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About

David A. Muller is a pioneering researcher at the forefront of microscale robotics, nanofabrication, and programmable materials. His work centers on developing ingenious methods to design, fabricate, and control miniaturized machines by applying cutting-edge techniques drawn from origami, kirigami, and atomic layer deposition. Muller's landmark 2015 paper on graphene kirigami, now boasting 877 citations, demonstrated how strategic cutting and shaping of atomically thin materials could yield extraordinary mechanical flexibility and functionality. Building on this foundation, he advanced origami-inspired graphene bimorphs for autonomous micron-scale machines (176 citations) and spearheaded the mass-manufacture of electronically integrated microscopic robots (344 citations), a breakthrough that made scalable microrobotics a practical reality. His subsequent development of shape-memory actuators for low-power microrobotics (126 citations) and robotic pixel assembly of van der Waals solids (140 citations) further underscores his ability to bridge materials science, electronics, and mechanical engineering at the nanoscale. Most recently, his configurable microscopic metasheet robots signal an exciting new frontier in reconfigurable matter. Collectively, Muller's contributions have fundamentally reshaped how researchers conceive of building, programming, and deploying machines at microscopic scales.