Dartmouth inventor of phone camera to be honored

Eric Fossum, a professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, is being recognized by the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his contributions that led to the development of digital imaging available on cell phones.Fossum, an engineering professor at Dartmouth, was part of a team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that created the CMOS active pixel sensor camera-on-a-chip. CMOS image sensors are now found in camera phones and other digital devices including digital SLR cameras, embedded Web-cams, automotive safety systems, swallowable pill cameras, toys and video games and wireless video-security networks.Worldwide annual revenue for the technology is estimated to reach $6 billion in 2011.Fossum doesn’t have just this one credit for inventions. To date, he has nearly 130 patents to his name as well as a number of other honors including the 2010 Inventor of the Year Award from the New York Intellectual Property Law Association, the 2009 IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award for outstanding contributions to solid-state devices and technology, and is also an inductee to the NASA/U.S. Department of Defense Space Technology Hall of Fame.He is also founder of several startup firms including co-founder and chairman of Photobit Corp., founder and general partner of Winnibit LP, and chairman and chief executive Siimpel Corp., among others. – CINDY KIBBE/NEW HAMPSHIRE BUSINESS REVIEW