Stephen W. Banovic (Fed)

Stephen Banovic is the Acting Chief Safety Officer at NIST.  He is also the Acting Director of the Office of Safety, Health, and Environment (OSHE). In these roles, Steve is accountable for establishing, ensuring implementation of, and continual improvement of NIST’s occupational health and safety management system, as well as overseeing the areas of radiation safety, environmental management, and fire and life safety. He is also responsible for the development and vetting of NIST directives associated with these four areas, and the tools to support them (e.g., procedures, guides, forms, permits, IT applications). 

Steve is a graduate of the National Safety Council’s Safety Leadership Program; has completed the OSHA 30-hour course and hundreds of other trainings related to occupational safety & health, ionizing radiation, environmental management, and fire & life safety; and is a certified ISO 45001 Occupational Health & Safety Lead Auditor.

Steve has held many safety positions at NIST, including Safety Representative for the Metallurgy Division, Chair of the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory (MSEL) Safety Council (2008-2009), and MSEL Safety Coordinator (2008-2009). After the NIST-Boulder plutonium spill in 2008, he worked directly with NIST Senior Leaders to implement many of the new safety policies and helped to layout the foundations for the organization that would become OSHE. 

In August 2009, Steve became the leader of the Safety and Environmental Management Group within NIST's Safety Office. In that role, he was responsible for building relationships between the new safety organization and the NIST staff.  Soon thereafter, he was promoted to Chief of the Gaithersburg Safety, Health, and Environment Division (2010) and then the Deputy Chief Safety Officer later that year.

Prior to transitioning to his safety roles, Steve was a scientist whose work focused on processing-structure-property relationships for thermal barrier coatings on turbine blades and corrosion-resistant weld overlay coatings used in coal-fired boilers. He also participated in 30+ failure analysis investigations involving ferrous and nickel-based components used in power generation. After a one-year post doc at Lehigh studying the weldability of stainless steel alloys containing gadolinium for nuclear reactor spent fuel storage, he joined NIST in 2000 on a two-year postdoc through the National Research Council.

As a member of the Metallurgy Division in MSEL, he investigated the fundamental linkages between microstructure and the mechanical response of advanced light-weight materials for automotive applications. He also characterized innovative ballistic materials in collaboration with NIST’s Office of Law Enforcement Standards. After the tragic attack of the World Trade Centers in Sept 2001, Steve was hired as a full-time federal employee in the Metallurgy Division and became a member of the National Construction Safety Team investigating the collapse of the Twin Towers. In collaboration with members of NY’s Structural Engineers Association, he identify 236 structural steel components from the recovery yards to bring to NIST as part of the effort. After conducting damage and failure mode assessments of the structural components, Steve analyzed the quality and mechanical properties of the steel used to make them. This data were used as inputs to the modeling work performed by others at NIST. The results of the full investigation lead to an understand of the towers collapse and significant building code changes aiming to improve the safety of tall buildings nationwide that included increased fire resistance for structural components, improved fireproofing, enhanced emergency responder access, and better exit path markings.