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Miniature Devices, Huge Opportunities

There was a day walking across campus Beau Farmer http://physics.njit.edu/Fac-Staff/PFac.html  recalls vividly. Not because of the snow showers that had left his hair soaking wet, but what had left his ears ringing with anger, frustration, and disbelief.

There he was, listening to a couple of students complaining. The usual, he said. No teachers here today - too much snow. What are we supposed to do? Student center? Gym? Library - don't think so? Got some time? Follow me, he suggests. Welcome to Dr. Farmer's neighborhood.

"The kids come here and see a poster on the wall, they're interested in what it might be," said Farmer, associate professor of physics and biomedical engineering and director of NJIT's Microelectronics Research Center. "I give them a demonstration of MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems) devices and I say, `Look, this is MEMS. Here's the research we're doing in the Microelectronics Research Center. You get a taste of that; you get to know what it is by combining all these different areas. You know - physics, chemical engineering, it's biomedical.' It just crosses all those disciplines. It's something they should be exposed to, and by showing them, they get hooked. Wait a second, a student may say. I get to help make some of these devices and actually test them, as well as learn about the field and the management aspects and the entrepreneurship? - That's pretty attractive."

MEMS and Microsystems technology continue to capture the imagination of Farmer, his students and others worldwide. Through classes, such as those Farmer instructs at the graduate and undergraduate levels, students will find hundreds of Microsystems technologist positions each year in the coming decade and familiarize many others in mechanical, chemical and other non-electronical disciplines with basic microfabrication manufacturing procedures.

"MEMS is an emerging, evolving hot field, where there's tremendous job opportunities," said Farmer. "One of our undergraduates just left with all of her MEMS experience and she had three companies bidding against each other to see who would get her."

Her, like many others, are finding the field very attractive financially, even leap frogging over those with half a decade of industry experience.

"The approach we take, the things that we integrate within the courses, and then finally the openness of the course, all three of those things make it unique."

Farmer is charged with the MEMS initiative, a comprehensive research and development and commercialization and educational program initiated through the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology. Funded annually with a budget of about $1 million, the program coordinates efforts from NJIT, Rutgers University and Stevens Institute of Technology.

The curriculum is very rigorous, understandably intimidating many of his students because they not only have to know how to make the devices, but how to package and test all the electronics associated with it.

"Some of the them say, `Wow! There's a lot of stuff that you have to know.' And that's not all, we tell them that if they're really interested in this field, they have to understand the marketing and management issues, too. You don't make a MEMS device just because you can. There must be some driving force, some market pull, have some business about them."

A 1,200-foot Class 10 CMOS at NJIT was adapted for MEMS fabrication, including specialty work, such as fusion wafer bonding.

"We take you from not knowing anything, to knowing something about design, fabrication, fabrication process, protocol, clean room tools, technology, just the whole picture that is brought to bare on MEMS, because we have it all here. We're a very lucky university," said Farmer.

Student projects are coordinated with the needs of more than 100 New Jersey companies identified as having interests in MEMS. Specific application areas include optical fiber communications, pressure and internal sensing, inertial navigation and guidance, biomedical interfacing, microfluids, DNA analysis, optical spectroscopy and environmental monitoring.

"At the end of the courses," said Farmer, "students begin to think of themselves as potential doers themselves. Not only did they see how it's made and participated in some of the fabrication, they also participated in the testing of some real MEMS devices."

For More, Click: http://www.njit.edu/Directory/Centers/MRC/index.htm; http://www.njit.edu/Directory/Centers/MRC/index2.htm

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