2016 Joint IMEKO TC1-TC7-TC13 Symposium: Metrology Across the Sciences: Wishful Thinking?

The 2016 IMEKO (International Measurement Confederation) TC1- TC7-TC13 Joint Symposium was organized and hosted by the BEAR Center (the Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research Center) in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley on 3-5 August 2016. The work of this symposium is reported in this volume. The scope of the symposium includes the main topics covered by the three participating Technical Committees:

TC1 Education and Training in Measurement and Instrumentation

TC7 Measurement Science

TC13 Measurements in Biology and Medicine

The excellence of previous events in this well established series sets a high standard. Maintaining that standard was vitally important for the 2016 event, as this was the first IMEKO event in the United States since the U.S. rejoined IMEKO, and because this was the first joint symposium hosted by psychometricians.

The focus was on metrology across the sciences, a recurring theme of past Joint Symposia reinvigorated recently by new collaborations of engineers and psychometricians. This larger theme was developed by keynote lectures on uncertainty in measurement, and on philosophic concerns with objectivity. Participants repeatedly remarked on useful interactions with scientists from different disciplines. The Symposium was attended by experts working across a wide range of measurement-intensive fields from 18 countries, including Brazil, Japan, and China, and provided a useful forum for them to share and exchange their work and ideas.