Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)

Research Advised by Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister

Filip Maksimovic

Alumni
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2018

Joseph Greenspun

Alumni
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2018

Daniel Drew

Alumni
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2018

Daniel Contreras

Alumni
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2018

Walking Silicon: Actuators and Legs for Small-Scale Terrestrial Robots

Daniel Contreras
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Michel M. Maharbiz
Liwei Lin
2018

This dissertation presents work on components and actuators for silicon-based walking centimeter-scale robots. The focus on this work was on the actuators used to drive these robots and the linkages that make the basic structure of the robot leg.

Pin-joints are used as the basic unit of the leg linkages. The pin-joints were tested in terms of robustness and demonstrated high maximum tensile loads of over 5mN and compressive loads in excess of 100mN.

Electrostatic inchworm motors were the...

Brad Wheeler

Alumni
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2019

Low Power, Crystal-Free Design for Monolithic Receivers

Brad Wheeler
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Ali M. Niknejad
Steven D. Glaser
2019

Predictions of the proliferation of hundreds of billions of connected wireless devices have yet to come true. The economics of such deployments becoming feasible require that current wireless modules become smaller, cheaper, and use less power. A typical wireless device combines a RF System-on-Chip with multiple frequency references, passive components, anantenna, and a battery on a printed circuit board. The Single Chip Mote project aims toreduce the size, weight, power, and cost of these devices by eliminating the off...

Alyssa Zhou

Alumni
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Michel M. Maharbiz (Advisor)
Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2020

Frequency Tunable MEMS-Based Timing Oscillators and Narrowband Filters

Henry Barrow
Clark T.-C. Nguyen
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Liwei Lin
2015

Both the accuracy of the clocks and ability of filters to achieve bandwidths small enough to select individual channels depend heavily on the accuracy and precision to which the frequency-setting devices they rely on are constructed. Inevitably, fabrication tolerances are finite, which means the ability to attain the highest performance relies on trimming or tuning. This dissertation focuses on methods by which voltage-controlled frequency tuning of capacitively-transduced micromechanical resonators make possible 1) an ultra-compact, low-power 32.768-kHz micromechanical clock...

A CMOS Biosensor for Infectious Disease Detection

Turgut Aytur
Bernhard E. Boser
Kristofer S.J. Pister
2007

This dissertation describes the design and implementation of an immunoassay platform based on micron-scale magnetic beads. We target the diagnosis of infectious diseases in developing countries, where small, inexpensive, and automated tests are required. Conventional sensor technologies, such as Giant Magneto-Resistors (GMRs), have excellent sensitivity but are expensive and difficult to integrate with other circuitry. The system presented here is built around a CMOS sensor chip and uses standard manufacturing techniques present in the electronics industry. CMOS technology can...