Eric R. Fossum

Dr. Eric R. Fossum is a solid-state image sensor device physicist and engineer. After working at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech, he co-founded several startups and served as CEO. He is currently the Krehbiel Professor for Emerging Technologies at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth. He has published over 300 technical papers and holds over 170 US patents. He is an Optica and IEEE Fellow, NAE member, NIHF inductee and Queen Elizabeth Prize Laureate. Additionally, Fossum is the recipient of the 2020 Edwin H. Land Medal.

Fossum invented the CMOS active pixel image sensor with intra-pixel charge transfer while at JPL, the basis for all modern CMOS image sensors. He further developed and commercialized the technology with colleagues at their startup Photobit. He later invented the photon-counting Quanta Image Sensor. At Dartmouth he developed the QIS technology with his students and co-founded Gigajot. He works with students and faculty to foster innovation and entrepreneurial thinking at Dartmouth and with the NIHF Camp Invention program.