The Hilton Head Workshop draws 350-500 academic, industry, and government participants from diverse engineering and scientific backgrounds, including chemistry, materials science, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, physics, biology, bioengineering, etc. Previous workshops have provided a highly interactive forum for researchers to present and discuss recent advances in microfabrication technologies for sensing and actuation devices and microsystems for physical, chemical, and biological applications.
Hilton Head 2020 was unfortunately cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and interestingly (but perhaps not coincidentally), its theme focused on healthcare grand challenges. Given the events of the past year and in consideration of future science and technology directions, HH 2022’s workshop theme will continue the great work in this direction with a focus on “Prevention of and Preparation for the Next Grand Challenges,” which we hope will inspire our community, encourage new collaborations and ideas, and explore the potential for MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) to impact a variety of global issues and grand challenges.