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Biography
Dr. Eric R. Fossum is the inventor of
the modern CMOS active pixel image sensor used in camera phones, web cameras,
DSLRs, high speed motion capture cameras, automotive cameras, dental x-ray
cameras and swallowable pill cameras. Dr. Fossum’s career has encompassed the
fields of education, government and entrepreneurial business.
Born and raised in
In
In 1990, Dr. Fossum joined the NASA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and managed JPL’s
image sensor and focal-plane technology research and advanced development. He
served concurrently as Asst. Section Manager for both the visible and infrared
imaging Sections, each with about 100 engineers. While at JPL, he invented the
In 1995 he co-founded Photobit
Corporation to commercialize the technology and joined as Chief Scientist in
1996. He became CEO of Photobit
Technology Corporation in 2000. In late
2001, with over 100 employees and revenue exceeding $20M per year, Photobit was
acquired by Micron Technology Inc. and Dr. Fossum was named a Senior Micron
Fellow. He left Micron in 2003 and spent two years semi-retired as a consultant
and expert witness. In early 2005, he
accepted an assignment to lead Siimpel Corporation as Chairman and CEO, a venture-backed start up
developing MEMS-based camera modules with autofocus and shutter functions for
cell phones. During this period he transformed the company from a 20-person
R&D organization to 100+ person product-focused company, raising over $25M
in venture funding and creating strategic ties to tier1 handset makers and
their manufacturing partners. He returned
to a semi-retirement in 2007 and is presently a consultant with the Samsung
Electronics Semiconductor R&D Center, South Korea, where he leads a team of
researchers in advanced image sensors.
Dr. Fossum has published 242 technical
papers, holds 119 U.S. patents, and is a Fellow member of the IEEE. He has been
primary thesis adviser to 13 graduated Ph.D.s. He received Yale’s Becton Prize
in 1984, the
He founded the biannual IEEE Workshops
on CCDs and Advanced Image Sensors (now the International Image Sensor
Workshop) and the SPIE Conferences on Infrared Readout Electronics. He has
served on program committees for the IEDM, ISSCC, and SPIE conferences. He has
served as associate editor for IEEE Trans. on VLSI, guest editor for IEEE JSSC,
and was Guest Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Trans. on Electron Devices Special
Issues on Solid-State Image Sensors published in October 1997, January 2003 and
the forthcoming 2009 Special Issue. He
formed and serves as President of ImageSensors Inc., a non-profit
public-benefit corporation for image sensor specialists around the world and
which operates the International Image Sensor Workshop (IISW).
He is married to Susan Briggs Fossum,
a public school science teacher, and has three daughters, and two stepchildren.
With residences in
Contact: Eric at this web address