Professor Maria Santore was recently awarded ~$ 1M by the National Science Foundation to lead a 3-year program focusing on communication between bacteria and electronic devices based on tactile two-way interactions. Along with Sloan Siegrist (Microbiology) and Mark Tuominen (Physics), the team will study how miniscule deformations and electronic signals at the cell wall produce cell- and community-level responses, how material surfaces and bacteria can be engineered to amplify the interactions, and how processes at the bacterial cell wall can be modulated and “felt” by devices. As part of the NSF Convergence effort, this program aims to nucleate a new scientific field at the interdisciplinary crossroads of materials engineering, microbiology, and nanoelectronic device interfaces, targeting the biofilm-device interface as a technologically useful construct for diverse applications.