Roger T. Howe

A portrait of Prof. Roger T. Howe.

Roger Thomas Howe was born in Sacramento, CA in 1957 and is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Engineering. He earned a B.S. degree in physics from Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA. He earned a M.S. degree and a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981 and 1984, respectively. He was a faculty member at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1984-1985, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1985-1987, and at UC Berkeley between 1987-2005. He has been a professor at Stanford University since then.

His research interests focuses on micro electromechanical system (MEMS), and nanoscale devices and fabrication technology. He and his Ph.D. advisor, Prof. Richard S. Muller at Berkeley, developed polysilicon surface micromachining technology. Such a process opened the possibilities of micro mechanical elements such as cantilevers, resonators, and gears. He was elected an IEEE Fellow in 1996, for "seminal contributions to microfabrication technologies, devices, and micro-electromechanical systems". He received the 1998 IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award. In 2005, he was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering; "for contributions to the development of microelectromechanical systems in processes, devices and systems". Since 2011, he has been the Director of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN).