MEMS Know Howe to Celebrate!

Roger T. Howe
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Stanford University
June 6, 2024

BSAC congratulates former co-director Professor Roger Howe on his retirement! 

Group photo of attendees from the "MEMS Know Howe" symposium and celebration at Hilton Head Workshop 2024.

Photo by Hilton Head Workshop at the "MEMS Know Howe" symposium and celebration, June 2024.

In honor of Professor Roger Howe's retirement, the Hilton Head Workshop hosted the MEMS Know Howe symposium this June in South Carolina to celebrate his transformative contributions to MEMS technology and the countless students and colleagues whose lives he has impacted.

The event featured talks from Professor Howe's colleagues and students, including BSAC co-directors Professor Roya Maboudian and Professor Clark Nguyen. They highlighted the various facets of his impact on the MEMS community and his enduring influence, which has inspired a new wave of pioneers in the field.

As a graduate student in EECS at UC Berkeley, Roger Howe, along with his advisor Professor Richard Muller, achieved a breakthrough that enabled the widespread use of MEMS. They successfully integrated mechanical elements with integrated circuits on a single chip using polycrystalline silicon as a structural material. This innovation, known as surface micromachining, is now used to create MEMS for various applications, including automobile sensors, smartphones, video game controllers, and gas and chemical sensors.

Following this breakthrough, the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center (BSAC) was founded by Professors Richard Muller and Richard White in 1986, bringing together a diverse group of researchers from industry and academia to collaborate with students on developing materials and processes for MEMS research.

Professor Howe joined BSAC as a faculty co-director, where he and his Ph.D. student, William C. Tang, co-invented the electrostatic comb drive—a key building block for microsensors and actuators. In collaboration with his colleague, Roya Maboudian, they developed processes to combat stiction, considered a major road-block in MEMS reliability and commercialization. Additionally, with his colleague Tsu-Jae King Liu and their students, he developed a low-temperature polycrystalline silicon-germanium micromachining technology that could be fabricated after standard CMOS electronics.

During his eighteen years at BSAC, Professor Howe mentored and inspired several MEMS leaders, significantly expanding the field's academic and professional community. BSAC extends its gratitude to Roger for his remarkable contributions and wishes him the best in his retirement!

Here is a list of notable BSAC alumni advised by Professor Howe:

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