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Amit Lal
"It was just so exciting I decided that was what I wanted to do," says Lal, who had been researching applied optics at the time and is now teaching analog circuit design as an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "In optics, the results are predictable in many ways. But in MEMS, there are plenty of surprises. It’s a lot less straightforward—there is a lot of engineering and discovery and applied physics all rolled together. Every time you make a device, there is something interesting that comes out of it." After Caltech, Lal attended University of California, Berkeley, where he finished his PhD in 1996, then joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin, leading the SonicMEMS group in research on ultrasonics, micromachining techniques, modeling of piezoelectric systems, and design and analysis of integrated circuits. Now at Cornell, where he is planning to concentrate on bioMEMS and integrated microsystems, Lal is proud of his two latest successes: a microscopic battery strong enough to power implantable medical devices and a silicon scalpel that is currently being tested by surgical companies. "The challenge is always to push the envelope on what MEMS can do," says Lal, who shares his Ithaca home with his wife, Garima, who has recently finished her master’s degree in business administration, and their six-year-old son, Ravi, who loves collecting insects. "The challenge is to come up with the next new fabrication technology, the next new phenomenon. The challenge is to take MEMS to the nanoscale and still enable system-level integration. The excitement comes from writing a proposal, using this new technology, and in the end, experiencing the surprise of discovery." |
Amit Lal grew up in India, moved to Virginia when he was twelve years old, and was an eighteen-year old Caltech undergraduate when a lecture on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) changed his life.