Pamela Caton (BA ’92) has always been a “maker.” As a young person, she took jewelry, machining, and programming classes. When her radio broke, her dad suggested, “Try to fix it. It’s already broken, so what’s the worst that can happen?” Working on hardware brings her joy, and she is especially drawn to multi-disciplinary projects.
Caton has primarily worked on micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS). MEMS engineers use the same tools that an electrical engineer would use to build silicon chips, but they build electronically-controlled mechanical structures with moving parts.
As an optical MEMS engineer at AEye, Caton is helping to develop a light detection and ranging (lidar) sensor for automotive and smart infrastructure applications. For example, self-driving car companies could use AEye’s sensors to detect and identify the features of an object on the freeway, allowing the car to understand if it needs to avoid the object—is it a brick or a plastic bag?
A lidar sensor measures the distance to a target by sending out a short laser pulse, reflecting it off an object, and recording the time between the outgoing and reflected light pulses. By doing an array of laser measurements, engineers create a big map of distance information. Caton works on developing and testing the MEMS mirrors used for laser scanning.
Caton credits some of her success in industry to her Berkeley Physics training. “I have a really solid understanding of the fundamentals. Physics is a fantastic basis for all types of engineering,” she says. Her favorite classes were the advanced physics labs. “Professor Sumner Davis was fantastic. And I loved Physics 111 because it was so hands-on. You couldn’t get through the lab without understanding the theory, but you got your hands dirty too.”
This is a reposting of my magazine alumni story, courtesy of UC Berkeley’s 2024 Berkeley Physics Magazine.
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