Director UC Berkeley

Current Project(s)

Albert P. Pisano holds the FANUC Chair of Mechanical Systems in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds a joint appointment to the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He serves as the senior co-Director of the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center (BSAC), the NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) running continuously since 1986.

Professor Pisano's research interests in recent times are 1) MEMS wireless sensors for harsh environments (600 C) such as gas turbines and geothermal wells, 2) passively powered micro cooling devices for electronic chips that transport heat over 10 cm away, as well as 3) new, additive, MEMS manufacturing techniques such as low-temperature (60 C), low-pressure (1 atm) nano-printing of nanoparticle inks and polymer solutions without traces of residual layers. Other research interests and activities at UC Berkeley include MEMS for a wide variety of applications, including RF components, power generation, drug delivery, strain sensors, biosensors, micro inertial instruments, disk-drive actuators and nanowire sensors. He is the co-inventor listed on more than 20 patents in MEMS and has co-authored more than 300 archival publications. Since 1983, he has graduated over 40 Ph.D. and 75 MS students. Also, he has hosted 4 visiting industrial fellows in his lab since 2005.

Professor Pisano was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2001. A member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, he was elected to Fellow status in 2004. In 2009, he was awarded the Columbia University Thomas Egleston Medal for Distinguished Engineering Achievement by notable alumni of Columbia University.

Professor Pisano recently served as the Faculty Head of the Program Office for Operational Excellence at UC Berkley. Before this position, he served as the Acting Dean of the College of Engineering, and was Professor and Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering from 2004 to 2010. Prior to serving as Department Chair, he served as Director of the Electronics Research Laboratory, the largest organized research unit on the UC Berkeley campus with over $73 million in research funds each year.

Professor Pisano joined the University of California in 1983. He received his B.S. (1976), M.S. (1977) and Ph.D. (1981) degrees from Columbia University in the City of New York in Mechanical Engineering. Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, he held research positions with Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Singer Sewing Machines Corporate R&D Center and General Motors Research Labs.

From 1997 to 1999, he served as Program Manager for the MEMS Program at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, VA, where he expanded the MEMS research portfolio to 83 contracts awarded nationwide with a total MEMS research expenditure in excess of $168 million distributed over 3 fiscal years.

He is a founder in ten start-up companies in the areas of transdermal drug delivery, transvascular drug delivery, sensorized catheters, MEMS manufacturing equipment, MEMS RF devices and MEMS motion sensors. In 2008, he was named one of the 100 Notable People by the Medical Devices and Diagnostic Industry (MD&DI) Magazine.