Research Areas

Teaching Schedule

Spring 2024

Biography

Ming C. Wu is Nortel Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at University of California, Berkeley, and Co-Director of Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center (BSAC) and Berkeley Emerging Technologies Research Center (BETR). He received B.S. from National Taiwan University in 1983 and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1988. Prior to joining the faculty at Berkeley, Dr. Wu has conducted research at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey (1988-1992) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) (1992-2004). Dr. Wu has published over 600 papers in journals and conferences and holds 35 US patents in Optical MEMS, optofluidics, silicon photonics and optoelectronics. In 1997, Prof. Wu co-founded OMM, Inc. to commercialize MEMS optical switches. OMM became the first company to supply Telcordia-qualified 8x8 and 16x16 switches. Recently, Prof. Wu has pushed the size of optical switches to 240x240 by combining MEMS with silicon photonics. In 2011, Prof. Wu co-founded Berkeley Lights, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLI) to commercialize optoelectronic tweezers (OET) invented by his group. The OET instrument is capable of sorting, cloning, culturing, analyzing antibody secretions of tens of thousands of single cells on a single optofluidic chip. The OET instruments have been used by major pharmaceutical companies for antibody discovery, cell line development, and synthetic biology.

Prof. Wu's accomplishments have been recognized by the Paul F. Forman Engineering Excellence Award (OSA 2007), the William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award (IEEE Photonics Society 2016), the C.E.K. Mees Medal (OSA 2017), the Robert Bosch Micro and Nano Electro Mechanical Systems Award (IEEE Electronic Device Society, 2020), and the Bakar Prize (UC Berkeley 2021). Prof. Wu is Fellow of IEEE and Optical Society (OSA), a Packard Foundation Fellow (1992 – 1997), and a Bakar Fellow (2018-2019).

Education

  • 1988, PhD, EECS, University of California, Berkeley

Selected Publications

Awards, Memberships and Fellowships