Richard S. Muller

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Richard S. Muller (born May 5, 1933) is an American professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He helped create the field of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).

In 1982, Muller and his student Roger T. Howe pioneered the use of polysilicon beams released by a sacrificial process, leading to surface micromachining. This work enabled the mass production of tiny mechanical devices and laid the foundation for low-cost micro accelerometers used in automotive airbags.

With Richard M. White, he founded the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center (BSAC), a hub for MEMS research and intellectual property. By 2013 MEMS had become a multi‑billion-dollar industry worldwide.

Muller was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1992 for contributions to the technology and design of integrated electronic sensors. He earned a Mechanical Engineering degree with highest honors from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1955, and a Master’s in Electrical Engineering (1957) and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Physics (1962) from the California Institute of Technology. He worked at Hughes Aircraft Company from 1955 to 1962 before joining UC Berkeley’s Electrical Engineering faculty in 1962. He served as a Trustee of Stevens Institute of Technology from 1995 to 2005.

With Theodore I. Kamins, he co-authored Device Electronics for Integrated Circuits, first published in 1977, with later editions in 1986 and 2002.

In the late 1970s, Muller shifted his research toward MEMS. In 1986 he and White founded BSAC, an NSF/Industry/University Cooperative Research Center. In 1990, he proposed a MEMS technical journal that began in 1991 as the IEEE/ASME Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems (JMEMS); he served as Editor-in-Chief from 1997 to 2013.

The surface micromachining process using polysilicon as a structural material and silicon oxide as a sacrificial layer became the cornerstone of many devices, including microphones, pressure sensors, electronic filters, spectrometers, and e-readers.

Awards and honors include the UC Berkeley Citation (1994); Stevens Institute of Technology Renaissance Award (1995); Transducers Research Conference Career Achievement Award (1997); IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award (with Howe, 1998); IEEE Millennium Medal (2000); and IEEE/RSE Wolfson Maxwell Award (2013). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Life Fellow of IEEE.