Jan. 13, 2006 – Kristofer Pister, an engineering professor and MEMS pioneer at the University of California, Berkeley, received national recognition for his invention of “smart dust” wireless sensor networks. The Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers (I/UCRC) announced today that Pister won the Alexander Schwarzkopf Prize for Technology Innovation. The I/UCRC is an independent association made up of 41 National Science Foundation-funded centers representing more than 60 universities.

Pister’s work on miniaturized sensors, or “motes,” that communicate through a self-organized wireless network gained momentum in the late 1990s with support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The technology has been used for monitoring buildings to make them more energy efficient and for studying wildlife habitats. The military is looking at smart dust as a surveillance technology.

In 2003, Pister took an industrial leave of absence to launch the company Dust Networks Inc., where he is chief technology officer. He also is a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley and co-director of the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center.