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The micromachining community, or more correctly, the Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) community is those of us who use fabrication methods similar to integrated circuit manufacturing to product systems which combine computation, sensing and actuation. These systems are produced on the same scale-order as IC's, allowing the miniaturization of mechanical, optical, fluid, electrical, etc. systems.

Examples of these that have been written in the popular press recently, include Analog Device's ADXL-50 airbag accelerometer, Texas Instruments Deformable Display Device. Micromachining or MEMS has been a skyrocketing technology area in the past few years, with it's roots back to the 60's and the advent of "micromachining" of silicon.

Anyway, where MUMPs comes in, is that in 1992 I started a program, with support from ARPA (or rather DARPA, now) to make advanaced MEMS technology available to all domestic participants at a very low cost, and low effort. That is the origina of the Multi-User MEMS Processes (MUMPs).

We had actually run into your MUMPS community a while back, but as you pointed out, we realized that we don't run in the same space and figured it would not be an issue. Wouldn't have been without the web search engines!

We looked at trademarking our use of MUMPs (note the little s), and did go as far as checking for active registration of that name. We were not able to find any, so I think it has lapsed. We decided that we really didn't need the trademark and left it at that.

As I mentioned in my original note, we are known world-wide in the microfabrication community, even though we only allow (for now) US/Canadian participation. (That is DOD's doing.) We will be opening up our access to Europe and the rest of the world in the next 2 years.

So, I hope that better explains who/what our MUMPs is.

Sincerely yours,

Karen W. Markus
Director, MEMS Technology Applications Center