Marcus Gingerich, Ph.D.

Background

A career at the nanoscale

Gingerich Consulting is the independent practice of Marcus Gingerich, Ph.D. — a micro/nanofabrication engineer with more than 25 years of hands-on experience, over 20 of them working at the CNF. The premise is simple: the most complex fabrication challenges are best solved by someone who has spent a career solving them in the cleanroom.

Marcus earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Michigan, developing multi-dimensional CMOS microelectrode arrays for neural stimulation and recording. Over the following two decades he led the microfabrication of multiple generations of chronically-implantable, flexible, polymer-based microelectrode arrays for retinal prostheses and deep-brain stimulation — work involving multi-layer metallization, SiC encapsulation, and the process integration required to move devices toward clinical use, including documentation for FDA approval.

Fluent in both engineering and the life sciences, Marcus can translate a concept from a client's field into something fabricable — from MEMS sensors and semiconductor devices to microfluidic platforms and biomedical microsystems. He is equally comfortable developing a single process step or integrating an entire flow, and a particular strength is anticipating where a process will run into trouble before it does.

Marcus works with startups, established companies, and academic research groups who need fabrication expertise they can trust — whether that means a single phone call to sanity-check a process flow, or a sustained engagement spanning months or even years to take a device from concept to prototype.