Shantanu Chakrabartty received the MSU Technologies 2012 Innovation of the year award for the invention of piezo-floating-gate self-powered sensors. He received the award at the MSU Innovation Celebration on April 11, in the MSU Union Ballroom.

http://www.technologies.msu.edu/awards

The award citation states: The self-powered sensors can be attached or embedded inside bridges, pavements, vehicles, rotating parts and biomedical implants where they can autonomously sense, compute and store cumulative statistics of strain-rates experienced by the structure, without the aid of batteries. What uniquely distinguishes the sensor from any competing technology are nano-watt non-volatile circuits that can be powered directly by a miniature piezoelectric transducer which also acts as a strain-sensor. The stored statistics can be remotely retrieved and used to predict the onset of mechanical failure, thereby alerting about potential problems, minimizing the risk of bodily harm, and significantly