Michael Helmbrecht is the executive director of the UC Berkeley Marvell Nanofabrication Laboratory at CITRIS. He received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering and computer science from UC Berkeley in 1994. Prior to starting graduate research, he worked for Daimler Benz Research and Technology as a guest researcher in Ottobrunn, Germany.
Helmbrecht returned to UC Berkeley to study microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), completing classes and research for M.S. (1999) and Ph.D. (2002) degrees from the electrical engineering and computer sciences department. As part of the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center (BSAC) and funded by the Center for Adaptive Optics at UC Santa Cruz, Helmbrecht developed MEMS-based deformable mirrors in the Berkeley Microlab to earn his doctorate. He continued MEMS deformable mirror development as a postdoctoral researcher.
After graduate school, Helmbrecht cofounded Iris AO in 2002 to commercialize his Ph.D. research. At Iris AO, he bootstrapped U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding, development contracts and product sales until 2018. Research and development for the MEMS mirrors was primarily done in the Berkeley Microlab and transitioned to the Marvell NanoLab when it opened in 2009.
From 2018–21 Helmbrecht was an associate at A.M. Fitzgerald & Associates, a MEMS product development company. There he broadened his expertise over a wide range of MEMS and microfabrication technologies. From 2021–24 Helmbrecht worked developing, testing and integrating MEMS scanning mirrors into automotive LiDAR systems while at AEye Inc.
In 2024, Helmbrecht returned to the Marvell NanoLab as the executive director. The NanoLab provides research capabilities to over 400 researchers per year, representing more than 70 academic principal investigators and more than 20 affiliate member companies, primarily Bay Area technical startups.