The 20th Korea-China-Japan ACRM Meeting was held virtually in August, 2021

- Researchers from national metrology institutes in Korea, China and Japan got together to discuss cooperation for Reference Materials development -

From August 18 to 20, 2021, around 110 researchers from national metrology institutes in Korea, China and Japan attended the 20th ACRM* online meeting to have a discussion on cooperation for research and development of reference materials.

* ACRM : Asian Collaboration on Reference Materials

ACRM is the conference in which the researchers from Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS), National Institute of Metrology of China (NIM) and National Metrology Institute of Japan (NMIJ) join to discuss matters regarding research and development of reference materials. Serving as the leading institutes in Asia in the field of measurement standard research for chemistry, KRISS, NIM and NMIJ have taken turns to host the ACRM meeting every year thus far.

The 20th ACRM meeting was originally scheduled to be held in China in 2020, but was postponed due to the recent outbreak of COVID-19; it was decided to be held in the form of an online meeting this year.

Along with the growing demand for safety, health, environment, food and medical services, the national metrology institutes play important roles as they supplies measurement standards in the form of reference materials for government, industry, academia and research institutes.

It is noteworthy that international cooperation is crucial in reference material research since the development of new reference materials requires verification processes such as international comparison to guarantee respectable scientific reliability of results.

Despite its limitations as an online conference, the 20th ACRM meeting was held successfully; the researchers shared progress and plans for their reference material development, and more detailed ways of cooperation were discussed in four working group meetings.

In response to the impending post COVID-19 era, KRISS, NIM and NMIJ agreed to expand their scope of research and development on measurement standards related to global issues by fortifying ties for international cooperation between the three countries.