Mr. Daniel Sawyer is the Leader of the Dimensional Metrology Group in the Engineering Physics Division at NIST in Gaithersburg, MD. His Group is comprised of 17 full time staff and 1 contract researchers. The Group’s primarily responsibility is the realization and dissemination of the SI unit of length. Dan has worked for over 20 years in performance evaluation of advanced coordinate measuring technologies and has authored and coauthored over 50 publications. He is a co-developer of the NIST laser rail calibration system, which has been commercialized by a U.S. manufacturer. He is the recipient of 4 U.S. Department of Commerce Bronze Medal awards for his work in coordinate metrology and a Judson C. French Award for developing new methods to calibrate kilometer length fiber optic cable standards. He’s worked with the National Geographic Society as a host researcher for the Jason Project, which developed educational material to promote STEM in middle schools throughout the U.S. He is the Vice-Chairman of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers B89-1 Division on length. Dan is one of the primary authors of the ASME B89.4.19 laser tracker standard. (The effort to produce the laser tracker standard was initiated at the CMSC in 1998.) Over the years, as a frequent participant ant CMSC, Dan has given several talks and participated and/or developed 4 workshops on laser tracker and laser scanner performance evaluation and standardization. For the last 2 years, he has served as a member of the Executive Committee organizing technical presentations. He has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Towson State University; a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland College Park, where he is a member of Tau Beta Pi’s national honor society; and a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University. His current research interests include design of high accuracy length standards for performance evaluation of large-scale metrology systems.
Office: (301) 975-5863
e-mail: daniel.sawyer@nist.gov
