Dana Weinstein
Purdue
Emerging Needs for Electromechanical Transducers
Electromechanical transducers have played a vital role over the last century in transforming everything from communication, computation, and navigation to medicine and fundamental science. A range of transducer materials and mechanisms have emerged, including electrostatic, piezoelectric, thermoelastic, magnetic, and phase change transducers, each best suited for different applications. This talk focuses on a subset of transducers that can be microfabricated due to the wealth of benefits of wafer-scale manufacturing in dedicated foundries. We will briefly survey the state-of-the-art, commercial successes, and current developments as a baseline to look forward to emerging needs. What material and design solutions are required to overcome technological barriers of high frequency, high bandwidth communication? Cognition and quantum computation? Medical diagnostics and intervention? Future pandemics? Sustainable agriculture? Renewable energy? There are ample opportunities for Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) transducers to address these needs with strategic research and development efforts over the coming years.
Bio
Dana Weinstein is an Associate Professor in Purdue’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Associate Dean of Graduate Education in the College of Engineering. Prior to joining Purdue in 2015, Dr. Weinstein joined the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT as an Assistant Professor, and served as an Associate Professor there between 2013 and 2015. She received her B.A. in Physics and Astrophysics from University of California - Berkeley in 2004 and her Ph.D. in Applied Physics in 2009 from Cornell, working on multi-GHz MEMS. She is a Purdue Faculty Scholar, and a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the DARPA Young Faculty Award, the first Intel Early Career Award, the first TRF Transducers Early Career Award, and the IEEE IEDM Roger A. Haken Best Paper Award. Dr. Weinstein’s current research focuses on innovative microelectromechanical devices for applications ranging from MEMS-IC wireless communications and clocking to micro-robotic actuators and flexible substrate ultrasonic transducers.