We seek to harness interfacial phenomena to achieve external, reversible, and local control of wetting and adhesion properties at the nanoscale. In a break from the traditional focus on the drawbacks posed by interfacial forces, such as unwanted adhesion in MEMS, we work on exploiting interfacial phenomena to provide a powerful means of controlling a new generation of devices. The large surface to volume ratios provided when devices are shrunk to the nanoscale create particularly exciting opportunities for exerting control via tunable surface interactions. To achieve this goal, an important focus of our group is on the application and development of experimental methods designed to probe the properties of interfaces and confined fluids. An important technique we employ is the Surface Forces Apparatus (SFA) which allows us to measure forces with a resolution in surface separation (2-3 Å).