MEMS Industry Group®, the trade association advancing MEMS and sensors across global markets, announced the creation of its new TSensors division on May 14, 2015; headed by Dr. Janusz Bryzek, TSensors Summit, Inc.’s founder. MIG’s new division will extend TSensors Summit’s visionary efforts to accelerate a world in which everyone has access to “Abundance” —food, safe water, clean air, healthcare and other vital resources— through the foundational use of sensors and MEMS.
This is big news.
MIG, now 14 years old, and comprising more than 180 members and partners, is well known for the energy it’s brought to promoting the MEMS and sensor space, and for its successful leadership of technical standards and technology roadmap activities in MEMS and sensors.
Karen Lightman, MIG’s executive director, noted in the announcement that “TSensors has proven itself to be vibrant and incredibly innovative, with initiatives designed to positively change the human experience through the widespread adoption of sensors … Clearly this is an ambitious goal — but with the success of past TSensors Summits, combined with MIG’s global membership base and organizational structure, I am confident that this goal has a greater potential for realization. We are thrilled to welcome Janusz Bryzek and the TSensors community to MIG. Together we aim to realize the vision of trillions of sensors improving the quality of people’s lives.”
We talked about the MIG – TSensors news at greater length with Steve Whalley, MIG’s chief strategy officer, when Steve visited 3D InCites at the Impress Labs office in Phoenix on Friday, May 22 2015.
By way of background, Steve Whalley officially joined MIG as CSO in June 2014, a week following retirement from Intel, after having served as a MIG board member, complementing his role then at Intel as director, Sensors, where he led cross platform strategy creation and execution.
Steve’s history on the TSensors side starts in 2013, with the TSensors Summit event(s) that year (UC Berkeley in the Spring; Stanford in the Fall).
The TSensors vision, a vision of using sensors to create life-changing global advancements and improvements in such basic, and important areas as more efficient food production and distribution to alleviate hunger; better, quicker, and cheaper medical care to improve health outcomes; and better supplies of clean, reliable, water and energy to improve quality of lives, resonated with Steve: “There’s something about this I like.”
Basically, Steve caught the bug, as so many other enthusiasts have, regarding “Abundance.”
As Steve says, “Who doesn’t want to solve world hunger?”
Who wouldn’t want to address those critical quality of life issues, particularly when in a position to help do so, in this case by advancing the TSensors cause, as MIG is now doing, now with TSensors and with Janusz Bryzek on the team.
The strength of adding TSensors to MIG’s already rich MEMS-and-sensors portfolio, in Steve’s thinking, is the chance now for efficiently embracing opportunities common to both organizations, rather than having a world continue to exist in which (possibly) redundant MEMS and sensor silos are erected and defended by organizations whose energies are diluted battling for turf.
Along with Janusz Bryzek, there are some other noted MEMS and sensors enthusiasts and advocates helping MIG with TSensors, among them Steve Walsh (MANCEF, Univ. of New Mexico), Roger Grace (Roger Grace Associates), and Bette Cooper (MEPTEC).
The next TSensors Summit will be held in Celebration, Florida, December 9-10, 102015. While Florida may not often be thought of as a high tech state (beyond rocket launching, and Disney’s Tomorrowland that is), Steve said locating TSensors in Florida makes perfect sense, as two of the big applications in which a trillion sensors will be called to duty are agriculture and health care, and Florida looms large in both spaces.
It makes sense to have a trade association harness the complementary power of both MEMS and sensors, MIG having started with MEMS alone in 2001, and having added sensors to its mission not so long ago. Now, with the addition of TSensors, MIG has that complementary power, and it has an influence horizon extending from the 3 to 5 year time frame common now in commercial MEMS and sensors, through 10 to 15 years from now, when a trillion sensors will bloom in a world of Abundance. ~PFW
