John Mavor

Last updated

John Mavor was a pioneer in the design of MOS transistors and Charge-Coupled Devices (CCDs) for signal processing. During his career as an educator and researcher at the University of Edinburgh he was appointed Professor before becoming Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering. He was subsequently appointed as Principal and Vice-Chancellor at Edinburgh Napier University.

Contents

Education

Born in Ayrshire, Scotland, John Mavor was educated in London. He gained a BSc (Hons) from City University and PhD and DSc (Eng) degrees also from London and, later, Honorary DSc (Eng) awards from both City and Greenwich Universities.[ citation needed ]

Career

Following his PhD in Metal-Oxide Silicon (MOS) transistors, [1] in 1968 he joined Texas Instruments before moving to the Glenrothes subsidiary of Hughes Aircraft Company, a key centre for microelectronics in Silicon Glen. [2]

He was appointed lecturer at The University of Edinburgh by Ewart Farvis in 1971 where he held two consecutive chairs: the Lothian Chair of Microelectronics (1980–85); and the Chair of Electrical Engineering (1986-1994). He became Dean of Science and Engineering in 1989 after being Head of Electrical Engineering from 1984. Although a prominent academic, he consulted with many companies including Plessey, ICI, Thorn-EMI and General Instruments.

Mavor’s most active research was in MOS transistors and Charge-Coupled Devices (CCDs) for signal processing, in conjunction with a number of research students, notably: Don MacLennan, Neil Weste, Peter Denyer, Colin Cowan, Colin Carruthers and Neil Petrie. Together with John Arthur from Wolfson Microelectronics they designed analogue miniature monolithic correlators with up to 256-point capability. [3] These were later extended into CCD adaptive filters. [4] [5] [6] He also researched on the companion switched capacitor techniques. [7] He held several contracts with the MOD at RSRE Malvern (radar) and AUWE Portland (sonar). In 1980 he initiated collaborative research with Philips Components Ltd. (Mullard), Southampton, on MOS/CCD signal processing for infrared sensors. These focal plane arrays exceeded 64x64 pixels and were employed in commercial and military systems. His research cooperation led to the International Charge-Coupled Devices Conference Series, co-organised by Isaac Lagnado of NOSC, San Diego and Dennis D. Buss of Texas Instruments.

From 1994-2002 Mavor was appointed Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Edinburgh Napier University. [8] Here he formed ‘research pillars’ to strengthen interdisciplinarity, e.g. the Transport Research Institute, coordinating activity in this area across the university. He developed each of the campuses: at Craighouse with a new teaching building; at Craiglockhart with a new Business School lecture theatre; and at Merchiston a 500-seat student computing facility. In 1995 the Scottish Office decided to place the Health Board Colleges into the higher education sector with Mavor securing the largest Napier contract to create a new Faculty, and form the biggest health studies unit in Scotland. Mavor was Principal in 2000 when the university was accused, by student leaders, of allowing the institution to slide into crisis. [9]

After Mavor retired he pursued a post-graduate degree at The University of Edinburgh in Social & Economic History. This resulted in an MPhil on Walter Montgomerie Neilson, who was a Victorian businessman and, arguably, the father of steam locomotive production in Glasgow who founded the North British Locomotive Company Ltd.

Recognition

He achieved several distinctions: Fellow of the IEEE; Chartered Engineer and Chartered Physicist; Fellow of both the Institution of Electrical Engineers and the Institute of Physics. In 1989 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh [10] becoming Vice-President for Physical Sciences, and in 1994 a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

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">Integrated circuit</span> Electronic circuit formed on a small, flat piece of semiconductor material

An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip, computer chip, or simply chip, is a small electronic device made up of multiple interconnected electronic components such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors. These components are etched onto a small piece of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Integrated circuits are used in a wide range of electronic devices, including computers, smartphones, and televisions, to perform various functions such as processing and storing information. They have greatly impacted the field of electronics by enabling device miniaturization and enhanced functionality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CMOS</span> Technology for constructing integrated circuits

Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFETs for logic functions. CMOS technology is used for constructing integrated circuit (IC) chips, including microprocessors, microcontrollers, memory chips, and other digital logic circuits. CMOS technology is also used for analog circuits such as image sensors, data converters, RF circuits, and highly integrated transceivers for many types of communication.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carver Mead</span> American scientist and engineer

Carver Andress Mead is an American scientist and engineer. He currently holds the position of Gordon and Betty Moore Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), having taught there for over 40 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mixed-signal integrated circuit</span> Integrated circuit

A mixed-signal integrated circuit is any integrated circuit that has both analog circuits and digital circuits on a single semiconductor die. Their usage has grown dramatically with the increased use of cell phones, telecommunications, portable electronics, and automobiles with electronics and digital sensors.

<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.

<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.

Ghavam G. Shahidi is an Iranian-American electrical engineer and IBM Fellow. He is the director of Silicon Technology at the IBM Thomas J Watson Research Center. He is best known for his pioneering work in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology since the late 1980s.

Four-phase logic is a type of, and design methodology for dynamic logic. It enabled non-specialist engineers to design quite complex ICs, using either PMOS or NMOS processes. It uses a kind of 4-phase clock signal.

A transistor is a semiconductor device with at least three terminals for connection to an electric circuit. In the common case, the third terminal controls the flow of current between the other two terminals. This can be used for amplification, as in the case of a radio receiver, or for rapid switching, as in the case of digital circuits. The transistor replaced the vacuum-tube triode, also called a (thermionic) valve, which was much larger in size and used significantly more power to operate. The first transistor was successfully demonstrated on December 23, 1947, at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Bell Labs was the research arm of American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T). The three individuals credited with the invention of the transistor were William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The introduction of the transistor is often considered one of the most important inventions in history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Asad Abidi</span> Pakistani-American electrical engineer

Asad Ali Abidi is a Pakistani-American electrical engineer. He serves as a tenured professor at University of California, Los Angeles, and is the inaugural holder of the Abdus Salam Chair at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He is best known for pioneering RF CMOS technology during the late 1980s to early 1990s. As of 2008, the radio transceivers in all wireless networking devices and modern mobile phones are mass-produced as RF CMOS devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian A. Young</span> American electrical engineer

Ian A. Young is an Intel engineer. Young is a co-author of 50 research papers, and has 71 patents in switched capacitor circuits, DRAM, SRAM, BiCMOS, x86 clocking, Photonics and spintronics.

Kenneth L Shepard is an American electrical engineer, nanoscientist, entrepreneur, and the Lau Family Professor of Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science (Columbia). Shepard was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffrey H. Collins</span> British electrical engineer

Jeff Collins was a British electrical engineer who directed and researched experimental physics, robotics, microelectronics, communications technologies and parallel computing.

Suhash Chandra Dutta Roy is an Indian electrical engineer and a former professor and head of the department of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He is known for his studies on analog and digital signal processing and is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies viz. Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences, India as well as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers, Systems Society of India and Acoustical Society of India, The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Engineering Sciences in 1981.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RF CMOS</span> Integrated circuit technology that integrates radio-frequency, analog and digital electronics

RF CMOS is a metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit (IC) technology that integrates radio-frequency (RF), analog and digital electronics on a mixed-signal CMOS RF circuit chip. It is widely used in modern wireless telecommunications, such as cellular networks, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS receivers, broadcasting, vehicular communication systems, and the radio transceivers in all modern mobile phones and wireless networking devices. RF CMOS technology was pioneered by Pakistani engineer Asad Ali Abidi at UCLA during the late 1980s to early 1990s, and helped bring about the wireless revolution with the introduction of digital signal processing in wireless communications. The development and design of RF CMOS devices was enabled by van der Ziel's FET RF noise model, which was published in the early 1960s and remained largely forgotten until the 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter L. P. Dillon</span> American physicist

Peter L. P. Dillon is an American physicist, and the inventor of integral color image sensors and single-chip color video cameras. The curator of the Technology Collection at the George Eastman Museum, Todd Gustavson, has stated that "the color sensor technology developed by Peter Dillon has revolutionized all forms of color photography. These color sensors are now ubiquitous in products such as smart phone cameras, digital cameras and camcorders, digital cinema cameras, medical cameras, automobile cameras, and drones". Dillon joined Kodak Research Labs in 1959 and retired from Kodak in 1991. He lives in Pittsford, New York.

References

  1. ↑ Carruthers, C.; Mavor, J. (1 June 1992). "Noise characteristics of n-channel deep-depletion mode MOS transistors". IEE Proceedings G - Circuits, Devices and Systems. 139 (3): 377. doi:10.1049/ip-g-2.1992.0061. ISSN   2053-9061.
  2. ↑ Collins, J. H. (1986). "'Silicon Glen'—myth or reality?". IEE Proceedings F - Communications, Radar and Signal Processing. 133: 2. doi:10.1049/ip-f-1.1986.0002.
  3. ↑ Denyer, P.B. (1979). "Miniature programmable transversal filter using CCD/MOS technology". Proceedings of the IEEE. 67: 42–50. doi:10.1109/PROC.1979.11201. S2CID   41718045.
  4. ↑ Cowan, CFN (1981). "CCD based adaptive filters - realization and analysis". IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. 29 (2): 220–229. Bibcode:1981ITASS..29..220C. doi:10.1109/TASSP.1981.1163538.
  5. ↑ Cowan, CFN (1981). "New digital adaptive-filter implementation using distributed-arithmetic techniques". IEE Proceedings F - Communications, Radar and Signal Processing. 128 (4): 225–230. doi:10.1049/ip-f-1.1981.0040.
  6. ↑ Denyer, P.B. (1983). "A monolithic adaptive filter". Journal of Solid State Circuits. 18 (3): 291–296. Bibcode:1983IJSSC..18..291D. doi:10.1109/JSSC.1983.1051942. S2CID   35213702.
  7. ↑ Mavor, J (1981). "A prototype switched-capacitor voltage-wave filter realized in NMOS technology". IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits. 16 (6): 716–723. Bibcode:1981IJSSC..16..716M. doi:10.1109/JSSC.1981.1051667. S2CID   25870472.
  8. ↑ "Professor crosses the city for Napier". 4 February 1994.
  9. ↑ "BBC News - SCOTLAND - Student anger at university standards".
  10. ↑ "Professor John Mavor FREng FRSE - The Royal Society of Edinburgh". 17 July 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.