Beth Pruitt – Engineering at the Interface of Biology
From Anita Borg Institute Wiki
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Pre-Conference Notes
Abstract
Life is intrinsically mechanical yet the sense of touch, hearing, pain and proprioception remain poorly understood. Nature uses systemic changes in the local mechanical properties, adhesion, and motion of cells to govern these senses as well as our development, bloodflow, and breathing. Yet most of cell biology is conducted in static conditions and with little quantification of the forces observed in basic life processes. What are the opportunities? How do you prepare to work across disciplines? and what are some of the unique challenges in working with biologists and physicians to create new methods, new metrologies and new metrics? Many exciting questions remain for biologists and engineers to answer together and I’ll describe a few exciting questions we are working on and promising directions for future interdisciplinary research.
About the Speaker
Dr. Beth Pruitt, Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, did her BS at MIT and MS and PhD at Stanford. She worked on Piezoresistive Cantilevers For Characterizing Thin-Film Gold Electrical Contacts during her PhD. During her post-doc, she worked on nanostencils and polymer MEMS. She joined the Stanford Mechanical Engineering faculty in Fall 2003 and started the Stanford Microsystems Lab.
Her research includes the development of novel processes and micromachined sensors and actuators for measuring micro-mechanical behavior, the analysis, design, and control of integrated electro-mechanical systems., and biomedical applications of nanofabricated devices with the goal of developing integrated MEMS-biological test platforms, precise measurement and analysis systems, and reliable manufacture methods. She has received an NSF CAREER award, and DARPA YFA award and the Anita Borg Institute Denice Denton Emerging Leader Award. Current lab support is comprised of NSF, NIH, DARPA, CIRM and Stanford Bio-X grants. Prior to her Ph.D., she was an officer in the U.S. Navy, serving first at NAVSEA08, the engineering headquarters of the Navy nuclear program, then as a Systems Engineering instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy, where she also taught offshore sailing. She still enjoys an occasional day on the water, biking, skiing and walking her dog.
