Dr. Laurie E. Locascio is currently the Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

From 2017 to 2022, Locascio served as vice president for research at the University of Maryland College Park and the University of Maryland Baltimore. She also served as a professor in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering at the A. James Clark School of Engineering with a secondary faculty appointment in the Department of Pharmacology in the School of Medicine. Before joining the university, she was at NIST for 31 years, rising from a research biomedical engineer to leading the agency’s Material Measurement Laboratory.

Locascio is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Dr. Locascio was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering.