KEYNOTE: Quanta Image Sensors: Every Photon Counts, Even in a Smartphone

The Quanta Image Sensor (QIS) was conceived as a different image sensor, one that counts photoelectrons one-at-a-time using millions or billions of specialized pixels read out at a high frame rate. QIS devices have been implemented in a CMOS image sensor (CIS) baseline technology and with SPAD arrays. Eric Fossum talks about the QIS concept, and how it has been implemented in CIS and in SPADs and what the major differences are between culminating results. Applications that can be disrupted or enabled by this technology are also shared. CIS-QIS technology could even be coming to smartphones in just a few years.

About the presenter
Eric R. Fossum, Ph.D., is best known for the invention of the CMOS image sensor “camera-on-a-chip” used in billions of cameras. He is a solid-state image sensor device physicist and engineer, and his career has included academic and government research and entrepreneurial leadership. At Dartmouth College, he is a Professor of Engineering and Vice Provost for Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer.

In 2017, 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 was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering among other honors—including a recent Emmy Award. He has published over 300 technical papers and holds over 175 U.S. patents. He co-founded several startups and served as CEO. He also co-founded the International Image Sensor Society (IISS) and was its first president. He is a fellow member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and Optica, formerly the Optical Society of America (OSA).