Forrest Liau, MS

The MIT Technology Review article Computerized Combat Glove: A new glove lets soldiers operate wearable computers while still holding their weapons said

Some U.S. soldiers in Iraq are already equipped with wearable computer systems. But the lack of efficient input devices restricts their use to safer environments, such as the interior of a Humvee or a base station, where the soldier can set down his weapon and use the keyboard or mouse tethered to his body. Now RallyPoint, a startup based in Cambridge, MA, has developed a sensor-embedded glove that allows the soldier to easily view and navigate digital maps, activate radio communications, and send commands without having to take his hand off his weapon.
 
For soldiers carrying a plethora of equipment, finding and using electronic controls on their bodies can be awkward, says Forrest Liau, the president and cofounder of RallyPoint. “We wanted to make a device that would have all the necessary components in a combat-ready way,” he says. The Natick Soldier Systems Center in Natick, MA, has a contract with RallyPoint and is currently testing a prototype of the glove, called a Handwear Computer Input Device (HCID), for use with its electronic systems.

The TG Daily article MIT develops solar panels which track the sun without motors said

Students at MIT participating in the annual MADMEC (Making And Designing Materials Engineering Contest) have devised a zero-input energy solution which allows solar panel arrays to track the sun’s movement thereby increasing solar panel efficiency by 38% over stationary panels. The three-person team of Forrest Liau, Vyom Sharma, George Whitfield, all Materials Science graduate students, won top honors and a $10,000 prize for their invention.
 
Borrowing from the very technology used to track the sun by plants coupled to the relatively primitive approach used in coil-based temperature gauges, the device is basically a temperature sensor that responds mechanically to changes in heat. Constructed from bimetal aluminum and steel, two materials which expand at different rates when exposed to identical changes in temperature, the device is built into a type of arch affixed permanently at one side and attached to a pivot arm on the other. As the sun moves it heats up different portions along the arch causing it to flex and bend to varying extents allowing the solar panel to track with the sun’s movement, as per the expansion of the arch.

Forrest Liau, MS is a Ph.D. student in Materials Science & Engineering at MIT and President of RallyPoint, Inc., a start-up company developing wearable electronic interfaces for soldiers, fire fighters, and law enforcement officers.
 
While a sophomore at MIT, he founded RallyPoint and produced a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase I proposal that won the company $70,000 from the U.S. Army. As Principal Investigator for the project and author for its Phase I Option and Phase II proposals, Forrest acquired $780,000 in further contract funds in the following years and helped the company pass intensive audits by the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA).
 
Furthermore, as a researcher in the MIT Biomolecular Materials Laboratory headed by Professor Angela Belcher, he is creating the world’s first virus-assembled solar cell. Forrest has mentored a number of groups and individuals in the MIT community, and aspires to work with an entrepreneurial team to transform industries through innovative services, technologies, and business processes.
 
Forrest authored Virus-enabled synthesis of titanium oxide nanowires and coauthored Nanobiotechnology Patents as well as Stamped microbattery electrodes based on self-assembled M13 viruses.
 
The R&D article Microbattery makes its own anode — from viruses said

Forget 9-volts, AAs, AAAs or D batteries: The energy for tomorrow’s miniature electronic devices could come from tiny microbatteries about half the size of a human cell and built with viruses.
 
MIT engineers have developed a way to at once create and install such microbatteries — which could one day power a range of miniature devices, from labs-on-a-chip to implantable medical sensors?y stamping them onto a variety of surfaces.
 
“To our knowledge, this is the first instance in which microcontact printing has been used to fabricate and position microbattery electrodes and the first use of virus-based assembly in such a process,” wrote MIT professors Paula T. Hammond, Angela M. Belcher, Yet-Ming Chiang and colleagues.
 
Additional coauthors of the PNAS paper are first author Ki Tae Nam, Ryan Wartena, Pil J. Yoo (now at Sungkyunkwan Univ., Korea), Forrest W. Liau, and Yun Jung Lee.

Read Student Entrepreneur/Inventor Wins Contract with U.S. Government.