An analysis is performed of a MEMS optical switch to determine a dynamical model containing electrical, mechanical, and optical components. The model is compared to experimental results and shows a good match, aside from the damping term which is difficult to analyze. Improved parameters are determined by system identification from the actual experimental data. The improved model is used to design a controller that has two parts, a feedforward part and a feedback part. The feedforward portion, not normalized in MEMS control, is shown to be instrumental in obtaining fast optical switching with minimal overshoot.