Director UC Berkeley

Current Project(s)

Michel M. Maharbiz is an Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley for his work on microbioreactor systems under Professor Roger T. Howe (EECS) and Professor Jay D. Keasling (ChemE). His work led to the foundation of Microreactor Technologies, Inc. which was acquired in 2009 by Pall Corporation. From 2003 to 2007, Michel Maharbiz was an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the co-founder of Tweedle Technologies and served as vice-president for product development at Quswami, Inc. from July 2010 to June 2011. Prof. Maharbiz was the recipient of a 2009 NSF Career Award for research into developing microfabricated interfaces for synthetic biology. Dr. Maharbiz has been a GE Scholar and an Intel IMAP Fellow. Professor Maharbiz’s current research interests include building micro/nano interfaces to cells and organisms and exploring bio-derived fabrication methods. His group is also known for developing the world’s first remotely radio-controlled cyborg beetles. This was named one of the top ten emerging technologies of 2009 by MIT’s Technology Review (TR10) and was in Time Magazine’s Top 50 Inventions of 2009. Michel’s long term goal is understanding developmental mechanisms as a way to engineer and fabricate machines.