The Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute and the School of Materials Science and Engineering welcomes Dr. Martin Schmidt on Monday, November 19, 2012.  The seminar begins at 4:00 p.m. in the Manufacturing Research Building Auditorium.  Refreshments will be served in the building Atrium prior to the seminar at 3:30 p.m.

Abstract: This talk will attempt to blend two experiences of the speaker into a vision for future needs in manufacturing at the micro and nano scale. The first experience is that of an academic focused on research in micro and nano-fabricated devices and their transition to commercialization. The second experience is that of faculty lead for the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP), a White House initiated effort to recommend actions to revitalize domestic manufacturing. In this talk, we will review global trends in manufacturing in general, and specifically in the area of micro and nano manufacturing. Particular emphasis will be focused on the increasing difficulty of manufacturing at the micro/nano scale for products outside the silicon CMOS space. This will lead to a discussion of an alternative technological path forward that not only breaks free of this difficulty, but offers a means to re-invigorate domestic production of micro and nano-scale devices.

Biography: Martin A. Schmidt received his BS degree from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1981 and his SM and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983 and 1988 respectively. Since 1988 he has been a faculty member in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at MIT. From 1999 to 2006 he served as the Director of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) at MIT. In July of 2008 he assumed his current position as Associate Provost at MIT. His teaching and research is in the area of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and micro/nano-manufacturing technology. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award and an Honorary Doctorate from the Technical University of Denmark. He was elected as a Fellow of the IEEE in 2004 for contributions to design and fabrication of microelectromechanical systems. He has received the Ruth and Joel Spira Teaching Award and the Eta Kappa Nu Teaching Award at MIT. In addition to his academic pursuits, he is active in consulting with industry in the commercialization of technology and is a co-founder of a number of companies that are commercializing MEMS-enabled products.