Olivia J. McMahon
Mark G. Allen has been named Chair of the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering.
Allen is the Alfred Fitler Moore Professor in Electrical and Systems Engineering with secondary appointments in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He comes to this position after serving more than 10 years as the inaugural Scientific Director of the Singh Center for Nanotechnology. Under his leadership, the Singh Center joined the NSF-Funded National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure, a collection of sixteen nanotechnology facilities across the nation dedicated to research and workforce development in nanotechnology. During this time, the Singh Center established a research base supporting advanced materials, life sciences and bioengineering, optics and photonics, and microelectromechanical systems (including sensors for the Internet of Things). Approximately 500 unique researchers (both inside and outside of Penn) utilize the Singh Center facilities every year, including researchers from six of Penn’s twelve schools. Further, the Singh Center provided support for fabrication of prototypes by multiple startup companies in the Philadelphia area and beyond.
Allen is also the Director of the MicroSensors and MicroActuators Group at Penn and his research specializes in microfabrication, nanotechnology and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), with emphasis on new approaches to fabricate devices with characteristic lengths in the micro- to nanoscale from both silicon and non-silicon materials. He has published approximately 450 journal articles and conference proceedings, and holds nearly 60 patents.
Allen served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering (a publication of the Institute of Physics) from 2009-2013, and is currently a member of the editorial board of Microsystems and Nanoengineering (Nature Publishing Group). He is a Fellow of the IEEE, and recipient of the 2016 IEEE Daniel P. Noble award in emerging technologies for his work in MEMS. In 2017 he was elected to the National Academy of Inventors. In 2023 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.