT is a multi-industry coalition of IT companies

that attempts to identify common issues and concerns 

in IT strategic directions and policy matters. ITL’s

participation assists in this process by providing technical

guidance that bridges the gap between the research,

standardization, and policy communities. Doug

Montgomery represents NIST on the executive committee. 

DVD ASSOCIATION (DVDA)

The DVDA represents standards developers, software

developers, disc and electronics manufacturers, government agencies, and content developers of DVD and 

associated technologies. Oliver Slattery and Fred Byers

represent ITL. Through our representation, we facilitate

standards, interoperability, and compatibility for writable

DVD media, disc drives, and consumer electronic players. 

eGOV CONSOLIDATED HEALTH

INFORMATICS

The Consolidated Health Informatics Initiative is the

healthcare component of the Administration’s eGov initiative. The committee facilitates the adoption of a common

coding system for patient medical information, so that

federal agencies will be able to exchange information

without having to translate it into a new system. Tom

Rhodes represents ITL on the committee. Through our

participation, ITL is helping to standardize federal clinical

health information.

37

ITL has developed fast and effective image deblurring methods that do not require prior

knowledge of the blurring kernel. This year ITL's APEX method was adapted for use in

color imagery. Here an original Hubble telescope image of the Orion reflection nebula

NGC 1999 (left) is sharpened by the APEX method (right).
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

ELECTIONS ASSISTANCE COMMISSION

(EAC)

Mandated by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002,

NIST supports the EAC as chair of the Technical

Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC). The TGDC

makes recommendations to the EAC on voluntary standards and guidelines related to voting machines. ITL is

coordinating the agency’s HAVA efforts through its

expertise in areas such as computer security and usability.

Allan Eustis is the project leader for the voting systems

standards project. Sharon Laskowski, Barbara Guttman,

Annabelle Lee, Nelson Hastings, and John Wack

contribute to the project.

FORUM ON PRIVACY AND SECURITY IN

HEALTHCARE (FPSH) 

Sponsored by the National Information Assurance

Partnership (NIAP, a joint National Institute of Standards

and Technology and National Security Agency initiative)

and the Healthcare Open Systems and Trial (HOST), the

FPSH is incorporated as a nonprofit charitable organization

consisting of participating members from approximately 50

healthcare organizations. Arnold Johnson represents ITL,

which with support from the NIST Advanced Technology

Program (ATP) and NIAP, is developing guidance material

and reference Common Criteria (CC)-based profiles to

assist, demonstrate, and educate the healthcare community

in specifying Protection Profile security requirements using

the ISO/IEC 15408 CC standard. 

HEALTHCARE INFORMATION AND

MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS SOCIETY,

INTEGRATING THE HEALTHCARE

ENVIRONMENT (HIMSS/IHE)

HIMSS is the healthcare industry's membership

organization exclusively focused on providing leadership

for the optimal use of healthcare information technology

and management systems for the betterment of human

health. Founded in 1961 with offices in Chicago,

Washington D.C., and other locations across the country,

HIMSS represents more than 14,000 individual members

and some 220 member corporations that employ more

than 1 million people. HIMSS frames and leads healthcare

public policy and industry practices through its advocacy,

educational, and professional development initiatives

designed to promote information and management

systems' contributions to ensuring quality patient care.

William Majurski represents ITL in the organization.

HEALTH LEVEL 7 (HL7)

HL7 is an ANSI-accredited standards developing

organization that provides standards for the exchange,

management, and integration of data to support clinical

patient care and the management, delivery, and

evaluation of healthcare services. Specifically, HL7 seeks

to create flexible, cost-effective approaches, standards,

guidelines, methodologies, and related services for

interoperability between healthcare information systems.

Lisa Carnahan, Robert Snelick, and Leonard Gallagher

represent ITL in the HL7 Conformance Special Interest

Group (SIG). Carnahan and Gallagher also serve on the

HL7 Modeling and Methodology Technical Committee.

Gordon Lyon and Anthony Cincotta participate in the

Electronic Health Records activity, and William Majurski

contributes to the HL7 Templates SIG. Our expertise

advances the interoperability of systems delivering

healthcare services.

HIGH DENSITY STORAGE ASSOCIATION

(HDSA)

The HDSA has a well-defined charter to focus on

automated, storage-centric technologies, known as

jukebox or library storage, and acts as a centralized

communicator among the industry, resellers, and users.

The group identifies interoperability, connectivity, and

compatibility issues and develops specifications to

38

This computed image of the wake behind a boat,

known as Kelvin's ship wave pattern, is an application

of the Airy function of applied mathematics. Properties

of such functions will be cataloged in ITL's Digital

Library of Mathematical Functions.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

enhance the storage infrastructure. Oliver

Slattery represents ITL, which provides a

neutral platform to perform testing and

development so the industry can improve

the interoperability and performance of

products for high-density data storage.

INDUSTRY USABILITY

REPORTING PROJECT (IUSR)

This NIST/industry collaboration resulted in

the development of a Common Industry

Format (CIF) for sharing usability data with

consumer organizations. The reporting

format was adopted as a national standard

(ANSI / INCITS 354) in November 2001.

Jean Scholtz, Sharon Laskowski, and Emile

Morse lead the ITL effort and facilitate the

international standardization of CIF. 

INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL AND

ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS (IEEE)

The world's largest technical professional society, IEEE

focuses on advancing the theory and practice of electrical,

electronics and computer engineering, and computer

science. Sharon Laskowski participates in P2001, Web

Best Practices Working Group (WG). Sheila Frankel

contributes to IEEE 802.11i, Task Group I: WG on Wireless

Local Area Networks (Security). David Cypher, Robert Van

Dyck, and Nada Golmie participate in IEEE 802.15, WG

for Wireless Personal Area Networks. Mary Brady and

Richard Rivello participate in IEEE 1073, Medical Device

Communications. Larry Reeker participates in IEEE

P1600.1, Standard Upper Ontology WG, and represents

ITL on the Industrial Advisory Board of the Software

Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) project, 

which seeks to identify the body of knowledge of software

engineering and to provide suitable access to that

knowledge. Stuart Katzke and Alicia Clay participate 

in IEEE P1700, Information Assurance: Standard for

Information System Security Assurance Architecture.

Through these contributions, ITL advances information

science in a broad spectrum of IT areas.

INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY STANDARDS

(INCITS)

INCITS's mission is to produce market-driven, voluntary

consensus standards in a wide range of IT areas. Michael

Hogan and Alicia Clay serve on the INCITS Executive

Board and Standards Policy Board. Teresa Schwarzhoff

and Jim Dray participate in TC B10, Identification Cards

and Related Devices. Mike Rubinfeld chairs and Mike

McCabe and Wo Chang serve on TC L3, Coding of Audio,

Picture, Multimedia and Hypermedia Information. Chang

and Rubinfeld also participate in TG L3.1, MPEG

Development Activity. Rubinfeld, McCabe, and Chang

contribute to TG L3.2, Still Image Coding. Fernando Podio

chairs and McCabe, Hogan, and Patrick Grother participate in TC M1, Biometrics. Podio and Hogan contribute to

TG M1.2, Biometric Technical Interfaces; McCabe and

Hogan are also on TG M1.3, Biometric Data Interchange

Formats; Podio chairs and Hogan participates in TG M1.4,

Biometric Application Profiles; Grother and Hogan are on

TG M1.5, Biometric Performance Testing and Reporting;

David Cooper participates in TC T3, Open Distributed

Processing; Alicia Clay and Randall Easter serve on TC T4,

IT Security Techniques; and Sharon Laskowski and Charles

Sheppard represent ITL on TC V2, IT Access Interfaces.

Through these interactions, we contribute our expertise to

the development of IT industry standards.

39

ITL's PHAML software for the parallel adaptive solution of partial differential

equations has recently been extended to deal with complicated spatial domains.

This image shows an adaptive grid computed by PHAML for Lake Superior.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION FOR

INFORMATION PROCESSING (IFIP)

Ronald Boisvert chairs the IFIP Working Group 2.5,

Numerical Software, which strives to improve the quality

of numerical computation by promoting international

cooperation in the development of languages, guidelines,

tools, and standards for numerical software. 

INTERNATIONAL MATHEMATICAL UNION

(IMU) 

IMU is an international nongovernmental and nonprofit

scientific organization, with the purpose of promoting

international cooperation in mathematics. Daniel Lozier

serves on the Technical Advisory Board of the Committee

for Electronic Information and Communication.

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR

STANDARDIZATION (ISO)

The ISO is a worldwide federation of national standards

bodies from some 140 countries, one from each country.

Nien-Fan Zhang serves on the Committee on Reference

Materials (REMCO) WG1 for ISO Guide 35. Zhang and

Nell Sedransk participate in the management group for

ISO TC 69, Statistical Methods. Our contributions

facilitate the development of international agreements 

that are published as International Standards.

INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE

(IETF)

ITL contributes to the technical development of the

Internet through participation in the IETF, which is a 

large open international community of network designers,

operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the

evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth

operation of the Internet. Doug Montgomery, Scott Rose,

and Sheila Frankel participate in the Internet Area; David

Griffith participates in the SUB-IP Area; Mark Carson,

Leonard Miller, Nader Moayeri, Luke KleinBerndt and

Montgomery participate in the Routing Area; Montgomery,

Okhee Kim, Frankel, Nelson Hastings, and Tim Polk

participate in the Security Area; Polk also chairs the PKI

Using X.509 Working Group; and Montgomery and

Mudumbai Ranganathan participate in the Transport Area. 

INTEROPERABLE MESSAGE PASSING

INTERFACE (IMPI)

ITL actively participates in the development of standards

and conformance testing for IMPI. William George, John

Hagedorn, and Judy Devaney represent ITL; our contributions benefit industries that use a parallel code across

different vendor systems, including the embedded

computing community.

MICROMAGNETIC MODELING ACTIVITY

GROUP 

The Micromagnetic Modeling Activity Group is an

organization of industrial, government, and academic

researchers investigating fundamental issues in

micromagnetic modeling through the establishment of

standard problems for testing micromagnetic simulation

software and the development of a public domain

reference implementation of micromagnetic simulation

software. Michael Donahue and Donald Porter represent

ITL on the steering committee.

40

ITL is working with scientists from the NIST Materials

Science and Engineering Laboratory to enable immersive

visualization of data from experiments. Here data from

two types of microscopes (optical coherence tomography

and confocal flourescence microscopy) are combined to

visualize cells growing on a polymer scaffold.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

MOTION IMAGERY STANDARDS BOARD

The mission of the Motion Imagery Standards Board is to

ensure the development, application, and implementation

of standards that maintain interoperability and quality for

video imagery, associated metadata, audio, and other

related systems in the Department of Defense/Intelligence

Community/U.S. Imagery Geospatial Information System.

Wo Chang and Charles Fenimore participate for ITL.

MOVING PICTURES EXPERTS GROUP

(MPEG) INDUSTRY FORUM

MPEG is a working group of ISO/IEC in charge of the

development of standards for coded representation of

digital audio and video. The MPEG Industry Forum is a

nonprofit organization that strives to further the adoption

of MPEG standards, by establishing them as well accepted

and widely used standards among creators of content,

developers, manufacturers, providers of services, and

users. Wo Chang represents ITL.

NATIONAL FILE FORMAT ADVISORY

PANEL

The National File Format Advisory Panel, which reports to

the U.S. Secretary of Education, has been working on the

National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard

(NIMAS). This standard will specify the file format to be

used by publishers of textbooks and other instructional

materials, in order to maximize accessibility to the

material. Examples of accessibility issues include formatting the textbook files so they can be easily translated into

Braille, correlating text and speech forms of material, and

providing alternate presentations formats, such as those

for students with learning disabilities. John Roberts represents ITL on the panel.

NATIONAL PUBLIC SAFETY

TELECOMMUNICATIONS COUNCIL

(NPSTC)

Formed May 1, 1997, the NPSTC is a federation of associations representing public safety telecommunications. The

purpose of NPSTC is to follow up on the recommendations of the Public Safety Wireless Advisory Committee

(PSWAC). In addition, NPSTC acts as a resource and

advocate for public safety telecommunications issues.

41

This snapshot was taken from an immersive

visualization developed by ITL of the dynamics

of concrete flow with embedded fibers. The 

data was obtained from a parallel simulation

algorithm developed in collaboration with the

NIST Building and Fire Research Laboratory.

Luke KleinBerndt and Nader Moayeri participate in

Project Mesa: Broadband Mobile Communications for

Public Safety.

NORTH AMERICAN OPEN MATH

INITIATIVE (NAOMI)

Open Math is a standard for communicating mathematical objects between computer programs. Bruce Miller

represents ITL in this organization and in the Open Math

Society.

OBJECT MANAGEMENT GROUP (OMG)

OMG is a nonprofit international consortium of 500

organizations whose mission is to research, develop, 

and promote the use of object-oriented technology for

distributed systems development. John Barkley is ITL's

principal representative to OMG.

OPTICAL INTERNETWORKING FORUM

(OIF)

The OIF fosters the development and deployment of

interoperable products and services for data switching and

routing using optical networking technologies. David Su

and David Griffith represent ITL in the Architecture,

Internetworking, and Management groups.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

OPTICAL STORAGE TECHNOLOGY

ASSOCIATION (OSTA)

OSTA is an international trade association dedicated to

promoting the use of writable optical technology for

storing computer data and images. Xiao Tang, Fred Byers,

and Oliver Slattery represent ITL. 

ORGANIZATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT

OF STRUCTURED INFORMATION

STANDARDS (OASIS)

OASIS is an international consortium dedicated to

accelerating the adoption of product-independent formats

based on public standards. These standards include XML

and related XML-based recommendations as well as

others that are related to structured information

processing. Lynne Rosenthal, Michael Kass, and Mark

Skall represent ITL. Our participation includes the

development of conformance tests for these standards.

SOCIETY FOR AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERS

(SAE) 

SAE is a resource for technical information and expertise

used in designing, building, maintaining, and operating

self-propelled vehicles for use on land or sea, in air or

space. Over 83,000 engineers, business executives,

educators, and students from more than 97 countries

share information and exchange ideas for advancing the

engineering of mobility systems. Sandy Ressler

participates in SAE-G13, Human Standards. 

SOCIETY OF MOTION PICTURE AND

TELEVISION ENGINEERS (SMPTE)

SMPTE is an international technical society devoted to

advancing the theory and application of motion-imaging

technology. Wo Chang serves on W25, Metadata

Description. 

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION (TIA)

AND EUROPEAN

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

STANDARDS INSTITUTE (ETSI)

The TIA is the leading U.S. nonprofit trade

association serving the communications and

information technology industry, with proven

strengths in market development, trade shows,

domestic and international advocacy, standards

development and enabling e-business. The ETSI

is an independent, nonprofit organization,

whose mission is to produce telecommunications standards for today and for the future.

Luke KleinBerndt and Nader Moayeri participate

with these organizations on Project MESA:

Broadband Mobile Communications for Public

Safety.

42

ITL is developing a variety of techniques to enable the immersive visualization

of complex volumetric data. Here both high resolution (light blue) and low

resolution (dark blue) scans of a polymer with growing cells (yellow and red,

respectively) are combined in a single visualization.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

WEB3D CONSORTIUM

The Web3D Consortium provides a forum for the creation

of open standards for Web3D specifications and

accelerates the worldwide demand for products based on

these standards through the sponsorship of market and

user education programs. Sandy Ressler represents ITL 

on the MPEG Development Activity, the Humanoid

Animation Working Group, and the Medical Working

Group.

WORLD WIDE WEB CONSORTIUM (W3C)

The W3C is an international industry consortium created

to lead the web to its full potential by developing

common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure

its interoperability. Mark Skall serves on the W3C

Advisory Committee. Tim Boland represents ITL on the

Authoring Tools Working Group (WG), the Authoring Tools

Accessibility WG, and the Cascading Stylesheets WG.

Bruce Miller serves on the Math Interest Group. Lynne

Rosenthal, Mark Skall, and Sandra Martinez are involved

in the Quality Assurance Activity. Carmelo MontanezRivera participates in the Query WG. Anthony Cincotta

represents ITL on the Schema WG, Wo Chang on the

SYMM WG, and Martinez on the XML WG. ITL’s

contributions facilitate web interoperability. 

X 9

X9 develops, establishes, publishes, maintains, and

promotes standards for the financial services industry in

order to facilitate delivery of financial products and

services. Morris Dworkin participates in X9F, Data and

Financial Information Security, and X9F.1, Cryptographic

Tool Standards and Guidelines. Elaine Barker, Lawrence

Bassham, Sharon Keller, and Annabelle Lee serve as

Editors in X9F.1. Elaine Barker attends X9F.3, Cryptographic Protocols, and Annabelle Lee participates in

X9F.5, Digital Signature and Certificate Policy. Through

participation in this forum, ITL promotes the security of

the financial services industry. 

43

This visualization of the real part of a complex

susceptibility function was obtained by ITL staff

working with the NIST Electronics and Electrical

Engineering Laboratory on models for transport

in compound semiconductors.
PUBLICATIONS FY 2004

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

44

NIST SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS

SP 500-252 Care and Handling of CDs and DVDs-A Guide for Librarians and Archivists October 2003

SP 500-255 The Twelfth Text Retrieval Conference March 2004

SP 500-256 Improving the Usability and Accessibility of Voting Systems and Products May 2004

SP 500-257 Proceedings of the ICASSP 2004 Meeting Recognition Workshop September 2004

SP 500-258 Drive Compatibility Test (Phase 2) for DVD-R (General) and DVD+R Discs, Including DVD

Creation Plan

September 2004

SP 800-27 Engineering Principles for IT Security (A Baseline for Achieving Security), Revision A June 2004

SP 800-35 Guide to Information Technology Security Services, Recommendations of the National

Institute of Standards and Technology

October 2003

SP 800-36 Guide to Selecting Information Technology Security Products, Recommendations of the

National Institute of Standards and Technology

October 2003

SP 800-37 Guide for the Security Certification and Accreditation of Federal Information Systems May 2004

SP 800-38C Recommendation for Block Cipher Modes of Operation: The CCM Mode for Authentication

and Confidentiality

May 2004

SP 800-42 Guideline on Network Security Testing, Recommendations of the National Institute of

Standards and Technology

October 2003

SP 800-50 Building an Information Technology Security Awareness and Training Program October 2003

SP 800-60 Guide for Mapping Types of Information and Information Systems to Security Categories June 2004

SP 800-61 Computer Security Incident Handling Guide, Recommendations of the National Institute of

Standards and Technology

January 2004

SP 800-63 Electronic Authentication Guideline, Recommendations of the National Institute of

Standards and Technology

June 2004

SP 800-64 Security Considerations in the Information System Development Life Cycle,

Recommendations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology

October 2003

SP 800-67 Recommendation for the Triple Data Encryption Algorithm (TDEA) Block Cipher May 2004

SP 800-72 Guidelines on PDA Forensics, Recommendations of the National Institute of Standards and

Technology

November 2004
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

45

FEDERAL INFORMATION PROCESSING STANDARDS

FIPS 199 Categorization of Federal Information and Information Systems February 2004

NIST INTERAGENCY REPORTS

NISTIR 7034 2003 Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) Technical Accomplishments January 2004

NISTIR 7043 Proceedings of the Biometric Consortium Conference 2003 (Volumes 1 and 2) August 2004

NISTIR 7056 Card Technology Developments and Gap Analysis Interagency Report March 2004

NISTIR 7059 1st Annual PKI Research Workshop Proceedings October 2003

NISTIR 7067 Visualization and Data Mining in a 3D Immersive Environment: Summer Project 2003 October 2003

NISTIR 7083 Face Recognition Vendor Test 2002 Supplemental Report February 2004

NISTIR 7085 2nd Annual PKI Research Workshop Proceedings April 2004

NISTIR 7091 Towards a Framework for Evaluating Ubiquitous Computing Applications March 2004

NISTIR 7100 PDA Forensic Tools: An Overview and Analysis August 2004

NISTIR 7103A Forensic Software Testing Support Tools: Test Plan, Test Design Specification, Test Case

Specification

August 2004

NISTIR 7103B Forensic Software Testing Support Tools: Test Summary Report August 2004

NISTIR 7110 Matching Performance for the US-Visit IDENT System Using Flat Fingerprints May 2004

NISTIR 7111 Computer Security Division 2003 Annual Report April 2004

NISTIR 7112 Studies of Plain-to-Rolled Fingerprint Matching Using the NIST Algorithmic Test Bed (ATB) April 2004

NISTIR 7119 Studies of One-to-One Fingerprint Matching with Vendor SDK Matchers April 2004

NISTIR 7122 3rd Annual PKI R&D Workshop Proceedings September 2004

NISTIR 7123 Fingerprint Vendor Technology Evaluation 2003: Summary of Results and Analysis Report July 2004

NISTIR 7144 Integer Representation of Decimal Numbers for Exact Computations October 2004

NISTIR 7150 Dublin Core and the Alternative Interface Access Protocol August 2004

NISTIR 7151 Fingerprint Image Quality August 2004

NISTIR 7162 Guide to Public Safety Applications of Wireless Technology October 2004
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

46

ITL BULLETINS

Information Technology Security Awareness, Training, Education, and Certification October 2003

Network Security Testing November 2003

Security Considerations in the Information System Development Life Cycle December 2003

Computer Security Incidents: Assessing, Managing, and Controlling Risks January 2004

Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 199, Standards for Security Categorization of Federal

Information and Information Systems

March 2004

Selecting Information Technology Security Products April 2004

Guide for the Security Certification And Accreditation of Federal Information Systems May 2004

Information Technology Security Services: How to Select, Implement, and Manage June 2004

Guide for Mapping Types of Information And Information Systems to Security Categories July 2004

Electronic Authentication: Guidance for Selecting Secure Techniques August 2004

Information Security Within the System Development Life Cycle September 2004

Securing voice Over Internet Protocol (IP) Networks October 2004

Understanding the New NIST Standards and Guidelines Required by FISMA November 2004
WORKSHOP ON CONTENT-BASED

RETRIEVAL FROM DIGITAL VIDEO

On November 17-18, 2003, ITL and the National Security

Agency’s Advanced Research and Development Activity

(ARDA) co-sponsored a workshop on content-based

retrieval from digital video, which was attended by an

international group of almost 50 researchers. The goal of

the workshop was to advance content-based retrieval from

digital video via open metrics-based evaluation. Twentyfour research groups, including ten groups from the U.S.,

ten from Europe, and four from Asia/Australia, participated

in one or more of four tasks: shot boundary detection,

story segmentation and typing, high-level feature

extraction, and search. See http://www-nlpir.nist.gov/

projects/trecvid.

TOPIC DETECTION AND TRACKING

WORKSHOP ON TEXT ORGANIZATION

ITL hosted the annual Topic Detection and Tracking (TDT)

Evaluation Workshop on November 17-18, 2003. The TDT

program develops technologies that search, organize, and

structure news-oriented textual materials from a variety of

broadcast news media in the Arabic, English, and

Mandarin languages. The research-driven program uses

controlled laboratory simulations of hypothetical systems

to test the efficacy of potential technologies to access the

continuously flowing information that is available from

news-producing entities. The website is

http://www.nist.gov/TDT.

TEXT RETRIEVAL CONFERENCE (TREC)

ITL sponsored the twelfth Text REtrieval Conference (TREC

2003) held at NIST on November 18-21, 2003. TREC is a

series of evaluation workshops designed to foster research

on technologies for information retrieval. Participants

produce retrieval results for one or more focus areas

called tracks prior to the workshop, then meet during the

workshop to discuss results. TREC 2003 contained six

tracks, including tracks on question answering, retrieving

web documents, and eliminating redundant

information in a response. In addition to a new

genomics track, two other new tracks focused on

improving baseline retrieval effectiveness. The website

is http://trec.nist.gov.

VOTING STANDARDS SYMPOSIUM

Over 280 computer scientists, vendors, voting rights

activists, Secretaries of State, and local election officials

participated in NIST's First Symposium on Building Trust

and Confidence in Voting Systems in Gaithersburg on

December 10-11, 2003. Participants discussed and

debated challenging computer security and usability

issues related to the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and

the role NIST would play in the law's implementation. 

The website is http://vote.nist.gov.

INFORMATION SECURITY WORKSHOP FOR

SMALL BUSINESSES

As part of its outreach initiative, ITL sponsored an

Information Security Workshop for Small Businesses in

Orlando, Florida, at the Small Business Administration

(SBA) Entrepreneur Center (NEC) on December 10, 2003.

Attendees included Chief Information Officers and

Comptrollers of small and medium-sized businesses and

self-employed persons. The website is http://csrc.nist.gov.

HANDS-ON UNCERTAINTY IN

MEASUREMENT WORKSHOP 

Staff of ITL’s Statistical Engineering Division gave a

"Hands-On Workshop on Estimating and Reporting

Measurement Uncertainty" to metrologists at the 2004

Measurement Science Conference in Anaheim, California.

Attended by participants from industry and government,

the workshop described the statistical framework and

methods needed to develop uncertainty statements based

on the ISO Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in

Measurement.

47

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

CONFERENCES FY 2004
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

SYMPOSIUM ON KNOWLEDGE BASED

AUTHENTICATION 

ITL and the General Services Administration (GSA) 

co-sponsored a symposium on “Knowledge Based

Authentication: Is it Quantifiable?” on February 9-10,

2004, at NIST. Approximately 150 people participated in

the symposium. Knowledge Based Authentication (KBA) 

is a useful tool to remotely authenticate individuals who

conduct business electronically with federal agencies or

businesses infrequently. The symposium explored KBA

through panel discussions of user requirements, KBA

system models, and metrics to quantify information

sources, questions for challenges, analysis and scoring of

responses, and standards. Complete information can be

found at http://csrc.nist.gov/kba.

WORKSHOP ON TECHNOLOGY TO ADDRESS

SPAM E-MAIL

On February 17, 2004, ITL conducted a workshop on 

technology to address the growing problem of spam e-mail.

About 130 people attended the workshop from the legislative and policy community; the enforcement community;

Internet service providers (ISPs) and vendors; the community of those that must implement the technology; the

research and academic community; and the normal, private

end-users. The workshop brought experts from these

various communities together for one of the first meetings

of this type to be hosted by the federal government. The

website is http://csrc.nist.gov/spam/index.html.

SECURITY CONTROLS WORKSHOP

ITL hosted a public workshop at NIST on March 8, 2004, to

discuss the comments received, during the public comment

period, on NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-53,

Recommended Security Controls for Federal Information

Systems. The workshop also addressed future plans for

modifying and enhancing the security controls document.

Over 250 attendees representing more than 100 organizations from the public and private sectors participated in the

workshop. The website is http://csrc.nist.gov/sec-cert/.

FISSEA CONFERENCE

ITL and the Federal Information Systems Security

Educators’ Association (FISSEA), an ITL-supported, 

federally focused organization, co-sponsored its annual

conference March 9-11, 2004, at the University of

Maryland. FISSEA’s focus is to elevate awareness and

knowledge of information systems security throughout the

federal government and to encourage the professional

development of its members. The conference drew nearly

150 attendees, with presentations from more than 60

speakers that addressed information systems security

awareness, training, education, and certification of 

information systems security professionals. The website 

is http://csrc.nist.gov/fissea.

INTERNATIONAL MEETING OF

BIOMETRICS EXPERTS

ITL hosted the International Meeting of Biometrics Experts

on March 23-25, 2004, in Gaithersburg. The purpose of

the unique meeting was to support technical information

sharing on biometrics between the various national

biometrics testing laboratories as well as other appropriate

organizations, in the hopes of leading to coordination of

testing and evaluation procedures for the biometrics

components of travel documents. The Department of

Commerce, Department of Homeland Security,

Department of State, Department of Justice, and the White

House Office of Science and Technology Policy jointly

organized the meeting. Presenters and attendees represented G-8 and other nations including Australia, Canada,

European Commission, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy,

Ireland, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands,

Norway, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, the

United Kingdom, and the United States. 

PUBLIC KEY INFRASTRUCTURE (PKI)

R&D WORKSHOP

On April 12-14, 2004, ITL hosted the 3rd Annual PKI

R&D Workshop at NIST. Co-sponsors of the workshop

included NIST, the National Institutes of Health, and

Internet2 in cooperation with USENIX and OASIS. More

than 120 security researchers attended the event.

Workshop goals included cross-pollinating existing

research efforts, identifying the key remaining challenges

in deploying public key authentication and authorization,

and developing a research agenda addressing those

outstanding issues. The website is http://csrc.nist.gov/pki/.

11TH SPRING RESEARCH CONFERENCE

ON STATISTICS IN INDUSTRY AND

TECHNOLOGY 

ITL hosted approximately 110 researchers from industry,

government, and academia at the 11th Spring Research

Conference on Statistics in Industry and Technology at

48
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

NIST from May 19-21, 2004. The Institute of

Mathematical Statistics (IMS) and the Section on Physical

and Engineering Sciences of the American Statistical

Association (ASA/SPES) jointly sponsored the annual

conference. The conference promotes cross-disciplinary

research in statistical methods for engineering, science,

and technology by bringing together statisticians,

researchers in the application areas, and industrial 

practitioners working in these areas. The website is

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/conf/src2004/.

RICH TRANSCRIPTION MEETING

RECOGNITION WORKSHOP

ITL sponsored the Spring 2004 Rich Transcription Meeting

Recognition Workshop at the annual IEEE International

Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Process

(ICASSP) on May 17, 2004, in Montreal, Canada. The

event focused on technologies relevant to the automatic

recognition and extraction of information from meetings.

The meeting incorporated 23 technical papers/presentations in five areas: the 2004 Meeting Recognition

Evaluation, data collection and transcription, speech

processing research, related research, and related

programs. The workshop brought together a burgeoning

new community of researchers and government sponsors

working in the meeting domain. The website is

http://www.itl.nist.gov/iaui/.

WORKSHOP ON TRENDS IN

MATHEMATICAL SOFTWARE

ITL hosted a workshop on the Changing Face of

Mathematical Software on June 3-4, 2004, at George

Washington University. The meeting provided a forum for

commercial software vendors and academic and government researchers to discuss issues regarding the

development, packaging, and dissemination of modern

mathematical software libraries and systems. Twenty-six

participants from six countries participated. The meeting

was one of a yearly series of topical workshops sponsored

by the International Federation for Information

Processing’s (IFIP) Working Group 2.5 (WG 2.5).

Chartered by UNESCO in 1961, IFIP is a multinational

federation of professional and technical organizations

fostering international cooperation in the field of information processing. The website is at

http://math.nist.gov/workshops/wg25-2004/.

CRYPTOGRAPHIC MODULE VALIDATION

PROGRAM SYMPOSIUM 2004 

On September 14-15, 2004, the Cryptographic Module

Validation Program (CMVP), co-sponsored by NIST and

the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) of

Canada, held its third technical symposium. The event

included presentations and discussions on Federal

Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2, Security

Requirements for Cryptographic Modules, supporting

documents such as the Derived Test Requirements and

Implementation Guidance, cryptographic algorithm testing

suites, expectations, future direction, panel discussions

from federal and user agencies, and laboratory panel

discussions. Over 110 participants from a broad base of

the international community attended the conference. 

The website is http://csrc.nist.gov/cryptval.

BIOMETRIC CONSORTIUM CONFERENCE 

On September 20-22, 2004, ITL co-sponsored the annual

Biometric Consortium Conference in Crystal City, Virginia.

One of the largest events worldwide dedicated solely to

biometrics, the conference included a program with over

110 speakers presenting to more than 1,000 participants

from over 50 government agencies, 25 universities, and

200 commercial technology vendors, systems integrators,

and end users. The conference addressed the latest trends

in biometrics research, development, testing and

application of biometrics, and the important role that

these technologies will play in the identification and

verification of individuals in this age of heightened

security and privacy. Government speakers highlighted 

the adoption of biometric standards in major government

programs. 

In addition to ITL, the National Security Agency (NSA),

The National Biometric Security Project (NBSP), DoD's

Biometrics Management Office (BMO), the National

Institute of Justice (NIJ), West Virginia U.S.A., the General

Services Administration (GSA), Office of Electronic

Government and Technology, Office of Governmentwide

Policy, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) 

co-sponsored the conference. Supporting organizations

included the American National Standards Institute

(ANSI), the BioAPI Consortium, the International

Biometric Industry Association (IBIA), the InterNational

Committee for Information Technology Standards

(INCITS), and the Biometric Foundation. The website is

http://www.nist.gov/bc2004. 

49
STAFF RECOGNITION

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

50

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE 2004 MEDAL AND NIST AWARDS

Mary Brady (from left), Richard Rivello, Sandra Martinez, John

Tebbutt, and Carmelo Montanez-Rivera, Software Diagnostics and

Conformance Testing Division, received a 2004 Bronze Medal Award

for the development of conformance tests for the Extensible Markup

Language (XML) standards. This work has had a momentous impact on

facilitating interconnected systems as well as providing dramatic cost

savings to companies developing and using these systems. 

Mark Carson, Advanced Network

Technologies Division, received a

2004 Bronze Medal Award for

engineering achievement for

developing the NIST Network

Emulation Tool and pioneering the use

of emulation as the basis for the test

and evaluation of emerging Internet

multimedia technologies. Carson’s

work changed the Internet industry’s

approach to the test and evaluation of

performance sensitive applications. 

William Guthrie (second from left) and Nien-Fan Zhang (right),

Statistical Engineering Division, received a 2004 Silver Medal

Award, with colleagues Theodore Doiron (left) and Richard Silver

(second from right) of NIST’s Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory,

for the development and calibration of a landmark two-dimensional

grid Standard Reference Material (SRM 5001) through an innovative

and effective collaboration with U.S. industry.

The NIST Smart Card Team, consisting of (left to right) John Wack,

Teresa Schwarzhoff, James Dray, all of the Computer Security

Division, and Alan Goldfine, Software Diagnostics and Conformance

Testing Division, received the 2004 Gold Medal Award for the

development of a framework and specification that dramatically

advanced interoperability among smart card applications, coalesced

U.S. Government requirements, and forged alliances with the world’s

foremost authorities on smart cards. The work of the NIST Smart Card

Team served to open an entire market to U.S. businesses while

dramatically increasing the security of government agencies.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

Stefan Leigh, Statistical Engineering

Division, received a 2004 Bronze

Medal Award for exemplary

leadership in expert application

and dissemination of statistical

metrology for the chemical,

physical, and information sciences.

Leigh was recognized for his broad

impact on the quality of the NIST

Standard Reference Materials

(SRMs) through his contributions to

uncertainty certification. 

Timothy Burns, Mathematical and

Computational Sciences Division,

and seven NIST colleagues,

members of the Kolsky Team,

received the 2004 Allen V. Astin

Award for advancements in

measurement of dynamic material

properties, leading to the first ever

stress-strain measurements at high

strain-rate and heating-rate. The

advanced measurement capabilities

developed by the team validate theoretical relations between

microstructure transformation due to elevated temperatures and

the resulting stress-strain behavior of the bulk material. 

EXTERNAL RECOGNITION

Ivelisse Aviles, Statistical Engineering

Division, received the Summer

Research Opportunity Program

(SROP) Alumni Achievement Award

by the Committee on Institutional

Cooperation. The award was

presented at the SROP Conference

held at the University of Iowa on

July 10, 2004.

Wo Chang, Information Access

Division, received the InterNational

Committee for Information

Technology Standards (INCITS)

Technical Excellence Award for

2003. Chang was recognized for

his invaluable contributions to the

success of the INCITS L3.1 Moving

Picture Experts Group (MPEG)

51

program, which covers all MPEG standards including MPEG-1/-2/-

4/-7/-21 and Advanced Video Codec as a joint project between

the International Organization for Standardization and the

International Telecommunications Union.

Alicia Clay, Deputy Chief, Computer Security Division, and

Michael Hogan, Standards Liaison, Office of the ITL Director,

received the first place award in the World Standards Day 2004

Paper Competition for their joint paper, "Securely Connecting the

World with Cyber Security Standards." The paper was selected 

by the World Standards Day 2004 Planning Committee and the

Standards Engineering Society, which published the article in 

the November/December 2004 issue of Standards Engineering: 

The Journal of the Standards Engineering Society.

Hamid Gharavi, Advanced

Network Technologies

Division, was elected by the

Institute of Electrical and

Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

Communications Society as a

Distinguished Lecturer on the

topics of wireless multimedia

communications and mobile

ad hoc networks. Gharavi

holds eight U.S. patents and has written a large number of

publications related to these topics. 

Joan Hash, Manager, Security

Management and Guidance

Group, Computer Security

Division, received a 2004 Federal

100 Award from Federal Computer

Week. Hash was recognized for

providing principal direction to the

development of security

management guidelines and

serving as key reviewer and often coauthor to ensure overall quality and consistency with legal, policy,

and other existing security guidelines. 
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY

Kevin Mills, senior research

scientist in the Advanced Network

Technologies Division, won the

outstanding adjunct award for

2004, conferred by the Department

of Information and Software

Engineering (ISE) at George Mason

University (GMU). Since receiving

a Ph.D. in Information Technology

from GMU in January 1996, Mills

has served continuously on the ISE

adjunct faculty. 

Fernando Podio, Computer Security

Division, was a co-recipient of the

InterNational Committee for

Information Technology Standards

(INCITS) Gene Milligan Award for

Effective Committee Management for

2003. The award recognizes individuals who, as officers, have provided

outstanding leadership to the

subgroup in its national and/or international work. Podio chairs the

INCITS M1, Biometrics, Officers Team. 

Thomas Ryan, guest researcher in the

Statistical Engineering Division, was elected

a Fellow of the American Society for

Quality. Only about 40 of the 600 Fellows

are statisticians. 

Teresa Schwarzhoff, Computer

Security Division, received an

InterNational Committee for

Information Technology Standards

(INCITS) Service Award for 2003 for

her contribution to the INCITS B10

committee on standardization of the

U.S. Government Smart Card

Interoperability Specification.

Schwarzhoff's excellent work toward

standardization of the specification had a clear and positive

impact on national security and competitiveness of the U.S. 

smart card industry.

Kotikalapudi Sriram, Advanced

Network Technologies Division, is a

co-recipient of one of the top five

patented new technologies of 2003,

as recognized by MIT’s Technology

Review magazine. Selected from

thousands of patents issued by the

U.S. Patent Office in 2003, the patent

is on Quality of Service (QoS)

Techniques for Voice Over Internet

Protocol (VOIP). Sriram and colleagues

developed the innovative technology while at Bell Laboratories 

in 1998. 

G.W. (Pete) Stewart, faculty

appointee in the Mathematical and

Computational Sciences Division,

was elected to the National

Academy of Engineering. Stewart is a

Professor of Computer Science at the

University of Maryland at College

Park, as well as a Professor of the

Institute for Advanced Computer

Studies (UMIACS). Stewart was cited

for development of numerical algorithms and software widely used in engineering computation. 

52
THE PEOPLE OF ITL

TONAN AGBOTA JEROME AJOT NEGA ALEMAYEHU DANIEL ALLEN BRADLEY ALPERT ENRIQUE AMIGO CABRERA PAUL AMMANN DANIEL ANDERSON EMMANOUIL ANTONAKAKIS BRIAN ANTONISHEK

MICHAEL ARCHER JOAQUIM ARLANDIS NAVARRO WILLIAM ASHLEY JOHN ATKINS JULIEN AUBE WHITNEY AUSTIN ANA AVILES RICHARD AYERS DOUGLAS BACCI ERIC BAER RICHARD BAILEY STEPHANY

BAILEY LAUREN BALLOU KOICHIRO BAN BARRY BANNISTER BRUCE BARGMEYER ELAINE BARKER WILLIAM BARKER JOHN BARKLEY JR LAWRENCE BASSHAM III ISABEL BEICHL JACKIE BELL GEORGE

BENNETT JAVIER BERNAL BARRY BERNSTEIN ROBIN BICKEL RAMSEY BILLUPS PAUL BLACK DEBORA BLACKSTONE CHAD BLOMQUIST DUANE BOES ROBERT BOHN RONALD BOISVERT FREDERICK

BOLAND JR JANET BOODRO OLIVER BORCHERT PAULINE BOWEN MARY BRADY DENNIS BRANSTAD RICHARD BRAUN FLORENT BREGAND TANYA BREWER-JONEAS RONNIE BRITTON CHRISTOPHER BROWN

THOMAS BUCKINGHAM LORI BUCKLAND LORNA BUHSE STEPHEN BULLOCK SHAUNTIA BURLEY TIMOTHY BURNS WILLIAM BURR FREDERICK BYERS ZHONGPING CAI DOMENIC CAPPABIANCA ALFRED

CARASSO LISA CARNAHAN ROBERT CARPENTER MARK CARSON SARA CASWELL JOHN HODOL CHAI RAMASWAMY CHANDRAMOULI JOSHUA CHANG RICHARD CHANG SHU-JEN CHANG WO CHANG

ABDERAHMAN CHENIOUR MICHAEL CHERNICK NICOLAS CHEVROLLIER JAE CHUNG NICOLAS CILLEROS ANTHONY CINCOTTA ALICIA CLAY KEVIN COAKLEY KENDRA COLE LESLIE COLLICA JOYCE CONLON

JOHN COOK DAVID COOPER CHRISTOPHER COPELAND JOHN CORNELL DAVID COTRELL CEDRIC COULON CARROLL CROARKIN MICHAEL CROWSEY TRUDY CUMMINGS RICHARD CURTIN DAVID CYPHER

CHRISTOPHER DABROWSKI ERIC DALCI HOA DANG RONAN DANIELLOU PAMELA DAVIS JEAN DERUELLE JUDITH DEVANEY DIPAK DEY GIUSEPPE DI LORENZO ANDREW DIENSTFREY ALDEN DIMA DARRIN

DIMMICK GEORGE DODDINGTON DONNA DODSON KIRK DOHNE MICHAEL DONAHUE JAMES DRAY JR MORRIS DWORKIN RANDALL EASTER CYNTRICA EATON LOWELL ELFENBEIN ALLAN EUSTIS BRUCE

FABIJONAS EDWARD FANNING MATTHEW FANTO BRENDAN FARRAR-FOLEY CHARLES FENIMORE DAVID FERRAIOLO HILDEGARD FERRAIOLO JAMES FILLIBEN ANTOINE FILLINGER JONATHAN FISCUS

LARRY FITZWATER PATRICIA FLANAGAN MARY FLOYD ELIZABETH FONG JEFFREY FONG JOHN FOUNTAIN KIMBERLY FOX SHEILA FRANKEL ELAINE FRYE LEONARD GALLAGHER KATHLEEN GALLO ROBERT

GALLUP JINGSI GAO SHAOSHUAI GAO JOHN GAROFOLO MICHAEL GARRIS SAUL GASS SERBAN GAVRILA LEONARD GEBASE CAMILLO GENTILE WILLIAM GEORGE HAMID GHARAVI SUBHRA GHOSH

ANDREW GIBBS MELISSA GIBSON DAVID GILSINN DONALD GISH SCOTT GLANCY AFZAL GODIL SYLVIA GOLDEN ALAN GOLDFINE NADA GOLMIE LAURA GOODING TIMOTHY GRANCE MARTHA GRAY

KATHERINE GREEN TERENCE GRIFFIN DAVID GRIFFITH JR PATRICK GROTHER KATHARINE GURSKI WILLIAM GUTHRIE BARBARA GUTTMAN JON GWINN SEUNG-ILL HAAN JOHN HAGEDORN ROBERT

HAGWOOD JAN HANNIG JOELLEN HANSROTH DONNA HARMAN GERLINDE HARR EDWARD HARRIS VICKIE HARRIS JOAN HASH NELSON HASTINGS KRISTI HAWES NATHANIEL HECKERT SYDNEY HENRARD

JOSEPH HENRIQUEZ MARTIN HERMAN BARRY HERSHMAN THOMAS HEUTE RICKY HILDERBRAND PEGGY HIMES ROBERT HITCHO MICHAEL HOGAN DIANE HONEYCUTT THOMAS HOPPER ADRIANA

HORNIKOVA PAMELA HOUGHTALING YING-PO HSIAO CHUNG TONG HU I-FENG HUANG MICHEAL HUBER JENNIFER HUCKETT WILLIAM HUFF ELIZABETH HUGHES RICHARD HUGHES HOWARD HUNG

FERN HUNT MICHAEL INDOVINA KATRINA INGRAM MICHAELA IORGA HARIHARAN IYER FIROUZEH JALILIAN STANLEY JANET JR WAYNE JANSEN JAMES JASINSKI DYAMI JENKINS VON AYRE JENNINGS

OLAF JERDE JANET JING ARNOLD JOHNSON SOREN JOHNSON RAGHU KACKER KAREN KAFADAR ATHANASIOS KARYGIANNIS DOMINIK KASPAR MICHAEL KASS STUART KATZKE ANTHONY KEARSLEY

SHARON KELLER JOHN KELSEY JOHN KELSO EDWARD KENNEDY HOWARD KERMISCH CHRISTOPHE KERN PETER KETCHAM LAWRENCE KEYS CHOON SOO KIM CHUL KIM ELAINE KIM OKHEE KIM

SEUNG HYUN KIM KELLY KIPFERL RICHARD KISSEL LUKE KLEIN-BERNDT ARTHUR KLEPCHUKOV KENTON KLINE STEPHAN KLINK EMANUEL KNILL JOSEPH KONCZAL HSIAO-MING KOO VLADIMIR KOROLEV

RAMAKRISHNAN KRISHNAN DAVID KUHN SRIKANTA KUMAR JOHN LEE KUNTZ BYUNG-JAE KWAK MARY LAAMANEN STEPHEN LANGER CHRISTOPHE LAPRUN LYNNE LARKIN MARIANNE LARKIN

JONATHAN LASKO SHARON LASKOWSKI JOHN LATTA DEBRA LAUTERBACH JAMES LAWRENCE MICHAEL LE TONY LE NANCY LEATHERMAN DENNIS LEBER YANN LEBLEVEC ANNABELLE LEE CALEB LEE

SUKYOUNG LEE JULIEN LEFORT STEFAN LEIGH NEGA LEMAYEHU ELIZABETH LENNON WALTER LIGGETT JR HUNG-KUNG LIU BENJAMIN LIVELSBERGER SUSAN LOAR SAMUEL LOMONACO BENJAMIN

LONG TERRANCE LOSONSKY DANIEL LOZIER JOHN LU RICHANG LU CHRISTOPHE LUCAS JAMES LYLE GORDON LYON LIJUN MA KATHERINE MACFARLAND WILLIAM MAJURSKI DONALD MALEC JOCELYN

MALONES VLADIMIR MARBUKH KAREN MARSHALL ALVIN MARTIN EDUARDO MARTINEZ VECINO SANDRA MARTINEZ PAUL MATTHEWS LEONARD MAXIMON ROBERT MCCABE ANDREW MCCAFFREY

MARJORIE MCCLAIN JANET MCCULLOCH-BASS GEOFFREY MCFADDEN STEVEN MEAD KATHRYN MEADOW ORLANS KETAN MEHTA ROSS MICHEALS MARTIAL MICHEL BRUCE MILLER LEONARD MILLER

KEVIN MILLS ALAN MINK WILLIAM MITCHELL NADER MOAYERI FRANCESCO MOGGIA VAN MOLINO CARMELO MONTANEZ-RIVERA DOUGLAS MONTGOMERY STANLEY MOREHOUSE KIMBERLY MORGAN

ROY MORGAN EMILE MORSE LEE MOSER YOUSSEF MSELLEK CAROLYN MULFORD BRUCE MURRAY ANASTASE NAKASSIS BERTRAND NDZANA JUSTIN NEAL JAMES NECHVATAL PATRICIA NELSON HAN

NGO ANNA NHAN ALEXEI NIKOLAEV FERNANDO O`CONNOR EARLE O'DONNELL JEFF OFFUTT AGNES O'GALLAGHER MICHAEL OGATA DIANNE O'LEARY FRANK OLVER PATRICK O'REILLY II PATIMA

OUASRI PAUL OVER DAVID PALLETT DANNY PAN SANGWOO PARK YOLANDA PARKER HERBERT PATTERSON HARRIET PECK JAN-WEN PENG JOANNE PERRIENS ADELE PESKIN JULIA PETROUSKY

JONATHON PHILLIPS SHASHI PHOHA FERNANDO PODIO MARGARET POLINKOVSKY WILLIAM POLK BERT PORTER DONALD PORTER FRANCES PORTER IRIS PORTNY FLORIAN POTRA ROLDAN POZO

NICOLAS PRATZ MARK PRZYBOCKI GEORGE QUINN STEPHEN QUIROLGICO SHIRLEY RADACK NICOLAS RADDE MUDUMBAI RANGANATHAN OLIVIER REBALA LARRY REEKER MICHAEL REILLY ERIC

RENAULT SANFORD RESSLER THOMAS RHODES MEGAN RICHTER ANN RICKERDS KELSEY RIDER CLEMENT RIDORET RICHARD RIVELLO EDWARD ROBACK JOHN ROBERTS KAMIE ROBERTS CEDRICK

ROCHET ALLEN ROGINSKY MARK ROSE SCOTT ROSE JOAN ROSENBLATT LYNNE ROSENTHAL RONALD ROSS PERRINE ROUCOUX RICHARD ROUIL JULIE ROUZAUD EUGENE ROWE MYRON RUBINFELD

ANDREW RUKHIN CRAIG RUSSELL BERT RUST THOMAS RYAN VITO SABIA HASSAN SAHIBZADA HASSAN SAHIBZAZA LUCY SALAH DENISE SANDERS GREGORY SANDERS DARRIN SANTAY KAROLINA

SARNOWSKA STEVEN SATTERFIELD GEORGE SAUER BONITA SAUNDERS KAMRAN SAYRAFIAN-POUR ROBERT SCHMIECH JEAN SCHOLTZ CATHY SCHOTT TERESA SCHWARZHOFF ROBERT SCOTT MEGAN

SEAMAN NELL SEDRANSK PHILIPPE SENELAS CLEMENT SEVEILLAC CHARLES SHEPPARD DA SHI MYUNG KI SHIN SANG-HEON SHIN KELLY SHUGGARS JAMES SIMS MARK SKALL OLIVER SLATTERY ROBERT

SNELICK STANLEY SNOUFFER JR DOROTHY SNYDER IAN SOBOROFF WON-KYU SOHN YEUNG JOON SOHN DAVID SONG NAH-OAK SONG HAROLD SORRELL JUAN SOTO JR MURUGIAH SOUPPAYA MICHAEL

SOURYAL TERESA SPLAIN JOLENE SPLETT SIVA SRINIVASAN KOTIKALAPUDI SRIRAM VINCENT STANFORD GILBERT STEWART WILLIAM STILLWELL GAROLD STONE WILLIAM STRAWDERMAN SARAH STREETT

DAVID SU VERNA SUIT FRANCIS SULLIVAN SUZANNE SULLIVAN VASUGHI SUNDRAMOORTHY MARIANNE SWANSON ELHAM TABASSI CERYEN TAN HAI TANG XIAO TANG JOHN TEBBUTT ANDREW

TESCHER MARY THEOFANOS BLAZA TOMAN AUDREY TONG PHUONG TON-NU PATRICIA TOTH SAMUEL TRAHAN SHARON TRAVIS DAVID TURNER DOMINIC VECCHIA ANGEL VILLALAIN PETER VLASOV

JOHN WACK CHIH-MING WANG QIMING WANG KELLY WATKINS CRAIG WATSON CHARLES WAYNE SHARON WENTLING BARBARA WHEATLEY DOUGLAS WHITE JEANNETTE WILLIAMS CHARLES WILSON

MARK WILSON CLARE WITTE CHRISTOPH WITZGALL BRIAN WLADKOWSKI STEPHEN WOOD JIN WU JOAN WYRWA BO YAN GRACE YANG MINGHUI YANG JAMES YEN JOONSOHN YEUNG ANOCHA

YIMSIRIWATTANA JEFFREY YOUNG MICHELLE YOUNG ABDOU YOUSSEF MIKE YU JIAN YUAN JULIE ZANON SUSAN ZEVIN JIA ZHANG NIEN-FAN ZHANG JIAN ZHENG

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Information Technology Laboratory

National Institute of Standards and Technology

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