On January 22, 2016, MTL hosted the annual meeting of the MTL Industrial Advisory Board (IAB), the representative body of MTL's Microsystems Industrial Group (MIG). This meeting serves as an opportunity for MTL to provide the MIG member companies a comprehensive view of current research activities as well as updates on the lab's recent activities, future plans, facilities and services. The members of the IAB in turn provide feedback and suggestions to the MTL leadership on their operations and plans. All 16 of the MIG member companies were represented at this year's meeting. There were a total of 23 MIG company representatives and 13 MIT faculty and staff in attendance.
Professor Jesús del Alamo began the meeting with the MTL Director's Update, providing an overview of the MTL mission and organizational structure, highlights of 2015, and plans for new initiatives for 2016. He was followed by Associate Dean Vladimir Bulović, who spoke on Next Steps on MIT.nano, which provided a vision for the organizational structure of the new MIT entity.
Professor Pablo Jarillo-Herrero then spoke on Ultrathin Optoelectronics with Novel 2D Materials, followed by Professor Anantha Chandrakasan with Self-Powered IoT System Design.
Dr. Brian Anthony provided an overview of industry interactions in the area of medical device technology in Industry Collaborations in Education and Research at MIT--Medical Device Technologies and Advanced Manufacturing. He also presented some background on a new government - industry - university initiative in manufacturing flexible hybrids - NEXTFLEX.
For the final talk of the morning, Associate Provost Karen Gleason spoke on Chemically Vapor Deposited (CVD) Polymers for Device Fabrication, in which she discussed the technology background, equipment and applications related to robust and conformal polymer coating.
After lunch, Dr. Vicky Diadiuk and Professor Duane Boning then provided an MTL Facilities and CAD/IT Services Update. This included an overview of improvements made in both areas and an analysisof the user community composition in the past year.
The last portion of the meeting consisted of an open discussion among IAB representatives, the MTL leadership and attending MTL faculty and staff about the past year's MTL activities and future directions.
--Bill Holber, MTL Associate Director, Industrial Relations