Hilton Head 2024 will kick off on Sunday, June 2 with multiple parallel workshops.

Workshop 1: MEMS Know Howe
Time: 10:00 – 15:00 with break for lunch
Cost for Workshop: $100

Professor Roger Howe, a leading figure in the field of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS), is set to retire from Stanford University this year. In honor of his retirement, a symposium is being organized to celebrate his transformative contributions to MEMS technology.

The event will feature talks from Professor Howe's colleagues and students, who will highlight the various facets of his impact on the MEMS community. Specific focus areas will include surface micromachining, resonators, oscillators, inertial sensors, self-assembly processes, adhesion in microstructures, optical MEMS, biosensors, and other applications. The symposium aims to acknowledge Professor Howe's enduring influence on MEMS, offer insights into key advancements from both academia and industry, and inspire a new wave of pioneers in the field.

Workshop 2: Small-scale Robots: From One to a Swarm
Time 11:00 – 15:00
Cost for Workshop $100

The research on small-scale robots has benefited tremendously from prior technological advances in MEMS. This journey started in 1980s where the vision of silicon chip-based robots with onboard sensors, actuators, and power supplies was proposed. Today, the challenge remains: how do we power these micro marvels and equip them with sufficient force to perform their tasks? The initial segment of this workshop will explore cutting-edge sensors and actuators, novel manufacturing methods, and creative strategies to address the energy limitations inherent in small-scale robotic systems.

The progress in small-scale robotics opens a dialogue about the creation of artificial agents that emulate the capabilities of their biological counterparts. In nature, the collective behaviors of simple agents—like ant colonies, bee hives, and schools of fish—illustrate how local interactions can lead to complex group dynamics, where the system as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Small-scale robots, with their compact dimensions and cost-effectiveness, serve as ideal platforms for exploring embodied and swarm intelligence. The workshop's second session will convene experts in swarm robotics, with a particular emphasis on micro-robots, to highlight the latest progress from theory to real-world applications in swarm design, fabrication, actuation, and coordination. For more information, please visit sites.google.com/view/hh2024-smallscalerobots

Workshop 3: CANCELLED
Time: 10:00 - 12:00
Cost for Workshop $50
CANCELLED

Workshop 4: Beyond Technical Expertise: Dealing with Sources of Personal and Professional Stress
Time: 13:00 – 15:00
Cost for Workshop $50

We use short dramatizations supplemented with extensive discussion to explore stressful non-technical issues that often arise in the high-tech life. Specifically, we focus on three topics: power imbalance during peer review, when a junior investigator is asked to review a paper by a senior person, and there is a question of originality of the work; microaggressions, behaviors that create personal discomfort, whether intended or accidental; and the imposter syndrome, feelings of personal or professional inadequacy that can arise when exploring uncharted territory.