Website of

Eric R. Fossum

Eric R. Fossum is best known for the invention of the CMOS image sensor “camera-on-a-chip” used in billions of cameras, from smart phones to web cameras to pill cameras and many other applications. He is a solid-state image sensor device physicist and engineer, and his career has included academic and government research, and entrepreneurial leadership. He is the John H. Krehbiel Sr. Professor for Emerging Technologies at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he teaches, performs research on image sensors, and directs the School’s Ph.D. Innovation Program. He also serves as Dartmouth’s Vice Provost for Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer.

Born and raised in Connecticut, he attended public school in Simsbury and spent Saturdays at the Talcott Mountain Science Center in Avon. He received his B.S. in Physics and Engineering from Trinity College in Hartford and the Ph.D. in Engineering and Applied Science from Yale University in New Haven. He was a member of Columbia University’s Electrical Engineering faculty and then joined the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology where he managed JPL’s image sensor and focal-plane technology research and advanced development. While at JPL, he invented the CMOS camera-on-a-chip technology and led its development and subsequent transfer of the technology to US industry. Its initial purpose was to miniaturize and improve cameras on NASA interplanetary spacecraft. This invention combined the low noise of the charge-coupled device (CCD) with the low power and small form-factor of CMOS integration by using intra-pixel charge transfer and an active pixel architecture, making cameras 100x smaller in size and needing far less energy to operate. Nearly all of the approx. seven (7) billion or more CMOS cameras made each year use the intra-pixel charge transfer invention.

Dr. Fossum co-founded Photobit Corporation to commercialize the technology and served in several top management roles including Chairman and CEO. Photobit was acquired by Micron Technology Inc. He served as Chairman and CEO of Siimpel Corporation developing MEMS-based camera modules with autofocus and shutter functions for cell phones. He was then a consultant with Samsung Electronics working on 3D image sensors and strategic issues for several years before joining Dartmouth. He co-founded Gigajot Technology Inc. with his former Dartmouth PhD students to commercialize the photon-counting Quanta Image Sensor (QIS) technology and served as Chairman.

Dr. Fossum received the Queen Elizabeth Prize from HRH Prince Charles, considered by many as the Nobel Prize of Engineering “for the creation of digital imaging sensors,” along with three others. He received the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation in a White House ceremony “for inventing world-changing "camera-on-chip" technology that has turned billions of phones into cameras and transformed everyday life…and then worked to use it in medicine, business, security, entertainment, and more.” In 2026 he will receive the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Charles Stark Draper Prize “for innovation, development, and commercialization of the complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) active pixel image sensor ‘camera-on-a-chip” and the IEEE Jun-Ichi Nishizawa Medal “for the invention, development, and commercialization of the CMOS image sensor”. Other honors include the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Technical Emmy® Award, the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, and the OSA and IS&T Edwin H. Land Medal, among others. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and elected to the NAE. An early Photobit sensor and camera were on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s Inventing in America exhibit and at the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum at USPTO, and Photobit’s PB-100 “camera-on-a-chip” is in the IEEE Spectrum Chip Hall of Fame.

Dr. Fossum has published over 340 technical papers and holds 185 US patents. He co-founded the International Image Sensor Society (IISS), was its first President and Chaired the IISS Board of Directors. He is a Life Fellow member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), a Fellow member of Optica (OSA), and a member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

He volunteers for the IISS Governance Advisory Committee, the NIHF Selection Committee and Selection Board, and the NAE Council

(Board). He has served on the Board of Trustees of Trinity College, the Board of Directors of the National Academy of Inventors, and the Board of Trustees for the Talcott Mountain Science Center, as an AAAS-Lemelson Invention Ambassador, on the Leadership Council of the Yale University School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Peer Selection Committee and Committee on Membership for the NAE, and the Fellow Selection Committee of the NAI. He also actively supports Camp Invention and the Collegiate Inventors Competition, two programs operated by NIHF. For relaxation, he and his wife enjoy their hobby farm in New Hampshire.

Site Links

Curriculum Vitae / Resume ♦ Publications ♦ Patents ♦ NIHF Video

Media Interviews ♦ Some Presentations ♦ Some Articles of Interest

External Links

Profile at Dartmouth ♦ Profile at Google Scholar

Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth

IISS ♦ NAI ♦ NAE ♦ NIHF ♦ Trinity ♦ Yale

Updated 17-January-2026