If Michael Biehler’s research is successful, he will help enable soft robotics that can self-assemble inside the human body, as well as dynamic, protective packaging for everything from food to military Humvees. His machine learning work could enhance 3D printing control systems and improve manufacturing quality.
But Biehler hopes the biggest outcome of his career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be the students who emerge from his classroom and research lab with the inspiration and skills to take on difficult, consequential problems.
“You can change the trajectory of those students, not just in an incremental way, but really change their lives and their kids’ lives,” says Biehler, who will join the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering as an assistant professor in January 2025. “We want to build leaders for society who will do good things, solve some of the biggest challenges. If we educate Wisconsin engineers, once they go out into the world, we want them to be able to make the world a better place than they found it.”
Biehler grew up on a small farm in rural Bavaria in southern Germany, but the notion of the Wisconsin Idea resonated with him when he attended the 2024 edition of WiscProf, the College of Engineering’s workshop for young scholars exploring academic careers. Biehler is the first faculty hire to come through the WiscProf pipeline.
“I made some great connections with people in the program,” he says. “I really enjoyed the experience, and I liked the mission of a land-grant university. How can we make real-world impact to improve the quality of life for people in the state, the country and the world overall? Those are kind of my missions, and I thought that matched really well with the university.”
Biehler comes to UW-Madison after earning his PhD from Georgia Tech. It’ll be his latest stop on a globe-trotting educational adventure that’s included a stint in Texas as a high school exchange student and study abroad experiences in California (where he met his wife), Australia, and Georgia.
“Where I’m from, there are literally six houses,” says Biehler, who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. “I always liked exploring new things.”
Biehler is also breaking new ground through his work on 4D printing, an outgrowth of 3D printing that uses smart materials—be they polymers or alloys—that can respond to their environment or external signals.
“The idea is that you can activate it with different stimuli after the printing. Usually you just print something, you get a static structure, that’s it. But with 4D, you can get some dynamic shape changes,” he says. “You can think about biomedical devices. If you’re trying to get something inside of a body, it would be nice if it could be small and then you could unfold it.”
Biehler combines his experimental work with a computational focus that involves applying machine learning techniques to 3D printing data to enable real-time control mechanisms and printing quality improvement. Several biomedical and robotics companies have already implemented his techniques in their additive manufacturing operations.
He plans to build similar industry connections in Wisconsin.
“How do we make our manufacturing systems more sustainable, more efficient, but also have new capabilities?” he says. “But I think that also needs to include how do we solve some big social challenges? Wisconsin has a big manufacturing workforce, and it used to be bigger. How can we make sure the state and the country are successful? So I think there’s an important workforce element as well.”