Archive for December, 2014

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Friday, December 19th, 2014

Good Bye 2014 ! 

Another year has almost passed.  Time is running fast, extremely fast.  Time again to make a quick look backwards to see what 2014 brought. 

It was a busy year for Harvest Imaging.  Several courses were organized, in-house as well as public courses.  Thanks to CEI, FSRM and Framos who organize the public or open courses.  Thanks to all my customers for the in-house courses.   The in-house trainings brought me again all over the world.  Several courses are scheduled again in 2015.  The open courses are listed on the website of Harvest Imaging.  Besides the trainings, also consulting went pretty well in 2014.  I could keep myself more than busy. 

In 2013 Harvest Imaging started with a forum, being a kind of 2-day class in a field of solid-state imaging, but outside my own expertise.  The first forum was very successful so that it was decided to run another one in 2014.  That just happened last week and earlier this week.  Many positive reactions were received, so the forum will continue in 2015.

It is quite funny to meet people all over the place telling me that they follow my blog.  I am very pleased with these reactions, and sometimes I am really surprised to see how many people visit the website every day.  Thanks very much for your visits and for your feedback.  It is very much appreciated.  Unfortunately there is something that I am missing to put more material on the blog, and that is time.  About two years ago, at the moment that I posted a blog, I had already 3 of 4 extra blogs ready to be published on a later stage.  But at this moment, the pace of blogging is equal to the pace of writing down the material.  In 2014 several blogs were spent on the MTF or Modulation Transfer Function.  I think I never received that many reactions as this time with the MTF.  Apparently it is a subject that “lives” in the community.  A few more blogs about the MTF will follow and then it is over. 

2015 will be a year to have the International Image Sensor Workshop again in Europe.  Being the General (Co-)Chair of the workshop, preparations have already started a while ago  Together with Johannes Solhuvik and Pierre Magnan, we try to make sure that IISW2015 will be another workshop to remember.  Of course much is depending on the quality of the submissions, but Johannes, Pierre and myself will make sure that the setting to present your work will be the most optimum we can obtain.  Besides being the co-chair for the workshop I accepted another task, being the Guest-Editor for the upcoming special Image Sensor issue of IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices.  For both “events”, workshop and special issue, the call for papers is already published.

Recently I was lucky to receive the SEMI Award, but another award, even the real Emmy Award was received for the broadcast camera that was developed around one of the CCDs developed at the time I headed the CCD group at Philips.  That is really a great recognition for the CCD team working at that time on the DPM-CCD.  The concept of a switchable pixel was developed in a close cooperation between the camera developers and the sensor designers, leading to a very nice commercial success.  Congratulations to all people who contributed to this success.

In other words, also 2015 will be busy again.  Nevertheless : Welcome 2015 !  Wishing all my readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

Albert, 19-12-2014.