The Department of Mechanical Engineering organized a two-day workshop on "Emerging Trends in Microactuation Technologies" on July 23 and 24, 2010. The aim of this workshop was to deliberate upon the different emerging microactuator technologies and their possible applications in the manufacturing, measurement and micro devices, to benefit the faculty members from the academic community and professionals from the industry.

Experts from premier institutes and R & D organizations delivered presentations and shared their expertise on different topics related to Microactuator Technologies. The topics discussed were:

1. An overview of microactuators and their applications
2. Application of microactuators in micromachining
3. Modeling of Piezoelectric actuators
4. Microactuation in MEMS devices
5. Piezoelectric actuators for flow control in servo valves
6. Magnetostrictive microactuators for flow control in servo valves
7. Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) actuators and their applications
8. Modeling and analysis of SMA actuators