Maureen L. Mulvihill
Maureen L. Mulvihill, Ph.D., is President and CEO of Piezo Resonance Innovations, Inc. (PRII). In December 2006, she founded PRII with 3 partners to integrate smart motion components into innovative medical devices. She has been working in the field of piezoelectric materials since 1989 and received her Ph.D. in Materials from the Pennsylvania State University in 1996. Dr. Mulvihill currently holds an Adjunct Associate Professor position at Penn State University’s Materials Research Institute and is also serving as the Vice Chairman of TechQuestPA Advisory Board.
Prior to PRII, she spent 2.5 years as Director of Research and Development at Micromechatronics, Inc., where she gained extensive experience in the day-to-day management of a small business. From 1998 to 2004, she was the program manager and principal investigator on over 16 Phase I, II and III SBIRs at Xinetics Inc. an adaptive optics company in Massachusetts. During her tenure at Xinetics, her team developed a cryogenic deformable mirror using piezoelectric actuators for NASA programs such as James Webb Space Telescope and Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF). In October 2002, Dr. Mulvihill received a NASA Technology Innovation Recognition award for “Low Temperature Deformable Mirror Technology” (MFS-31634-1). Her excellent managerial skills meeting deliverables, schedule and budget on this program was commended by the JPL acquisition staff representative. In 1997-98 she was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow working at the Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung Stuttgart, Germany. In 1991, she was a visiting scientist at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. She has experience in fields such as broad temperature range actuator and transducer device development, ferroelectric single crystal growth and device design, cryogenic electrostrictive composition development, cut and bond actuator assembly, cofired actuator fabrication, cryogenic device testing, Zygo optical measurement, planarization coatings, microelectronic substrates materials, photolithography, automated electron back scattered diffraction, transmission and scanning electron microscopy, materials characterization and testing procedure documentation, government grant writing and small business management. She is a U.S. Citizen.