Foreword

"At the PTB, R&D work accomplished as well as the scientific-based services rendered are overall of very good, in part, of excellent quality", the Science Council established in its scientific-political comments on the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) Braunschweig and Berlin, which it published on 8 May 2008. After the likewise excellent result of the evaluation of the year 2002, this provides confirmation for us that we are on the right path.

At the same time, it is for us all both an incentive and a duty to secure the high standard and expand it – wherever necessary. That we will also succeed with this is attested to by, among other things, the present Annual Report. In the "News of the Year" you will find – in addition to some activities and events which we deem worthy of mentioning – also some of the scientific "highlights" of the past year, as, e.g., the programmable 10V SNS Josephson voltage standard, realized for the first time in a cooperation with the NIST (USA), or the progress made in the determination of the Avogadro constant by means of isotopically enriched 28Si single crystal spheres.

Also in our efforts to coordinate European metrological research, we have made good progress. After the – meanwhile – already 21 joint research projects of the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP) have been funded within the scope of the ERANET-PLUS funding, the European Commission presented to the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers on 3 December 2008 the greatly extended application for the funding of a coordinated European Metrology Research Programme in accordance with Article 169 of the Unification Treaty, having a total volume of 400 million Euro, for approval. We are optimistic that this application will also clear these last hurdles in the current legislative period of the European Parliament.

Analogue to the course of action in the EMRP projects started in 2008 within the scope of ERA-NET-PLUS, also the research subjects within the scope of Article 169 funding will be largely aimed at "great social challenges". Therefore at the beginning of the programme, the focus will be on the subject "energy".

The PTB was, in support of the BMWi (Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology), instrumental in the working out of the new Units Act. The new act combines the old Units Act (under the responsibility of the BMWi) and the Time Act (under the responsibility of the BMI (Federal Ministry of the Interior)). Furthermore, the sovereign tasks of the PTB have been expanded to include the dissemination of the units with the corresponding research activity.

We are exceedingly glad that as of the end of the year 2008, the management of our "QUEST" Team is complete. Professor Piet Schmidt, University of Innsbruck, has accepted a W3 professorship at the University of Hannover and will head the QUEST Institute at the PTB in Braunschweig, and Dr. Tanja Mehlstäubler assumes the head of the Junior Research Group. A warm welcome to them and their staff members, and we wish them good luck.

All of the staff members who are – as also described by the Science Council – a "basis of the considerable performance profile of the PTB" I would like to thank most sincerely for the good work in the past year.