Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

At the end of the 2011 I would like to take the opportunity to wish all my blog readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  You are with a lot of people who are visiting my web-site every day.  In 2011, there was a new record established : 785 unique visitors on one single day.  Thanks for stopping by !!!

Looking back to 2011, it was a great year for Harvest Imaging.  The teaching activities continued at full speed, and especially the new course “Hands-on Evaluation of Image Sensors and Cameras” was quite successful.  For 2012, we planned a new location for the course, being Amsterdam.  For me, this will limit the issues with the transport of the equipment.  In 2012, also the very first in-house training of this course will take place.  Of course, all the other courses remain on the calendar and they will be organized at the well-known locations. 

About my consulting activities, I cannot elaborate on these because with several customers I do have NDAs in place that do not allow me to give you details about the projects.  But in summary I can tell that also the consulting assignments kept me more than busy.

2011 was also a great year for conferences and workshops in Imaging.  Personally I could attend the Electronic Imaging in San Francisco, the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, Image Sensors Europe, the International Image Sensor Workshop, Swiss Imaging, and recently the International Electron Devices Meeting.  Unfortunately during the ISSCC I became sick and I had to miss most of the imaging forum on 3D Imaging.  In this way I could optimally enjoy my too-expensive-hotel room because I had to stay in bed for a couple of days.  Highlight of the conferences was the IISW in Hokkaido, Japan.  Despite of the very difficult situation in Japan early 2011, the workshop was very well organized.  Our Japanese colleagues had to set up a plan B to move the workshop from Japan to another Asian country due to the problems after the earthquake and the tsunami.  They did a great job in very difficult circumstances, so that ultimately the workshop could take place as was originally scheduled.  The workshop organization put together a very strong program, based on high-level abstracts submitted by the speakers.  The workshop is and remains the top-event for technical people active in solid-state image capturing.  I heard from several participants attending the workshop for the first time, that they never ever attended a workshop or conference with/in such a great atmosphere as the one in Hokkaido.  Most participants come from competing companies in the imaging market, but at the workshop they are all friends, enjoy technical presentations and discussions, have a chat and a drink together, even sing together in the karaoke bar. 

More or less by coincidence I recently could attend the IEDM in Washington.  My previous visit to IEDM in Washington was 6 years ago.  At that time I presented my work on the cosmic ray damage.  One of the reasons to attend this year’s IEDM was my nomination for the IEEE Education Award. 

2011 was a bit of a sad year for my activities at the Delft University of Technology.  Unfortunately one of my former co-workers passed away at a way-too-young-age.  I mentioned this in one of the previous blogs that Hiroaki Fujita, who worked for me during one year in Delft, died recently.  On the other hand, 3 out of my 5 PhD students finished their projects.  So at this moment, the population of my group in Delft is a bit thin.  Initiatives to raise funds for new programs have been taken, but it is not that easy anymore to get money for PhD projects.

What is happening to me more and more : I do meet much more people than ever before that seem to know me, but that I apparently do not know of.  I do see/meet more and more people through my courses and at conferences, but unfortunately I cannot store all the faces, names and affiliations on my “hard disk”.  So please forgive me if I meet some of you and if I do not immediately recognize your face.  I guess that I saw about 3000 people in my courses over the last 10 years, so it is impossible to know them all.  Sorry for that.

I wish all of you the very best for 2012, and hope that we will regularly “meet” through this blog.  Thanks for visiting the website of Harvest Imaging, hopefully see you next year 😉

Albert, 22-12-2010.

 

2 Responses to “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year”

  1. Bernhard says:

    Dear Albert

    I would like to send you all my best wishes for Christmas and thank you for your great work in writing the blog. Remembering the great co-operation in Delft during my Post-Doc time in 2009 and 2010, I hope very much that you will be successfull in rasing some money for the nice student programmes you have set up so far. Hope to see you again soon!

    Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

    Bernhard

  2. Takayuki Fujita says:

    Dear Albert-san,

    My name is Takayuki Fujita who is a big brother to Hiroaki (Hiro) Fujita. Thank you for warm words to him above. I am proud of Hiro again to know that the person who uses the other language wrote about him. But we, his family ,called him “Aki” or “Chiro” in Japan.

    Kind regards,
    Takayuki Fujita

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