[UCI-CalIT2] Distinguished Speaker Dr. Albert Yee May 23

[Stuart A ROSS]

Cal-(IT)2 presents a Distinguished Speaker

Albert F. Yee
Director, Institute for Materials Research and Engineering  (IMRE) 
Singapore

"FROM MEMS TO NANO-IMPRINTING:  A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF DEVELOPMENT AT IMRE" 

Friday, May 23
2:00 PM
McDonnell Douglas Auditorium
Reception in the lobby at 3:00 PM

ABSTRACT:
IMRE is a 200-staff national research institute in Singapore
specializing in materials research and engineering.  In this talk I give
a brief account of the strategic development of MEMS research in this
institute, and some nanoimprinting research that I am personally
involved in.

IMRE was just over three years in existence when I became its Director
about two and a half years ago.  Two of my objectives as the Director
were to provide more strategic focus to IMRE's activities and to upgrade
the quality of the research, with the eventual goal of seeing IMRE join
the small circle of leading materials research institutes in the world.
The presence of some quite high quality expertise and researchers in
MEMS provided an opportunity to develop this into a strength.  We
quickly focused on non-silicon MEMS as an area that would have potential
industrial impact and intellectual richness, and as a way to distinguish
IMRE from many other research centers on silicon-based MEMS.  The focus
on non-silicon MEMS also meant the need to develop micro- and nano-
fabrication capabilities for these materials, as well as the ability to
integrate these materials and their associated fabrication techniques.
An interdisciplinary center on materials and integration in micro- and
nano- systems (MIMNS) was therefore established.   Among many
possibilities polymer-based MEMS was identified as having the greatest
potential for biomedical, sensor, and electronic applications. I
describe in this talk some of the platform technologies related to
polymer MEMS developed at IMRE, as well as examples of research in the
MIMNS Center.

Conventional techniques for the fabrication of polymer MEMS have
significant limitations when pushed to micron and especially nm scales.
Along with researchers at the University of Michigan we have been
developing a suite of novel reversal imprinting techniques which
overcomes many of the limitations of more conventional techniques and
has the potential of reaching the sub-100nm scale in line width.  Most
importantly we have demonstrated the ability to imprint on surfaces with
topography, and to create quasi-3D nanostructures.  The technique has
potential applications in plastic electronics, OLED, sensors, tissue
engineering, and in studying cell and protein behaviors.

THE SPEAKER:
Albert F. Yee obtained BS and PhD degrees in chemistry in 1967 and 1971,
respectively, from the University of California, Berkeley.  He began his
career as a research scientist with General Electric's Corporate
Research & Development Center in Schenectady, New York.  His research
focused on the physics of polymers, mechanical behaviour of polymers,
and engineering applications of plastics.  He eventually managed the
Structural Design with Plastics Programme at GE CRD.

In 1985, Dr. Yee joined the University of Michigan as a Professor, and
led a team which won an NSF Materials Research Group award, of which he
was the Director. From 1994 to 2000 he served as the Chair of the
Department of Materials Science and Engineering.  In 1997 he founded the
Center for Advanced Polymer Engineering Research, a College-wide
initiative, and became its founding Director.

In September 2000 Dr. Yee took a leave of absence from the University of
Michigan to accept an invitation to be the Director of the Institute of
Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) in Singapore.  

Dr. Yee has published more than 140 papers in refereed journals.  He was
recently selected as one of about 200 materials scientists world-wide to
be listed in WWW.ISIHighlyCited.com.  Most of his publications center
around three areas: toughening mechanisms in engineering polymers,
molecular relaxation mechanisms in glassy polymers, and applications of
the positronium annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) technique to
the study of polymers and other materials.  His recent research
interests include nanocomposites, nanoimprinting and nanopatterning,
ultrathin polymer films, polymer MEMS, and physics of glassy polymers.

Dr. Yee has been honoured with the following recognitions and awards:

* Fellow, American Physical Society, 1984
* Fellow, Polymer Materials Science & Engineering Div., American
Chemical Society, 2001 
* Excellence in Research Award, College of Engineering, University of
Michigan, 2002 
* International Adhesion Society  (94 Japan) Award, 1994 
* Karakash Lecturer, Lehigh University, Sept., 1991 
* Invited Professor, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne,
92 - 93. 
* Chairman of Gordon Research Conference on Composites, Jan., 1993. 
* Monbushu visiting professor, Kyushu University, Japan 
* Member, International Scientific Committee, International Conference
on Yield, Deformation and Fracture of Polymers, since 1985