CMOS biosensors; adaptive integrated circuits (ICs) and IC sensors; hybrid microsystems incorporating CMOS, MEMS, optoelectronics, microfluidics, and biological components; low power mixed-signal ICs for a variety of applications, including cell-based sensing, high performance imaging, miniature robotics, spike sorting, adaptive data conversion, and closed loop control of MEMS and microfluidic systems

Pamela Abshire is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her areas of specialty are in the fields of VLSI circuit design and bioengineering.  Dr. Abshire's research focuses on better understanding the tradeoffs between performance and resources in natural and engineered systems.

Prior to her arrival at the University of Maryland in November, 2001, she was a graduate student in the Sensory Communications and Microsystems Lab in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The Johns Hopkins University.  Her advisor was Andreas G. Andreou, and her dissertation topic was Sensory Information Processing Under Physical Constraints.  Her research interests include information theory for physical systems, noise theory for electronic, photonic, and biological systems, analysis and design of sensory information processing systems, and algorithm, VLSI circuit, and microsystem design, especially for low power applications. Dr. Abshire was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and grew up in the Roanoke Valley in southwestern Virginia.  She graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1988 from Salem High School in Salem, VA. From 1985 to 1988 she also attended the Roanoke Valley Governor's School for Science and Technology in Roanoke, VA.