Andrei M. Shkel | IMIT 2025

Andrei M. Shkel

Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

University of California, Irvine

Speech Title:

Engineering Our Senses: Microtechnology for Protection and Enhancement of Sensory Organs

Abstract:

Our five senses all contribute to our ability to observe, taste, and “feel” the world around us. When exposed to extreme or life-threatening conditions, these five senses operate in unison and at their maximum capacity, assuming full responsibility for our very survival. The presentation will explore an intriguing paradigm that couples both protection and simultaneous enhancement of sensory organs. Although protection and enhancement might seem to be mutually-exclusive and present significant technological challenges, opportunities exist for overcoming such challenges by investigating and exploiting a combination of recently discovered physical phenomena, emerging non-linear acoustic/optical/thermal materials, distributed design of miniature sensors and actuators, and never-before explored architectural solutions.

Bio:

Andrei M. Shkel is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at the University of California at Irvine, where he is jointly appointed to the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and Department of Biomedical Engineering. From 2009 to 2013, Dr. Shkel served as a Program Manager in the Microsystems Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Arlington, VA, where he created and managed a comprehensive portfolio of programs focused on microtechnology for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) applications, totaling over $200M in funding. His professional interests, reflected in over 160 publications and two books, include solid-state sensors and actuators, MEMS-based neuroprosthetics, sensor-based intelligence, and control theory. He holds 19 U.S. and world-wide patents (12 are pending) on micromachined angle-measuring gyroscopes, wide-bandwidth rate gyroscopes, design and fabrication of light manipulators and tunable optical filters, and hybrid micromachining processes.

His current interests center on the design and advanced control of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) for biomedical, communications, and inertial navigation applications, in particular on the development of high-precision micro-machined gyroscopes. Dr. Shkel has served on a number of editorial boards, most recently as Editor of IEEE/ASME Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, Editorial Board Member for the International Journal on Smart Structures and Systems, TPC Member of Hilton Head 2009, and General Chair of 2005 IEEE Sensors Conference. He has been awarded the IEEE Sensors Council 2009 Technical Achievement Award, 2005 NSF CAREER award, the 2002 George E. Brown, Jr. Award, and the 2006 Best Faculty Research Award. In 2013, he received the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service for his work at DARPA as a Program Manager. Dr. Shkel holds Diploma (1991) in Mechanics and Mathematics from Moscow State University, and his Ph.D. degree (1997) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.