Part of InstMC Learning and Engagement Talks Programme. Join Professor Richard Brown and Louise Wright from the National Physical Laboratory to hear two fascinating back to back talks on metrology and data science. 

A Short History of SI Prefixes by Professor Richard Brown

12pm - 12.45pm

Professor Richard Brown has worked at the National Physical Laboratory, the UK’s National Metrology Institute, for over 22 years. He is currently an NPL Senior Fellow and NPL’s Head of Metrology. In 2022 he led the first expansion to the range of SI Prefixes within the International System of Units for over 31 years.

Talk synopsis

The International System of Units (SI) is the world’s measurement system. A key part of the SI is the SI prefixes, which are used together with units when measurements get very big or very small, to ensure the results expressed remain easy to understand.

This presentation relates the history and development of the SI prefixes and describes the story behind the recent addition to the range of SI prefixes in November 2022 – which added quetta, ronna, ronto and quecto – principally to meet the future requirements of data science and increased digitalisation.

The Digital NMI: Metrology for Confidence in Big Data by Louise Wright

12.45 - 1.30pm

Louise Wright has worked at the National Physical Laboratory since 1999. She is NPL’s Head of Digital Metrology, with responsibility for championing digital approaches across the scientific areas in the laboratory and enabling technical knowledge of digitalisation processes to be shared between different areas of measurement.

Talk synopsis

The increase in both size and number of digital data sets brings opportunities and challenges, as well as new prefixes. The ability to share scientific data across multiple technical areas will accelerate development of solutions to many of the world’s problems, and the analysis and use of extremely large data sets is already generating new scientific discoveries in areas such as protein folding. But as measurement scientists know, trustworthy use of data requires a traceability chain back to national standards and an uncertainty associated with the measured value.

This talk will discuss some of the work we are doing at the National Physical Laboratory to develop methods and tools to ensure that as we move towards the quettabyte, the benefits that metrology brings can continue to deliver confidence in data.

An opportunity to ask questions will follow each talk.

Tickets are free and available via Eventbrite here

If you have any questions, email jane.chandler@instmc.org