Our People

Areas of expertise
• Measurement models
• Measurement uncertainty
• Software for metrology
• Quality infrastructure
Qualifications
- Dr. ès Sci. (EPFL)
Biography
Blair leads MSL's Digital Metrology programme.
Blair trained as a physicist. He holds a doctorate from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, for research into the atomic structure of nanometre-sized particles, and later worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Swiss national metrology institute (METAS) studying the quantum Hall effect. He returned to New Zealand in 1993 to lecture in Physics and Electronics at Massey University, then, in 1998, he joined MSL to develop national measurement standards for radio and microwave frequency quantities.
Blair is interested in the metrological challenges that arise from applying digital technologies to measurement. His current research focuses on developing suitable digital representations for measurement semantics. He is working on modelling essential ideas such as metrological traceability, a cornerstone of the international measurement system.
Publications
- B. D. Hall,“Software support for physical quantities”, Proceedings of the 9th Electronics New Zealand Conference, (2002).
- B. D. Hall, “Computing with Uncertain Numbers”, Metrologia, 43 (2006) L56–L61
- B. D. Hall, “Evaluating methods of calculating measurement uncertainty”, Metrologia, 45 (2008) L5-L8
- B. D. Hall, “Evaluating the measurement uncertainty of complex quantities: a selective review”, Metrologia 53 S25 (2015) (Focus issue on the 2015 BIPM GUM Revision workshop).
- B. D. Hall and D. R. White,“An introduction to measurement uncertainty”, (Measurement Standards Laboratory of New Zealand, 2018), ISBN: 978-0-473-40581-6.
- B. D. Hall, “An opportunity to enhance the value of metrological traceability in digital systems”, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Metrology for Industry 4.0 and IoT (MetroInd4.0&IoT) (2019)
- B. D. Hall, "Software for calculation with physical quantities", Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Metrology for Industry 4.0 and IoT (MetroInd4.0&IoT) (2020).
Professional activities
- Member of the semantics task group of the CIPM Forum for metrology and digitalisation (Forum-MD)
- Member of the fundamental concepts in metrology task group (TG-FCM) of the CIPM consultative committee for units (CCU)
- Member of the New Zealand Data and Digital Standards Community of Practice
- Member of working group 1 of the APMP Technical Committee for Quality Systems (TCQS)
- Member of the International Measurement Confederation (IMEKO) technical committees: TC6-Digitalisation and TC21-Mathematical Tools for Measurements