Agenda

Special ME colloquium

• Tuesday, 9 June 2026
• 15:00-16:00
• EEMCS, Boole

Manipulating Solids, Liquids, and Light

Manipulating Solids, Liquids, and Light

This talk presents an overview of selected research projects from the UW MEMS Group. Topics span microrobotic transport and assembly of solid components, the manipulation of discrete droplets in microfluidic systems, and tunable metasurface optics. These examples illustrate how MEMS technologies enable microrobot locomotion, self-cleaning surfaces, and low-cost, compact optical components for miniature cameras and endoscopes.

Short Bio
Karl F. Böhringer received his Diplom-Informatiker degree from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1990 and both his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (1993 and 1997 respectively). He was a visiting scholar at Stanford University (1994-1995) and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley (1996-1998). He joined the University of Washington in Seattle in 1998, where he is Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Bioengineering and Director of the Institute for Nano-Engineered Systems. Böhringer has held visiting faculty positions at the Universities of Tohoku, Tokyo, Kyoto (Japan), São Paulo (Brazil) and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland). He is co-founder and board member of Tunoptix LLC. His research interests include microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), manipulation and assembly from macro to nano scales, microfluidic systems for the life sciences, MEMS-metaoptics, and microrobotics. He has created multi-batch self-assembling systems, massively parallel microactuator arrays and a walking microrobot.

Karl F. Böhringer, Ph.D.
Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Bioengineering
Institute for Nano-engineered Systems
University of Washington, Seattle, USA