Again another year (almost) has passed. I know it sounds a bit silly, but time is flying by, and I do have the impression that everything is moving faster than ever before.
2016 started with a great special issue of IEEE Transactions on Solid-State Imaging in January. I had the honour of being the guest-editor-at-large for this special issue. (What does the title of guest-editor-at-large mean ? A lot of work !). But I am a big fan of IEEE-ED and IEEE-JSSC, because these journals are great sources of information from and for our community. So I was really pleased with the invitation of IEEE to serve as the guest-editor-at-large and I am happy that I could cooperate with my soul-mates in imaging.
In 2015 Harvest Imaging came with a new product on the market : a reverse engineering report of a particular imaging feature present in a commercial camera. The first reverse engineering report was devoted to Phase Detection Auto-Focus Pixels. And in the meantime, in 2016 I started with a new project. Because the new project is still in the preparation phase, it is difficult to disclose the topic, but it will be based on tons and tons of measurements. Recently I bought an EMVA1288 test equipment and I do hope to get started with it sometime after New Year.
The Harvest Imaging Forum 2016 was targeting “Robustness of CMOS Technology and Circuitry”. I do have to admit that the interest in the 2016 Forum was less than in the 2015 Forum. Something I do not immediately understand, because the robustness of CMOS is a topic that should be of interest to our imaging community as well. The main objective of the Harvest Imaging Forum is to touch topics that are somewhat out of my own core expertise, but still important subjects for solid-state imaging. (For subjects that belong to my own expertise, I do not have to hire external instructors of course.) Nevertheless, Harvest Imaging will continue with the Forum, also in 2017. I do have a topic and a speaker in mind, but the speaker himself does not know yet. More info will follow in the Spring 2017 I guess.
Although (or maybe just because ?) we did not had a new IISW in 2016 (the next one will be in 2017), 2 new conferences were launched in Europe : the AutoSens and the MediSens. I attended both, also because both of them are organized by a good friend of mine, Robert Stead and his crew. I was happy to see that new applications were introduced by young engineers that are working in the solid-state imaging field. I am pretty sure that the next generation will be capable of continuing to grow the solid-state imaging business. Imaging was never ever that big and appealing as it is today, and I am pretty sure that in the future imaging can and will become only bigger.
Welcome 2017 ! Looking forward to another great imaging year, with the IISW in Japan !
Wishing all my readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. “See” you soon.
Albert, 23-12-2016.