Eric Fossum
Eric R. Fossum (born October 17, 1957) is an Emmy award-winning American engineer and professor, who co-developed some of the active pixel image sensor with intra-pixel charge transfer, with the help of other scientists from the
Early years and education
Fossum was born at Hartford Hospital and raised in Simsbury, Connecticut and attended public school there. He graduated from Simsbury High School. He also spent Saturdays at the Talcott Mountain Science Center in Avon, CT, which he credits for his lifelong interest in science, engineering, and mentoring students. He received his B.S. in engineering from Trinity College in 1979, and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Yale University in 1984. In 2014, he received an honorary doctor of science degree from his undergraduate school, Trinity College.[2]
Academic career
During the 4th year of his PhD, Eric R. Fossum became an acting instructor at Yale University.[3] After graduating Yale, the now Dr. Fossum became a member of the Electrical Engineering faculty at Columbia University from 1984 to 1990. At Columbia University, he and his students performed research on CCD focal-plane image processing and high speed III-V CCDs. In 1990, Dr. Fossum left his university professorship and joined the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology to manage JPL's image sensor and focal-plane technology research and advanced development.
In 2007 he co-sponsored the Trinity College Fire-Fighting Robot Contest,[4] aimed at increasing innovation and invention in the world of robotics.
He joined the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth in 2010, where he currently teaches, performs research on the Quanta Image Sensor[5] with his graduate students, and coordinates the Ph.D. Innovation Program.[6] He also serves as Vice Provost for Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer.
Since 1987, Eric has supervised 23 doctoral dissertations throughout his faculty positions at Columbia and Dartmouth.[3]
Invention
While Fossum was at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), then-NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin invoked a plan of "Faster, Better, Cheaper" for NASA Space Science missions. One of the instrument goals was to miniaturize charge-coupled device (CCD) camera systems onboard interplanetary spacecraft. In response, throughout the early 1990s, the JPL team including Fossum, Sunetra Mendis and Sabrina E Kemeny, made some changes to the already invented CMOS active-pixel sensor (APS). They implemented Dr. Nobukazu Teranishi's pinned photo diode invention in on chip as camera-on-a-chip technology. They also included other invented technologies by other people, such as a sample and hold in the sensor chip. [7][8]
Based on these changes and additions, the JPL team made their first image sensor. The same year, he co-authored an extensive paper broadly defining the active-pixel sensor (APS) and giving a historical overview of the technology.[
In 1994, JPL image sensor team proposed an improvement to the CMOS sensor: the integration of the
As part of Goldin's directive to transfer space technology to the public sector whenever possible, JPL led the CMOS APS development and subsequent transfer of the technology to US industry, including
Entrepreneur
In 1995, frustrated by the slow pace of the technology's adoption, Fossum and then-wife Dr. Sabrina Kemeny co-founded Photobit Corporation with 3 other co-founders to commercialize the technology.[12] Fossum left JPL to join Photobit full-time in 1996.
In late 2001, Micron Technology Inc. acquired Photobit Corp. and Dr. Fossum was named a Senior Micron Fellow and remained with Micron for about a year before his first retirement.
In 2005, he joined SiWave Inc., a developer of MEMS technology for mobile phone handsets, as CEO. SiWave was renamed Siimpel and grew substantially before his departure in 2007. Fossum claimed to have raised over $25M in financing during his tenure as CEO, adding to Siimple's total $65M in funding over its lifetime.[13] But ultimately, a severely damaged Siimpel was acquired three years later by Tessera for only $15M.[14]
In 1986, he co-founded the IEEE Workshop on CCDs, now known as the International Image Sensor Workshop (IISW). In 2007, with Nobukazu Teranishi and Albert Theuwissen, he co-founded and was the first President of the International Image Sensor Society (IISS)[15] which operates the IISW. Dr. Fossum currently sits on the Governance Advisory Committee at IISS.
His most recent entrepreneurial pursuit was in 2017 when Fossum co-founded Gigajot Technology, Inc. with two former Dartmouth PhD students, Dr. Saleh Masoodian and Dr. Jiaju Ma, to commercialize the Quanta Image Sensor (QIS) technology developed in his lab at Dartmouth College.[16] [17] [18]
Achievements and awards
Eric R. Fossum has published over 300 technical papers,[19] and holds more than 180 U.S. patents.[20] He is a Fellow member of the IEEE. He has been primary thesis adviser to a number of graduated Ph.D.s.
He has received several prizes and honors including:
- Yale's Becton Prize in 1984.
- IBM Faculty Development Award in 1984.
- National Science Foundation Lew Allen Award for Excellencein 1992.
- NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal in 1996.
- Induction into the US Space Foundation Space Technology Hall of Famein 1999.
- Progress Medal in 2003.[21]
- Royal Photographic Society Progress Medal in 2004.[22]
- IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award in 2009.
- Inventor of the Year by the New York Intellectual Property Law Association in 2010.
- Induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2011.[23]
- Elected as a Charter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2012.[24]
- Elected as a Member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2013.[25]
- Received the Doctor of Science honoris causa from Trinity College (Connecticut) in 2014.[26]
- Received 2017 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering[27] (shared with 3 people)
- OSA/IS&T Edwin H. Land Medal in 2020.[28]
- Technology and Engineering Emmy Awardin 2020
References
- ^ B. Stern, Inventors at Work, Apress 2012.
- ^ "Eric R. Fossum '79, H'14".
- ^ a b "Eric R. Fossum" (PDF).
- ^ "Trinity Fire Fighting Robot Contest -Event Sponsors". Archived from the original on 2014-01-30. Retrieved 2007-09-11.
- S2CID 14510385.
- ^ Engineering, Thayer School of. "PhD Innovation Program - Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth". engineering.dartmouth.edu.
- ^ B. Stern, Inventors at Work, Apress 2012.
- ^ e.g. US Patents 5,471,515 and 5,841,126
- S2CID 10556755.
- ^ .
- ^ "Engineering alum Eric Fossum wins Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering". YaleNews. January 29, 2018. Retrieved January 29, 2018.
- ^ "Photobit Corporation". www.twst.com.
- ^ cite web|url=https://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2007/09/eric-fossum-left-siimpel.html
- ^ cite web|url=https://www.socaltech.com/Siimpel_Acquired_By_Tessera/s-0028417.html
- ^ "International Image Sensor Society". www.imagesensors.org.
- ^ "United States SEC Database". www.secdatabase.com.
- ^ "Berkshire Hathaway Press Release". www.businesswire.com.
- ^ "Eric R. Fossum". Dartmouth Engineering. Retrieved 18 February 2024.
- ^ See Google Scholar
- ^ USPTO Search 2020
- ^ "PSA Progress Medal".
- ^ "Royal Photographic Society". www.rps.org.
- ^ "Inductee Detail - National Inventors Hall of Fame".
- ^ "National Academy of Inventors". www.academyofinventors.org. Archived from the original on 2013-01-28. Retrieved 2014-08-08.
- ^ "National Academy of Engineering Elects 69 Members And 11 Foreign Associates".
- ^ Webmaster. "Six Honorary Degrees to be Awarded at Commencement". www.trincoll.edu.
- ^ "2017 QEPrize Winners - Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering".
- ^ "Edwin H. Land Medal". The Optical Society.