English version German version

Company

About A.M. Fitzgerald & Associates

Founded in 2003, A.M. Fitzgerald & Associates provides technical consulting services to clients ranging from one-person start-ups to companies in the Fortune 500. A.M. Fitzgerald & Associates is a member of the MEMS Industry Group.

Team

Alissa M. Fitzgerald
Founder and Managing Member
Zaheer Ali
Associate
Brent M. Huigens Associate
David M. Pierce
Associate
Carolyn D. White Associate
Benedikt Zeyen Associate

Alissa M. Fitzgerald, Founder and Managing Member

Dr. Fitzgerald has over 14 years of hands-on experience in MEMS design and fabrication and has developed over a dozen distinct MEMS devices, such as piezoresistive cantilevers, ultrasound transducers, and microcalorimeters, for applications as broad as implantable medical devices to spacecraft sensors. She is an expert on reliability of brittle materials and finite element analysis for MEMS devices, and continues to conduct research in those areas.

She has previously been employed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Orbital Sciences Corporation, Sigpro, and Sensant Corporation (acquired by Siemens). Dr. Fitzgerald received her bachelor and master degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her doctorate from Stanford University, all in the discipline of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Dr. Fitzgerald has numerous journal publications, holds two patents, and is a frequent lecturer at Stanford University and local professional group meetings. Dr. Fitzgerald is the Director of the MIT Club of N. California Semiconductor Entrepreneurship Program and is a member of the MEMS Industry Group Governing Council.

top

Zaheer Ali, Associate

Mr. Ali has several years of experience in applying solid state physics and engineering knowledge to novel device development and fabrication. He has held recent positions at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Lab for Laser Energetics of the University of Rochester, and has worked on projects at Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Mr. Ali has worked on the development of experimental diagnostics for micro-scale to particle accelerator-scale systems. Mr. Ali has a B.S. in Physics from the University of California Berkeley and a Certificate in Nanotechnology from Columbia University.

top

Brent M. Huigens, Associate

Mr. Huigens has a diverse background in microsystems fabrication and characterization and has held recent positions with Johnson & Johnson and Olympus Microsystems America. He has experience in the fabrication of CMOS devices and cantilever architectures, as well as the characterization of micro-actuators. Mr. Huigens has worked with shape memory alloys (SMA) for MEMS applications, test and characterization systems for micromirror devices, and on the mechanical reliability of micro-electrostatic devices. He holds a B.S. in Materials Engineering and a M.S. in Biomedical Microsystems from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

top

David M. Pierce, Associate

Dr. Pierce has a strong foundation in computational mechanics, finite element methods, applied mathematics and the associated programming/software to support work in these areas. He has worked extensively with Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) on engineering research. Most recently, he developed a fatigue life prediction methodology for lead-free solder alloy interconnects in electronic packaging working with SNL. He has also worked as an engineering consultant with several companies and as a design engineer and analyst for Rosemount, Inc. in Minnesota. Dr. Pierce received his B.S. from the University of Minnesota – Minneapolis, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University, all in Mechanical Engineering. He has numerous journal publications and holds one patent.

top

Carolyn D. White, Associate

Dr. White's expertise is in the mechanics of materials as applied to MEMS design, fabrication, and evaluation. Specific experience includes design and reliability optimization, electrostatic and piezoelectric resonators, and processing of thin film piezoelectric and magnetic materials. Dr. White has been employed by Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and has numerous publications. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Brown University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

top

Benedikt Zeyen, Associate

Dr. Zeyen has a strong background in product development, design to manufacture, and static/dynamic modeling of systems. Specifically, he has worked on micro-cantilever design, fabrication and atomic force microscopes.
Dr. Zeyen has been employed by the European Space Agency, EADS Space Transportation and McKinsey & Company. He received his Diplom- Ingenieur degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

top