JD Albert

Last updated

JD Albert (born April 18, 1975) is an American engineer, inventor, and educator. Albert is one of the inventors of microencapsulated electrophoretic display (known as E Ink) commonly used in electronic devices such as e-readers. [1]

Contents

In 2016 Albert became one of the youngest inventors ever inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. [2] Albert is named on over 100 US patents. [3] He teaches product development in the University of Pennsylvania's Integrated Product Design (IPD) program. [4]

Career

Along with Barrett Comiskey, he developed the E Ink display. The two invented E Ink while they were undergraduates at MIT. MIT Media Lab professor Joseph Jacobson recruited them to create a technology that mimicked pages in a book. [5] As Albert told Science Friday, [6] "It was ... experimental discovery. ... We had ideas, we were doing a lot of research, reading a lot of patents — many of which were expired patents — recreating experiments, and really, truly forging ahead to make this thing work. It involved a lot of prototypes, and it involved a huge amount of failed experiments." In 1997, after years of research and experimentation, Comiskey and fellow MIT undergraduate JD Albert realized a working prototype.

In 1997, Albert, Comiskey and Jacobson along with Russ Wilcox and Jerome Rubin founded E Ink Corporation. [7]

Albert contributed a chapter on design thinking for early-stage startups to the book Design Thinking: New Product Development Essentials from the PDMA. [8] He has also contributed articles about product development to Entrepreneur [9] and Wired. [10]

Albert is a member of Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honor society. [11]

Personal life and education

Albert has a Bachelor's of Science in Mechanical Engineering [12] from MIT and attended Lower Merion High School. He lives in Philadelphia.

Related Research Articles

Electronic paper Paper like display technology

Electronic paper, also sometimes electronic ink, e-ink or electrophoretic display, are display devices that mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper. Unlike conventional flat panel displays that emit light, an electronic paper display reflects ambient light like paper. This may make them more comfortable to read, and provide a wider viewing angle than most light-emitting displays. The contrast ratio in electronic displays available as of 2008 approaches newspaper, and newly (2008) developed displays are slightly better. An ideal e-paper display can be read in direct sunlight without the image appearing to fade.

Invention Novel device, material or technical process

An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition or process. The invention process is a process within an overall engineering and product development process. It may be an improvement upon a machine or product or a new process for creating an object or a result. An invention that achieves a completely unique function or result may be a radical breakthrough. Such works are novel and not obvious to others skilled in the same field. An inventor may be taking a big step toward success or failure.

Danny Hillis American computer scientist

William Daniel "Danny" Hillis is an American inventor, entrepreneur, and computer scientist, who pioneered parallel computers and their use in artificial intelligence. He founded Thinking Machines Corporation, a parallel supercomputer manufacturer, and subsequently was Vice President of Research and Disney Fellow at Walt Disney Imagineering.

Thomas W. Malone American business theorist

Thomas W. Malone is an American organizational theorist, management consultant, and the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

E Ink Electronic paper manufactured by E Ink Corporation

E Ink is a brand of electronic paper (e-paper) display technology commercialized by the E Ink Corporation, which was co-founded in 1997 by MIT undergraduates JD Albert and Barrett Comiskey, MIT Media Lab professor Joseph Jacobson, Jerome Rubin and Russ Wilcox.

Joseph Jacobson, is a tenured professor and head of the Molecular Machines group at the Center for Bits and Atoms at the MIT Media Lab, and is one of the inventors of microencapsulated electrophoretic display commonly used in electronic devices such as e-readers. He is the founder of several companies including E Ink Corporation, Gen9, Inc., and Kovio, is on the scientific board of several more companies.

Timeline of United States inventions (after 1991)

A timeline of United States inventions encompasses the ingenuity and innovative advancements of the United States within a historical context, dating from the Contemporary era to the present day, which have been achieved by inventors who are either native-born or naturalized citizens of the United States. Patent protection secures a person's right to his or her first-to-invent claim of the original invention in question, highlighted in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution which gives the following enumerated power to the United States Congress:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Flexible display

A flexible display or rollable display is an electronic visual display which is flexible in nature, as opposed to the traditional flat screen displays used in most electronic devices. In recent years there has been a growing interest from numerous consumer electronics manufacturers to apply this display technology in e-readers, mobile phones and other consumer electronics. Such screens can be rolled up like a scroll without the image or text being distorted. Technologies involved in building a rollable display include electronic ink, Gyricon, Organic LCD, and OLED.

Plastic Logic

Plastic Logic Germany develops and manufactures electrophoretic displays (EPD), based on organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) technology, in Dresden, Germany.

Clayton Jacobson II

Clayton Jacobson II is a Norwegian American inventor credited with inventing the jet ski.

Clocky Alarm clock that uses wheels to hide itself

Clocky is a brand of alarm clock outfitted with wheels, allowing it to hide itself in order to force the owner awake in an attempt to find it. Invented for an industrial design class by Gauri Nanda, then a graduate student at MIT Media Lab, Clocky won the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize in Economics. After earning her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and her master's degree from MIT, Nanda founded a company, Nanda Home, to commercialize Clocky and other home products.

The Lemelson Foundation is an American 501(c)(3) private foundation. It was started in 1993 by Jerome H. Lemelson and his wife Dorothy.

Timeline of United States inventions (1946–1991) Inventions by native-born or naturalized citizens of the U.S. dating from 1946-1991

A timeline of United States inventions (1946–1991) encompasses the ingenuity and innovative advancements of the United States within a historical context, dating from the era of the Cold War, which have been achieved by inventors who are either native-born or naturalized citizens of the United States. Copyright protection secures a person's right to his or her first-to-invent claim of the original invention in question, highlighted in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution which gives the following enumerated power to the United States Congress:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Squid Labs was an American independent research and development company founded by a group of four MIT graduates. In 2004, Colin Bulthaup, Dan Goldwater, Saul Griffith, and Eric Wilhelm moved from the East Coast to California to found the company known as Squid Labs. During its years of existence from 2004 to 2007, Squid Labs added three more members to its team: Geo Homsy, Corwin Hardham and Ryan McKinley. Working out of a warehouse in Emeryville, the group adopted the slogan "We're not a think tank, we're a do tank." and created a handful of patents and inventions including an electronically sensed rope, portable pull-cord generators, and a machine that could manufacture eyeglasses of any prescriptions at extremely low cost. Squid Labs was also the birthplace for many companies still running today, such as Makani Power and Howtoons. Although the company no longer exists, Squid Lab's co-founder, Saul Griffith created a similar company in San Francisco named Otherlab.

Cathode-ray tube amusement device Earliest known interactive electronic game

The cathode-ray tube amusement device is the earliest known interactive electronic game as well as the first game to incorporate an electronic display. The device simulates an artillery shell arcing towards targets on a cathode-ray tube (CRT) screen, which is controlled by the player by adjusting knobs to change the trajectory of a CRT beam spot on the display in order to reach plastic targets overlaid on the screen. Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann constructed the game from analog electronics and filed for a patent in 1947, which was issued the following year. The gaming device was never manufactured or marketed to the public, so it had no effect on the future video game industry. Under many definitions, the device is not considered a video game, as while it had an electronic display it did not run on a computing device. Therefore, despite its relevance to the early history of video games, it is not generally considered a candidate for the title of the first video game.

Barrett Comiskey is an American innovator. He is recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer and was the youngest inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, for inventing and co-founding E Ink while an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently the Founder of Migo.

Norm Cox (designer) American interaction designer

Norman Lloyd "Norm" Cox is an American interaction designer best known for inventing the hamburger icon.

Tactile (device)

Tactile is a real-time text-to-braille translation device currently under development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was conceived by a team of undergraduate students, competing as "Team 100% Enthusiasm", during a 15-hour MIT "hackathon". The device is slid over printed text and a camera captures images of the words and sends them to a microcontroller. The information moves the pins up and down, translating the text into Braille. Once on the market it is hoped to be much cheaper than existing devices.

Dhairya Dand is an Indian-born, American inventor and artist based in New York City.

Migo (company)

Migo is a technology company that "provides affordable data services for emerging markets". Its content delivery network distributes digital products and services to mass market consumers at the local corner store through Migo Download Stations (MDS).

References

  1. Comiskey, Barrett (18 May 1998). "An electrophoretic ink for all-printed reflective electronic displays". Nature. 394 (6690): 253–255. doi:10.1038/28349.
  2. "JD Albert in Inventors Hall of Fame | Bresslergroup News" . Retrieved 2016-09-01.
  3. "jdalbert.com". jdalbert.com. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  4. "JD Albert". ipd.me.upenn.edu.
  5. Primozic, Ursa. "Interview with Barrett Comiskey". visionect.com. Retrieved 11 March 2017.
  6. "How Electronic Ink Was Invented - Science Friday" . Retrieved 2016-09-01.
  7. Klein, Alec. "A New Printing Technology Sets Off a High-Stakes Race". wsj.com. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
  8. Luchs, Michael G.; Swan, Scott; Griffin, Abbie (2015-11-02). Design Thinking: New Product Development Essentials from the PDMA (1 ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN   9781118971802.
  9. Albert, JD. "JD Albert". Entrepreneur. Retrieved 2016-09-01.
  10. Bresslergroup, JD Albert. "Not Just for Coders: Hackathons for Hardware Innovation" . Retrieved 2016-09-01.
  11. "TBP Member Search".
  12. "LinkedIn".