Gabriel Featured as MEMS Pioneer in Forbes ASAP Magazine
August 2, 2001
The April 2 edition of Forbes ASAP Magazine, Micromachines: the Next BIG THING, featured Kaigham (Ken) J. Gabriel, Professor of ECE and Robotics, as a pioneer in the field of MEMS (microelectromechanical systems).
Profiled for his role as head of the MEMS Program at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Gabriel orchestrated $80 million-a-year in funding, promoting research in industry and universities that spurred today's commercialization of MEMS. He began the the first MEMS manufacturing facility that was open to public, giving more people the tools to manufacture micromachines.
With a graduate assistant, Mehran Mehregany, he was also one of the first to build a silicon-based micromachine, at Bell Labs in 1987. Today, Gabriel is working on MEMS applications that could be used as microphones and earphones. "I'm thinking along the lines of a universal translator," he said.
MEMS technology can power such diverse tasks as beaming data into communication networks, inflating airbags, and checking blood pressure.
