Director UC Berkeley

Current Project(s)

Kristofer S.J. Pister received a B.A. degree in applied physics from the University of California, San Diego, in 1982, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989 and 1992. From 1992 to 1997 he was an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1997, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is currently a Professor and Co-Director of the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center. He created the term "Smart Dust" and pioneered the development of ubiquitous networks of communication sensors, a concept that has since become a vital sector of technology R&D. During 2003 and 2004 he was on industrial leave as CEO and then CTO of Dust Networks, a company that he co-founded to commercialize low-power wireless sensor networks. In addition to wireless sensor networks, his research interests include MEMS-based microrobotics and low-power circuit design.