Abstract:Advancement in micromachined sensors, actuators, and low-power integrated electronics has fueled recent rapid development in wireless microsystem technology providing smart robust sensing and wireless communication capability. Ultra low system power dissipation allows batteryless microsystem to be achieved with a small form factor and powered by ambient or external energy sources. Such system is crucial for biomedical as well as industrial sensing applications, where size, weight, and limited access are critical system design constraints. Optimized design in system, device, circuit, and packaging is highly important for achieving an overall high performance. In this seminar, I will first present two on-going research efforts from my research laboratory on (1) wireless battery recharging for implantable bladder pressure sensor and (2) robust MEMS tactile sensor array. System design architecture, sensing principles, and measurement results will be described.

Biography:Darrin Young received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at University of California at Berkeley.Dr. Young pioneered the research work in MEMS-based, high-Q, tunable capacitors and on-chip 3-D coil inductors for low phase noise RF voltage-controlled oscillator design for wireless communication applications. Between 1991 and 1993, he worked at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, California, where he designed a shared memory system for a DSP-based multiprocessor architecture. Between 1997 and 1998, he worked at Rockwell Semiconductor Systems in Newport Beach, California, where he designed silicon bipolar RF analog circuits for cellular telephony applications. During this time period he was also at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, working on the design and fabrication of three-dimensional RF MEMS coil inductors for wireless communications. Dr. Young joined the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Case Western Reserve University in 1999. In 2009 he joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Utah, where he currently serves as an associate department chair. His interests include micro-electro-mechanical systems design, fabrication, and integrated circuits design for wireless sensing, biomedical implant, communication and general industrial applications as well as commercialization of wireless microsystems. He has published many technical papers in journals and conferences, and served as a technical program committee member and session chair for a number of international conferences. Dr. Young was an associate editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits between 2006 and 2011, and the chair of the IEEE Electron Devices Society MEMS Committee between 2006 and 2009. He is a member of the IEEE Sensors Council, and currently serves as an editor of the IEEE Transactions of Electron Devices with a special focus on solid-state sensors and actuators.