Biomedical Applications of Electroactive Polymer Actuators (eBook)

Dr. Ing. Federico Carpi is a postdoctoral researcher at the Interdepartmental Research Center, E. Piaggio, at the University of Pisa (Italy). He gained his degree and PhD at the University of Pisa. His main research interests include the design, the study, the development, the fabrication and the characterization of innovative electromechanical devices based on electroactive polymer (EAP) materials. Dr. Carpi is also founder and co-coordinator for the European Scientific Network for Artificial Muscles. Elisabeth Smela is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland (USA). She received her BS in physics from MIT and completed her PhD in electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. She then worked at Linköping University in Sweden and at Riso National Lab in Denmark developing microfabricated conjugated polymer devices. In 1999 she joined the start-up company Santa Fe Science and Technology in New Mexico as Vice President of Research and Development. She joined the faculty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland in September 2000. She was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2004 for research in dielectric elastomer actuators for microrobotics. She also received the DuPont Young Professor Award in 2003, the engineering school's Kent Teaching Award for Junior Faculty in 2004, and the university's Outstanding Invention of 2004. Her research interests are in polymer MEMS and bioMEMS, and more generally in combining organic materials with conventional inorganic materials to make new micro-scale devices.