Michel Maharbiz (UC Berkeley)

Speaker

Michel Maharbiz
UC Berkeley

Title

Recent Advances in the Neural Dust Platform: Can We Target Many Motes, Deep in the Brain and through the Skull?

Abstract

Michel Maharbiz is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and a Co-Director of the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Maharbiz's research interests include building micro/nano interfaces to cells and organisms and exploring bio-deprived fabrication methods. His long term goal is to understand developmental mechanisms as a way to engineer and fabricate machines. Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, Professor Maharbiz’s work on microbioreactor systems under Professor Roger T. Howe (EECS) and Professor Jay D. Keasling (ChemE) led to the foundation of Microreactor Technologies, Inc., which was acquired by Pall Corporation in 2009. He is the co-founder of Tweedle Technologies and served as Vice President of Product Development at Quswami, Inc. from July 2010 to June 2011. Dr. Maharbiz was the recipient of a 2009 NSF Career Award for research into developing microfabricated interfaces for synthetic biology. In 2013, he received an Excellence in Engineering Education Award from National Instruments. He has been a GE Scholar and an Intel IMAP Fellow. His group is also known for developing the world’s first remotely radio-controlled cyborg beetles. This was named one of the top ten emerging technologies of 2009 by MIT’s Technology Review (TR10) and was in Time Magazine’s Top 50 Inventions of 2009. In 2017 Dr. Maharbiz and his colleague Jose Carmena shared the prestigious McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award. Dr. Maharbiz received his Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley.