SAN JOSE -- Stanford mechanical engineering professor Dr. Beth Pruitt will keynote the 7th Annual MEMS symposium in May, the MicroElectronics Packaging and Test Engineering Council announced today.

The event, MEMS Innovation - Growth Engine in Rich and Lean Times, takes place May 14, in San Jose.

MEMS are ubiquitous in many consumer electronics today, yet despite some of the earliest MEMS research being directed at pressure sensors and electrical probes for in vivo biomedical applications, indwelling devices have not been realized beyond clinical trials yet. The hurdles for in vivo applications include materials biocompatibility, reliability, isolation and communication -- in a word, packaging. In her presentation, A Look at MEMS for Biology and Medicine, Dr. Pruitt will present a range of applications that require MEMS to operate in biological environments with excellent signal fidelity and reliability and will also review opportunities, needs, and challenges for applying MEMS and microfabrication techniques to fundamental in vitro biology questions as well as translational medical problems.
 
The keynote will be followed with a report on MEMS growth opportunities, presented by Tina Lamers of Axept.