Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)

Research Advised by Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister

Pister Group:  List of Projects | List of Researchers

Titan Yuan

Graduate Student Researcher
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2027 (Anticipated)

Titan received his B.S. and M.S. in EECS from UC Berkeley in 2019 and 2020, respectively, advised by Prof. Kris Pister. After graduating, he spent two years in industry working on radar embedded software and signal processing for autonomous vehicles. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in EECS, also advised by Prof. Kris Pister, with an interest in wireless sensor networks, RFICs, and RF/wireless sensing.

BSAC Spring 2025 Research Review...

Daniel Teal

Alumni
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2024, PostDoc 2025

EECS PhD student under Prof. Kristofer Pister; previously earned a BS mechanical engineering / math from the University of Texas at Austin. Studies MEMS and microfabrication. Interested in making microfabrication faster and easier.

Benjamin Cook

Visiting Scholar Researcher
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2007, Visiting Scholar 2025 to present.

The Small, the Agile, and the Many: Autonomous Hierarchical Swarm-vs.-Swarm Engagement Simulations

Titan Yuan
2025
Spring 2025 BSAC Research Review Presentation View Slides Project: BPN990 - Professor Kris Pister Group

BPN915: Control of Microrobots with Reinforcement Learning

Yichen Liu
Kesava Viswanadha
Zhongyu Li
Emily Tan
Nelson Lojo
Derrick Han Sun
Aviral Mishra
Rushil Desai
2025

Developing task schedulers and low-level end-to-end controllers for microrobots operating in complex environments often demands extensive system and environment knowledge, leading to prolonged design cycles for specialized controllers. To expedite the generation of general controllers without requiring domain-specific expertise, we propose utilizing model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) trained within simulated environments. Our research advances microrobot control through two key approaches: modeling the long-term dynamics of robots and distilling computationally intensive model...

BPN985: Multimaterial Nanoscale 3D Printing

Daniel Teal
2024

We propose a new multimaterial direct-write printing technique with projected sub-micron resolution. Inorganic nanoparticles (≈1-10nm) of common microfabrication materials are electrically charged, manipulated electromagnetically in vacuum with an ion trap, and shot toward a substrate where they deposit onto a part under construction, similar to PVD methods. To date, we have successfully demonstrated basic multimaterial deposition. Eventually, this ion printing technology could allow rapid prototyping of integrated circuits and MEMS.

Project ended: 12/20/2024

Carson Spoo

Undergraduate Researcher
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)
B.S. 2026 (Anticipated)

Hani Gomez

Postdoctoral Researcher
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2020, PostDoc 2024 to present

Originally from Cochabamba, Bolivia, Hani obtained her BS in Electrical Engineering at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. In 2020, Hani graduated with a PhD from UC Berkeley, where she focused on the design, fabrication and assembly of walking silicon microrobots using MEMS technology. Now, she is once again working with Kristofer Pister, developing a six-axis controlled, electrostatically levitated 1g mass system.

Alexander Alvara

Graduate Student Researcher
Mechanical Engineering
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Liwei Lin (Advisor)
Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2025 (Anticipated)

Alexander Alvara is a final year Ph.D. Candidate in mechanical engineering who earned his 3 BS degrees from UC Irvine '17 concurrently in mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, and materials science and engineering. Alexander is interested in extreme conditions applications and performance of MEMS devices as well as nanoscale materials engineering that investigates the interplay of materials with electromagnetism and light.

Rotary Inchworm Motor for Underwater Microrobot Propulsion

Mauricio J. Bustamante
Michel M. Maharbiz
Kristofer S. J. Pister
2024

Swimming microrobots have significant potential for biomedical applications and distributed sensing. To date, most work has relied on external fields for control control. To achieve au- tonomy, locally controllable propulsion mechanisms must be developed. This thesis presents an rotary inchworm motor designed to drive an artificial flagellum, inspired by bacterial flagellar motors found in nature. The design adapts electrostatic gap closing actuators with angled arms for rotational motion. The devices are fabricated in an SOI process with a bonded lid featuring through-wafer vias as a...