Program

Rainer Gloess is Head of Advanced Mechatronics at Physik Instrumente (PI) SE & Co.KG Karlsruhe in the department Global Innovation & Scouting. 
In 1970, he began his studies at the Technical University Dresden in “Electrical Technology and Fine Mechanics”, and received his PhD in the field of “Optoelectronic metrology in high dynamic motion processes.  
From 1976 to 1991, he held a position at the Academy of Science, Berlin,  Central Institute of Cybernetics and Information Processes, where he developed data recorder for near earth and deep space satellite missions. 

Since 1991 he has been working in different R&D positions at Physik Instrumente, Karlsruhe. He developed piezo positioners, 6-DOF nano-positioning systems for semiconductor and photonics industry as well as for astronomy. Newest developments involve magnetic  levitation with sub-nanometer resolution. 

He is sustainable member of the American Society for Precision Engineering (ASPE) and member of two VDI/VDE technical committees.  

Martin Hoffmann has been a full professor at the Ruhr University Bochum for Microsystems Technology since 2017.

After his work at the TU Dortmund, he joined MEMS companies and returned to academia in 2006 as a full professor for Micromechanical Systems at the TU Ilmenau.

Microactuators have always been a key area of interest in combination with sensors and optical waveguides from visible to THz.  The application-specific MEMS are mainly based on thermal and electrostatic effects and demonstrators have been realized in an own cleanroom.

Professor Liwei Lin is the James Marshall Wells Academic Chair in Mechanical Engineering, and Co-Director at Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center (BSAC) at UC Berkeley. 

His research interests are in design, modeling, and fabrication of micro/nano structures; sensors and actuators; as well as mechanical issues in micro/nano systems including heat transfer, solid/fluid mechanics, and dynamics.  

Dr. Lin is the recipient of the 1998 NSF CAREER Award for research in MEMS Packaging and the 1999 ASME Journal of Heat Transfer best paper award for his work on micro scale bubble formation.  He led the effort to establish the MEMS division in ASME and served as the founding Chairman of the Executive Committee from 2004~2005.  He is an ASME Fellow and has 23 issued US patents in MEMS. He was the general co-chair of the 24th IEEE international conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems at Cancun, Mexico in 2011. 
He is currently serving as a subject editor of Microsystems & Nanoengineering published by the Nature group.

Arianna Menciassi (Fellow, IEEE) received the M.Sc. degree in physics from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, in 1995, and the Ph.D. degree in bioengineering from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), Pisa, Italy, in 1999. She is currently a Professor of bioengineering and biomedical robotics with SSSA, where she is the Team Leader of Surgical Robotics & Allied Technologies within The BioRobotics Institute. She served as Coordinator of the Ph.D. in BioRobotics in the period Feb. 2019-Feb. 2025, and in April 2019 she was appointed as the Vice-Rector of the SSSA for 6 years. Her research interests include surgical robotics, microrobotics for biomedical applications, biomechatronic artificial organs, and smart and soft solutions for biomedical devices.

She pays special attention to the combination of traditional robotics, targeted therapy, and wireless solutions for therapy (e.g., ultrasound- and magnetic-based solutions). She has served for many years as the Co-Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Surgical Robotics. Prof. Menciassi is an Editor for the IEEE Transactions of Robotics and APL Bioengineering and she is an Associate Editor for Soft Robotics. She received the Well-tech Award (Milan, Italy) for her research on endoscopic capsules, and she was awarded by the Tuscany Region with the Gonfalone D’Argento, in 2007, as one of the best 10 young talents of the region. In 2020, she has been awarded with the KUKA Innovation Award, for her activities on robotic assisted focused ultrasound.
 

Professor Oliver G. Schmidt is the Scientific Director of the Research Center for Materials, Architectures and Integration of Nanomembranes (MAIN) and holds the Chair of Material Systems for Nanoelectronics at the Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany.

He is an elected member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering and has received several international prizes and awards, among them the Leibniz-Prize of the German Research Foundation in 2018, and an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council (ERC) in 2019.

He is a pioneer in microrobotics, its biomedical applications and its potential for creating artificial life. He achieved several Guinness World Records (e.g. smallest man-made jet engine and smallest microelectronic robot) and has made major scientific contributions to small scale energy storage devices, flexible electronics and integrated multi-functional microsystems. He has been an ISI highly cited researcher in 2018, 2019, 2022, 2024, 2025 and has authored and co-authored > 900 papers with a citation index > 68.000 and an H-index of 134.

Shoji Takeuchi is Professor in the Department of Mechano-Informatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Japan.

He has received numerous honors, including the JSPS Prize, TIME Best Inventions 2025, and the Springer Nature Test of Time Award 2025. His research focuses on cultivated meat, 3D tissue fabrication, bioMEMS, implantable devices, and biohybrid robotics.