Eric Fossum

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Eric R. Fossum (born October 17, 1957) is an Emmy award-winning American engineer who co-developed some of the active pixel image sensor with intra-pixel charge transfer, with the help of other scientists from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. [1] He is a professor at Thayer School of Engineering in Dartmouth College.

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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.[ citation needed ] 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, Fossum became an acting instructor at Yale University. [3] After graduating Yale, 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, 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.[ citation needed ]

In 2007m 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 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.

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 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.[ citation needed ] The invention of APS technology was done by the Japanese companies Olympus and Toshiba during the mid-to-late 1980s, noting the former developed the vertical APS structure with NMOS transistors and the latter developed the lateral APS structure with PMOS transistors. The JPL team was the first to fabricate a practical APS outside of Japan, while making several key improvements to APS technology. The JPL sensor used a lateral APS structure similar to the Toshiba sensor, but was fabricated with CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) transistors rather than PMOS transistors. [9] This made JPL's APS device the first CMOS sensor with intra-pixel charge transfer. [10]

In 1994, JPL image sensor team proposed an improvement to the CMOS sensor: the integration of the pinned photodiode (PPD). A CMOS sensor with PPD technology was first fabricated in 1995 by a joint JPL and Kodak team that included Fossum along with P.P.K. Lee, R.C. Gee, R.M. Guidash and T.H. Lee. Further refinements to the CMOS sensor with PPD technology between 1997 and 2003 led to CMOS sensors achieve imaging performance on par with CCD sensors, and later exceeding CCD sensors. [10]

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 Eastman Kodak, AT&T Bell Labs, National Semiconductor and others. Despite initial skepticism by entrenched CCD manufacturers, the CMOS image sensor technology is now used in almost all cell-phone cameras, many medical applications such as capsule endoscopy and dental x-ray systems, scientific imaging, automotive safety systems, DSLR digital cameras and many other applications. About 8 billion cameras are manufactured each year using CMOS technology. [11]

Entrepreneur

In 1995, frustrated by the slow pace of the technology's adoption, Fossum and then-wife 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 Fossum was named a Senior Micron Fellow and remained with Micron for about a year before his first retirement.[ citation needed ]

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.

In 2017, Fossum co-founded Gigajot Technology, Inc. with two former Dartmouth PhD students, Saleh Masoodian and Jiaju Ma, to commercialize the Quanta Image Sensor (QIS) technology developed in his lab at Dartmouth College. [16] [17] [18]

Achievements and awards

Fossum has published over 300 technical papers, and holds more than 180 U.S. patents. [19] He is a Fellow member of the IEEE and Optica.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charge-coupled device</span> Device for the movement of electrical charge

A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a major technology used in digital imaging.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Photodiode</span> Converts light into current

A photodiode is a semiconductor diode sensitive to photon radiation, such as visible light, infrared or ultraviolet radiation, X-rays and gamma rays. It produces an electrical current when it absorbs photons. This can be used for detection and measurement applications, or for the generation of electrical power in solar cells. Photodiodes are used in a wide range of applications throughout the electromagnetic spectrum from visible light photocells to gamma ray spectrometers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital camera</span> Camera that captures photographs or video in digital format

A digital camera, also called a digicam, is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film or film stock. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices like smartphones with the same or more capabilities and features of dedicated cameras. High-end, high-definition dedicated cameras are still commonly used by professionals and those who desire to take higher-quality photographs.

Digital image processing is the use of a digital computer to process digital images through an algorithm. As a subcategory or field of digital signal processing, digital image processing has many advantages over analog image processing. It allows a much wider range of algorithms to be applied to the input data and can avoid problems such as the build-up of noise and distortion during processing. Since images are defined over two dimensions digital image processing may be modeled in the form of multidimensional systems. The generation and development of digital image processing are mainly affected by three factors: first, the development of computers; second, the development of mathematics ; third, the demand for a wide range of applications in environment, agriculture, military, industry and medical science has increased.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sensor</span> Converter that measures a physical quantity and converts it into a signal

A sensor is a device that produces an output signal for the purpose of detecting a physical phenomenon.

LBCAST is a type of photo sensor which the manufacturer claims is simpler and thus smaller and faster than CMOS sensors. It was developed over ten years by Nikon, in parallel with other manufacturer's development of CMOS, and resulted in shipping product in 2003.

Digital imaging or digital image acquisition is the creation of a digital representation of the visual characteristics of an object, such as a physical scene or the interior structure of an object. The term is often assumed to imply or include the processing, compression, storage, printing and display of such images. A key advantage of a digital image, versus an analog image such as a film photograph, is the ability to digitally propagate copies of the original subject indefinitely without any loss of image quality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video camera</span> Camera used for electronic motion picture acquisition

A video camera is an optical instrument that captures videos, as opposed to a movie camera, which records images on film. Video cameras were initially developed for the television industry but have since become widely used for a variety of other purposes.

A digital image is an image composed of picture elements, also known as pixels, each with finite, discrete quantities of numeric representation for its intensity or gray level that is an output from its two-dimensional functions fed as input by its spatial coordinates denoted with x, y on the x-axis and y-axis, respectively. Depending on whether the image resolution is fixed, it may be of vector or raster type. By itself, the term "digital image" usually refers to raster images or bitmapped images.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Photodetector</span> Sensors of light or other electromagnetic energy

Photodetectors, also called photosensors, are sensors of light or other electromagnetic radiation. There are a wide variety of photodetectors which may be classified by mechanism of detection, such as photoelectric or photochemical effects, or by various performance metrics, such as spectral response. Semiconductor-based photodetectors typically use a p–n junction that converts photons into charge. The absorbed photons make electron–hole pairs in the depletion region. Photodiodes and photo transistors are a few examples of photo detectors. Solar cells convert some of the light energy absorbed into electrical energy.

In photography, shutter lag is the delay between triggering the shutter and when the photograph is actually recorded. This is a common problem in the photography of fast-moving objects or animals and people in motion. The term narrowly refers only to shutter effects, but more broadly refers to all lag between when the shutter button is pressed and when the photo is taken, including metering and focus lag.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Image sensor</span> Device that converts images into electronic signals

An image sensor or imager is a sensor that detects and conveys information used to form an image. It does so by converting the variable attenuation of light waves into signals, small bursts of current that convey the information. The waves can be light or other electromagnetic radiation. Image sensors are used in electronic imaging devices of both analog and digital types, which include digital cameras, camera modules, camera phones, optical mouse devices, medical imaging equipment, night vision equipment such as thermal imaging devices, radar, sonar, and others. As technology changes, electronic and digital imaging tends to replace chemical and analog imaging.

The J. J. Ebers Award was established in 1971 to foster progress in electron devices. It commemorates Jewell James Ebers, whose contributions, particularly to transistors, shaped the understanding and technology of electron devices. It is presented annually to one or more individuals who have made either a single or a series of contributions of recognized scientific, economic, or social significance in the broad field of electron devices. The recipient is awarded a certificate and check for $5,000, presented at the International Electron Devices Meeting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Active-pixel sensor</span> Image sensor, consisting of an integrated circuit

An active-pixel sensor (APS) is an image sensor, which was invented by Peter J.W. Noble in 1968, where each pixel sensor unit cell has a photodetector and one or more active transistors. In a metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) active-pixel sensor, MOS field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) are used as amplifiers. There are different types of APS, including the early NMOS APS and the now much more common complementary MOS (CMOS) APS, also known as the CMOS sensor. CMOS sensors are used in digital camera technologies such as cell phone cameras, web cameras, most modern digital pocket cameras, most digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLRs), mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras (MILCs), and lensless imaging for cells.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Color filter array</span>

In digital imaging, a color filter array (CFA), or color filter mosaic (CFM), is a mosaic of tiny color filters placed over the pixel sensors of an image sensor to capture color information.

Michael Tompsett is a British-born physicist, engineer, and inventor, and the founder director of the US software company TheraManager. He is a former researcher at the English Electric Valve Company, who later moved to Bell Labs in the United States. Tompsett invented CCD imagers and designed and built the first ever video camera with a solid-state (CCD) sensor. Tompsett received the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2017, with Eric Fossum, George Smith, and Nobukazu Teranishi. Tompsett has also received two other lifetime awards; the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame 2010 Pioneer Award, and the 2012 IEEE Edison Medal. The thermal-imaging camera tube developed from his invention also earned a Queen's Award in 1987.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Back-illuminated sensor</span> Type of digital image sensor

A back-illuminated sensor, also known as backside illumination (BI) sensor, is a type of digital image sensor that uses a novel arrangement of the imaging elements to increase the amount of light captured and thereby improve low-light performance.

Nobukazu Teranishi is a Japanese engineer who researches image sensors, and is known for inventing the pinned photodiode, an important component of modern digital cameras. He was one of four recipients of the 2017 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. His industrial career wasa at NEC Corporation (1978–2000) and Panasonic Corporation (2000–13). As of 2018, he is a professor at the University of Hyogo and at Shizuoka University.

sCMOS are a type of CMOS image sensor (CIS). These sensors are commonly used as components in specific observational scientific instruments, such as microscopes and telescopes. sCMOS image sensors offer extremely low noise, rapid frame rates, wide dynamic range, high quantum efficiency, high resolution, and a large field of view simultaneously in one image.

References

  1. ↑ B. Stern, Inventors at Work, Apress 2012.
  2. ↑ "Eric R. Fossum '79, H'14".
  3. ↑ "Eric R. Fossum" (PDF).
  4. ↑ "Trinity Fire Fighting Robot Contest -Event Sponsors". Archived from the original on 2014-01-30. Retrieved 2007-09-11.
  5. ↑ Fossum, E. R. (1 September 2013). "Modeling the Performance of Single-Bit and Multi-Bit Quanta Image Sensors". IEEE Journal of the Electron Devices Society. 1 (9): 166–174. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.646.5176 . doi:10.1109/JEDS.2013.2284054. S2CID   14510385.
  6. ↑ Engineering, Thayer School of. "PhD Innovation Program - Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth". engineering.dartmouth.edu.
  7. ↑ B. Stern, Inventors at Work, Apress 2012.
  8. ↑ e.g. US Patents 5,471,515 and 5,841,126
  9. ↑ Fossum, Eric R. (12 July 1993). Blouke, Morley M. (ed.). "Active pixel sensors: are CCDs dinosaurs?". SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1900: Charge-Coupled Devices and Solid State Optical Sensors III. Charge-Coupled Devices and Solid State Optical Sensors III. 1900. International Society for Optics and Photonics: 2–14. Bibcode:1993SPIE.1900....2F. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.408.6558 . doi:10.1117/12.148585. S2CID   10556755.
  10. 1 2 Fossum, Eric R.; Hondongwa, D. B. (2014). "A Review of the Pinned Photodiode for CCD and CMOS Image Sensors". IEEE Journal of the Electron Devices Society. 2 (3): 33–43. doi: 10.1109/JEDS.2014.2306412 .
  11. ↑ "Engineering alum Eric Fossum wins Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering". YaleNews. January 29, 2018. Retrieved January 29, 2018.
  12. ↑ "Photobit Corporation". www.twst.com.
  13. ↑ cite web|url=https://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2007/09/eric-fossum-left-siimpel.html
  14. ↑ cite web|url=https://www.socaltech.com/Siimpel_Acquired_By_Tessera/s-0028417.html
  15. ↑ "International Image Sensor Society". www.imagesensors.org.
  16. ↑ "United States SEC Database". www.secdatabase.com.
  17. ↑ "Berkshire Hathaway Press Release". www.businesswire.com.
  18. ↑ "Eric R. Fossum". Dartmouth Engineering. Retrieved 18 February 2024.
  19. ↑ USPTO Search 2020
  20. ↑ "PSA Progress Medal".
  21. ↑ "Royal Photographic Society". www.rps.org.
  22. ↑ "Inductee Detail - National Inventors Hall of Fame".
  23. ↑ "National Academy of Inventors". www.academyofinventors.org. Archived from the original on 2013-01-28. Retrieved 2014-08-08.
  24. ↑ "National Academy of Engineering Elects 69 Members And 11 Foreign Associates".
  25. ↑ Webmaster. "Six Honorary Degrees to be Awarded at Commencement". www.trincoll.edu.
  26. ↑ "2017 QEPrize Winners - Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering".
  27. ↑ "Edwin H. Land Medal". The Optical Society.
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