Fabrication specialist Daniel Woodie named director of Princeton’s Micro/Nanofabrication Center

Written by
Wright B. Señeres
Jan. 31, 2024

Daniel Woodie has joined the Princeton Materials Institute as director of the Micro/Nanofabrication Center, a clean room facility that encompasses a suite of tools and processes for assembling devices and structures for electronic, photonic, Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) and biological applications.

Woodie brings decades of experience to the role. He spent nearly 24 years at Cornell University, where he was a manager of the Cornell NanoScale Facility and then the safety manager and facilities manager for the College of Engineering and Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.

In that time, he led operations and research-tool development for a facility that serves more than 500 users per year. In his most recent position, he oversaw safety, regulatory compliance, emergency planning and technical systems in 15 buildings, including six major building renovations and an additional 26 lab renovations for new faculty. His role was to liaison between the architectural and engineering design teams, contractors, and the faculty for both design and construction, focusing on safety of the new facility and ensuring the labs met the technical needs of the faculty and research equipment. Woodie brings special expertise in supporting research in the life sciences, micromechanical systems, photonics and advanced materials.

During his time at Cornell, he spent many hours leading outreach activities. In 2006, he spearheaded Cornell hosting a FIRST LEGO League Explore Expo event for teams of students ages 6 to 10 to use the fundamentals of engineering to explore real-world problems and create solutions using LEGO bricks. Since then he led 15 Expos, with 290 teams of more than 1,600 students participating.

Prior to his work at Cornell, Woodie was a semiconductor process engineer at Lockheed Martin from 1995 to 2000. He has a B.S. in chemical engineering from Virginia Tech and an M.S. in chemical engineering from Cornell.