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CMOS image sensor

Eric Fossum : The Inventor of Active Pixel Sensor

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Due to the high demand for mobile phones and digital camera, the production and development of image sensors have become an integral part of existing technology. And, among all the image sensors developed till date, active-pixel sensor (APS) is the widely used one, especially CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) APS. These image sensors are extensively used in smartphone cameras, digital pocket cameras, digital single-lens reflex cameras, and probably, in every other present-day camera you can name.

The history of these image sensors goes back to 1985 when Tsutomu Nakamura started working on the charge modulation device active pixel sensor. But it was Eric Fossum, who brought a giant wave of development in this field. So, next time you take out that pocket camera to take photographs, it’s Fossum you should be thankful for.

Early Life and Education of Eric Fossum

Born into a family in Simsbury, Connecticut, Fossum went to a local public school. From a very tender age, he developed an interest in science and engineering. So he spent the Saturdays at Talcott Mountain Science Center in Avon CT. In 1979, he graduated from Trinity College with a B.S in physics and engineering, followed by receiving his PhD in electrical engineering, in 1984 from Yale University.

Fossum’s Academic Career, Research and Invention

eric fossum
Image Source: yale.edu

After receiving his PhD, Fossum joined Columbia University as a professor in 1984. During his time at the university, he, along with his students, researched on CCD (charge-coupled device) focal-plane image processing and high-speed III-C CCDs. In 1990, Fossum joined the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California Institute of Technology and continued his research on the image sensor field. There he developed a modified version of the image sensor with intra-pixel charge transfer and un-pixel amplifier with more modifications and additional features. While he was working in the laboratory, Daniel Goldin, the then NASA-Administrator, wanted something faster, better and cheaper for the space missions. This led Eric Fossum to come up with CMOS APS, which today is incorporated in phone cameras, DSLRs, medical equipment, and automotive safety systems, etc.

According to Fossum, the growth in technology during the early 1990s was at a very slow rate, which led him to establish Photo bit Corporation along with his then-wife, Sabrina Kemeny, to develop and commercialize APS technology at a faster rate. In 1996, he joined the board as chairman and also as the chief scientist. In 2000, Fossum became the CEO of the company, which after a year came under the acquisition of Micron Technology. Even after the acquisition, he remained the part of the company and was named a Senior Micron Fellow. But in 2003, Fossum left Micron. In 2005, he joined at SiWave Inc. as the CEO and worked with the company for two years.

Eric Fossum, in 1986, founded the IEEE workshop on CCDS, which was later renamed as International Image Sensor Workshop.

He also had a sheer interest in robotics, and hence, he partially sponsored the Trinity College Fire-Fighting Robot Contest in 2007. In 2010, Fossum joined the Thayer School of Engineering to teach and conduct research on Quanta Image Sensor and also to coordinate the PhD Innovation Program.

Achievements

Throughout Fossum’s academic career, he had been a recipient of ample of awards. His was in 1984, which was the Yale’s Becton Prize. In the same year, he was honoured with the IBM Faculty Development Award. He also received the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1986, and within the next decade, he bagged NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal. And, this is just a mere preview of his glorious achievements.

Recently, in 2017, Fossum was honoured with Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, which is probably the biggest prize for an engineer. It’s a cash prize of £1 million, generally given to the engineers for inventing something which is globally beneficial.

Life after Retirement

Fossum founded Photobit in 1996 followed by another company Siimple within few years. But, he stepped down from every position, and finally, retired from his business life in 2010. He then moved to New Hampshire.

He was quite happy with his decision to leave his entrepreneurial life because he decided to embrace the retired life and pursue teaching. And thus, he joined Thayer School of Engineering to stay active in the journey of innovation and contribute to the technology as far as he can.

Baidu

Robin Li : The Founder of Baidu, the “Google of China”

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The emergence of the Internet opened new ways for everyone, especially for them who were innovative and wanted to create something big. It also helped those who had no resources as a child, but later, reached the heights of success. The rags to riches stories are interesting and inspire people to fight with their situations and face the struggle. One such person who presents the most appropriate rags to riches story is Robin Li, an internet entrepreneur from China, who once faced the worst financial conditions and now is one of the richest men in China. He is the founder of the multinational company Baidu, which is the owner of China’s biggest search engine, with the same name.

Early Life

Robin Li was born on 17 November 1968 in Yangquan, Shanxi, China in a labour family. He was a single boy among the five children of his parents. The Shanxi province was an underdeveloped area, and there were no good resources of education. But still, Li tried his best and on the advice of his mother, worked hard to get a better education. Ultimately, he was able to crack the entrance exam for Peking University, Beijing, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in library information management.

After completing his bachelor’s degree, the next step was to get a job. He worked in a company in Beijing for one and a half year, but fortunately got admission to a Fellowship program at the State University of New York. He moved to New York and completed a master’s degree in science from the university in 1994. He was enrolled in the PhD program in computer science but did not complete his doctorate.

Career

Robin Li
Image Source: buffalo.edu

As soon Robin Li completed his master’s he joined Dow Jones and Company’s IDD Information Services as a software engineer. At IDD, he became the part of the development team, which was working on software program for the online edition of The Wall Street Journal. Here he also got the chance to work on the search engine algorithms as well.

While working at IDD, he started working on page-ranking algorithms, and ultimately developed Rankdex, the first web search engine with page-ranking and site-scoring algorithms that means, it used hyperlinks to check the quality of a website. Rankdex later became the inspiration for Google’s PageRank algorithm.

After Li successfully developed Rankdex and got the U.S. patent for its ranking algorithm, he left his job at IDD, in 1997. He then, joined Infoseek, another internet company that was working on search engine algorithms. During his time at Infoseek, he developed a new function for Go.com, through which it could do image-based searches. Here he worked for two years and left the job in 1999.

Founding Baidu

Robin Li moved back to China, to work on his own product and in 2000, he developed Baidu with the help of his friend Eric Xu. The two used the same algorithm as of Rankdex to develop Baidu. Li did not have a permanent apartment in China at that time and did all the coding work and the launch of Baidu from a hotel room near Peking University. Li became the Chairman of the company and Xu was appointed as the CEO.

In 2001, Baidu offered people to bid for putting ads on the search engine. This led to the monetization as well as the growth of the company. Baidu was an instant hit, and Li was named among the “Chinese Top Ten Innovative Pioneers” in the same year. In 2003, the company introduced image-based searches as well as a news search engine.

In 2004, Xu resigned from his post as CEO, and Li held the position. The next year, Li took Baidu to NASDAQ, and the value of its every share raised by 350 per cent, i.e., from $27 to $122. In December 2007, Baidu was listed in the NASDAQ-100, becoming the first Chinese company to do so. In the same year, Li was named in CNN Money’s annual list of “50 people who matter now”.

By 2010, Baidu was the most used search engine in China, and it also got the title of “Google of China”. The company has partnered with big names like Qualcomm, Continental and Bosch. It has also started working in the field of AI. The company has also launched a self-driving vehicle platform under its Apollo project (Apolong).

Along with hosting the biggest search engine in China, Baidu offers over fifty internet-related services as well as artificial intelligence-based products to its users.

Baidu is one innovative product that helped Li to fight with his circumstances. Today, Li is one of the richest men in China and ranks at number eight with $16.5 billion’s net worth. He has been awarded great accolades, including “15 Asian Scientists To Watch” by Asian Scientist Magazine in 2011, “Most Influential Business Leader in China” by Fortune, and “World’s Best Business Leader” by the American Business Weekly in 2006.

nio

William Li : The Founder of Chinese Tesla, Nio

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Everyone is aware of the potential of electric motor vehicles, as these can help the world save on fuel as well as money. Tesla has been the biggest inspiration for every other automobile company, and most of them have already built their electric cars, and are steadily moving towards manufacturing autonomous vehicles. One such company is Nio, founded by a celebrity entrepreneur William Li, that is working on something inspired by the same concept of Tesla electric cars, but a bit on the cheaper end.

William Li was born on born 9 August 1974 in Anhui, Eastern China. Li’s family did not have a very good financial condition, so they started saving for his college since he was seven. He had to work part-time while he was still in school to support his family. He attended a local school and later, joined the Peking University in Beijing to pursue a graduate degree in sociology. He also opted for a minor in law.

Despite the humble beginnings, Li managed to start a business at the age of 21 in 1996. The business was an internet-based startup, and the boom in the industry helped him grow as a successful entrepreneur.

William Li Founder Nio
bloomberg.com

In 2000, he started his second company, which later become his first biggest business. The company name was Bitauto, and it was an automobile Internet content and marketing services provider. Bitauto later became public and traded on the American Stock Exchange Copyright in 2010. It saw huge success and valued at $1 billion. It helped Li to gain enough experience as a businessman and established him as one of the most influential entrepreneurs in China. He served as the CEO and chairman of the company for thirteen years and finally sold Bitauto in 2013.

A fine entrepreneur is never out of ideas and cannot stay idle. Only in a year after he sold his second company, he came up with a new luxury electric car manufacturer startup, Nio, in 2014. Since he had always been into the automobile and stuff related to it, he was inspired to start his own automobile business.

But to start a huge vehicle manufacturing business, one needs a lot of money. For that, he started looking for investments. Li has got great convincing skills, which can be estimated from how he changed the mind of Xiaomi from starting its own electric car manufacturing brand to investing money into another such startup.

Li had always been inspired by the founder of Xiaomi, and how its business model worked. He even implemented some of the strategies from the business model of Xiaomi into his own startup. In a year of struggle, Li was able to bag investments from the major tech companies, including Tencent, Temasek, Baidu, Lenovo and TPG.

NIO EP9 is the first sports car model that the company produced and was launched on the same day as the company. In 2016, the company raised over a billion-dollar from its investors. To expand its specializations, the company received the “Autonomous Vehicle Testing Permit” from the California DMV, in October 2016. Since then, the company has been working on the level-three and level-four autonomy to build its own autonomous vehicles. By the end of the year, the company launched a new two-door coupé, named NIO EP9. Li being an experienced businessman is not afraid of taking risks, but he believes in steady growth. That is why Nio is still producing limited-edition vehicles. Though the company has now made some plans on mass production of its vehicles.

In four years of Nio, it produced over 14,000 units of electric vehicles, and by the end of 2019, the company expects to make the number 20,000 units. Till the year 2019, the company also raised over $2.5 billion through four rounds of investments. In September 2018, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange and raised a US$1.8 billion.

Nio participated in the Formula E in the 2014–2015 season and also the other race championships. It also won the 2015 Long Beach ePrix and the 2015 Moscow ePrix. NIO has even set five records in their track-only EP9 for the fastest lap for an electric-powered car.

Along with his three startups, Li has also made some good investments. In fact, he has invested in 32 companies from the transportation sector. Li was famous before he started Nio, but the success of Nio has made him known globally. He, in fact, is often termed as the “godfather of the transport sector” in China and sometimes the “Elon Musk” of China.

shazam app

Chris Barton : The Founder of Shazam, A Product of Pure Innovation

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The past few decades have been the luckiest for new ideas and startups. There have been many such cases, where the budding entrepreneurs have got overnight success. But this ain’t true for all of them out there. As, for some of the ideas, it took a lot of persistence and patience of the founders, to become a successful one. One of such ideas is Shazam, a music identifying service, that took a decade to be under the limelight and get the success that it deserved. It was the endurance and willingness for the successe of the founder of Shazam, Chris Barton, that brought the service at the place, where it is today.

Early Life

Chris Barton’s parents were the biggest influence on him. His father was a nuclear physics professor, and his mother worked as a computer science professor. His mother introduced him with computers when she brought a Sinclair computer to their home. Chris loved working on the computer and taught himself the basics of programming. He loved experimenting with things, from where BSMSarton also grew an interest in inventions and creating new things.

After completing his school education, Chris went to the University of California, Berkeley, where he first opted for a double major in computer science. But eventually, he went to graduate in business studies, economics being the major subject of his course.

Chris Barton
Image Source: haas.berkeley.edu

Chris met Philip Inghelbrecht, the future co-founder of Shazam, at the university, where both were in the same class and later became project-teammate. On the other hand, he was already friends with Dhiraj Mukherjee, the other co-founder of the company, when he lived in San Francisco.

Beginning of Entrepreneurship

It was just in 1998 when Chris got his first mobile phone. The time was about the internet and the new mobile devices coming into the market. Though most of the people were looking forward to developing internet-related things, Chris was brainstorming about what he can build based on the tiny handset, that people carried with them 24/7.

When Chris Barton was interning at Microsoft’s internet search portal group MSN, in London, he again met with Mukherjee there, who was working on establishing the first international office of his startup company, Viant, in London. Chris introduced Mukherjee with Inghelbrecht, and all three coincided on a similar topic, starting up a new business.

All the three started looking for an idea that would transform their lives and the world. In the summer of 1999, during the height of the dot-com bubble, Chris saw an opportunity in identifying and providing people with the song they want to know about. Though at that time, many people had tried the same concept for their business, all of them were relying upon the radio for music identification.

Origin of the Idea

Chris Barton came up with the idea of a software that will help people identify a song playing on the radio using the sound of the music itself, and that too, using a mobile phone. But as simple the idea was, its implementation was equally difficult. There was no such technology existed at that time, that would make this very idea possible.

To implement the idea, they developed an algorithm with the help of a PhD scholar Avery Wang (the fourth co-founder of Shazam), that was based on the recorded sound identification technology. So in the year 2000, they launched the demo of Shazam, a mobile service, through which the users could record the piece of music (from radio, club, or any other place) and send it to Shazam, and in return, Shazam would reply the name of the artist and album of the song.

This innovative idea was way ahead of its time. Even before Apple launched its iPod and iPhones. In the beginning, Chris established its office in London and focussed on the European countries, as these countries were more drawn to music.

Founding Shazam

To bring the product out in the market, the co-founders took the help of their family members and friends. After three months of pitching the idea in front of the investors, they raised a one million dollar investment from HSBC. To make the service work properly, in the beginning, the co-founders decided to partner with the people who are related to the key technology that will be used in the service. They partnered with the IVR provider, the SMS aggregator for premium SMS integration, and with the four leading mobile operators in the United Kingdom, i.e. Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, and O2.

After getting everything in place, Chris Barton along with the other co-founders launched Shazam on 19 August 2002. Now, people could use the service by dialling a four-digit number, i.e. 2580, on their mobile phone, record the music, and receive the details about it, through an SMS, for just 50 pence.

A few years later, with the emergence of better Symbian mobile phones, the company offered the option to buy ringtones of the identified songs. The users could also get access to an unlimited use subscription pack for around $3 per month. And after the iPhone got launched in 2007, in 2008 the new Shazam app reached the heights of success. It had 11 million downloads in the year of 2010. According to a report from CNET, Shazam was the 4th most downloaded app of 2011. By 2012, Shazam had over 225 million users in more than 200 countries.

Today, all four co-founders sit on the board of the company, and Chris now works for Google. Shazam is one of the most popular apps today that allow the users to buy the music, watch music videos, as well as see the lyrics of a particular song.

IN 2016, Snapchat included the Shazam feature to its app, and in 2018, Apple acquired the company for $400 million.

magento

Roy Rubin : The Founder of Magento, the Open-Source E-Commerce Platform

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With the advent of new technologies and rapid development in our world, especially in terms of science and technology, tech-savvies are crawling all over the surface. And, this rapid growth in technology and the development through it, can mostly be witnessed amongst the school and college students.

The most obvious evidence of scientific and technical development in our society is the innumerable establishment of tech-related start-ups, like e-commerce platforms, digital payment platform, Open-source community, online market place, etc., taking place currently.

Magento is one such gigantic open source e-commerce platform that was created in 2008 by a student, Roy Rubin. It all dates back to 2004 when Varien, the company that owned Magento overtook one of its competitors and changed the status of the business forever.

Varien-From Where It All Started

Roy Rubin
Image Source: powerretail.com

Since childhood, Rubin had a great interest in the development and technical stuff, and he was completely engrossed in the idea of the subject. He made his mind to pursue engineering, and alongside, he also grew an interest in starting a business of his own.

He didn’t have greater plans when he was working on this business plan of his, as he only saw it as an opportunity to gain more knowledge, more professionalism and enough money to maintain a sober lifestyle of a student.

Initially, he started making small progress with web development, web applications, e-commerce, and content management, as he wasn’t selective about picking a single domain. But soon, he felt like everything was going topsy-turvy in his business, and eventually, he realized that it’s important to be focused on one single thing to achieve success.

While Roy Rubin was making step-wise progress, a major breakthrough took place in 2004, when he started his own company named Varien and also got a job at OsCommerce. With a few weeks of studies related to OsCommerce, he concluded that the company shared mutual goals with Varien, but the former lacked better quality of services and enough employees. He saw it as a golden opportunity to stream down customers to Varien, which was better than OsCommerce in every aspect. Thus, he invested some of his own money in Google AdWords, and the result was unexpected.

This decision of Roy Rubin changed the future of Varien forever and gave him a better scope to expand his business.

Releasing Magento

After releasing an advertisement in Google AdWords, Varien landed its one of his biggest clients. Rubin, in one of his interviews, said that if it hadn’t been for the advertisement, the company could have never managed to launch a product like Magento. Because, that specific company was entirely responsible for the funding of this e-commerce platform, now known as Magento.

The first public beta version of Magento was released on 31 August 2007. Varien launched Magento, an open-source e-commerce platform, as its product. It was written in PHP, and the first general availability of this software was released on 31st March 2008.

Ownership, Growth and Success of Magento

In February 2011, eBay bought a 49% share of Magento, followed by the entire acquisition of the company on 6th June 2011. But, Rubin continued to work as the CEO of Magento. But, in 2013 he stepped down and left the company.

On 3rd November 2015, Permira acquired the company, and finally, on 19th June 2018, Adobe took the ownership of Magento for $1.68 billion.

On 17th November 2015, the company released the second version of Magento, i.e. Magento 2.0. Since then, Magento is considered as the top digital e-commerce platform around the world.

On 19th October 2016, Rubin joined Magento Board of Directors, and he said that the pace at which Magento was growing was really commendable.

Rubin and Akeneo

Rubin joined Akeneo, a French company for open source product as an advisor in 2016. Since, Akeneo was also a company related to open source, the CEO of Akeneo mentioned that they were grateful to have a person like Rubin in their team. In Akeneo, Rubin is responsible for making the strategic decisions for the short-term goals of the company.

Roy Rubin is a true businessman, and a visionary, who keeps inspiring every start-up related to open-source platform out there. His role in Magento followed by his strategies in Akeneo is incredible.

venmo

Venmo : The Experience of Money Transfer Made Easy

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You do not get success in the first few attempts, but you sure get the experience. Trying and trying again always gets you with some good exposure and enhanced skill, such that the end product you create is always ‘the product’ that changes your life. One such similar story is of the founders of Venmo, a mobile payment service, who from being clueless about their future were able to build a multimillion startup.

The Founders

Venmo, an online payment app, was founded by two friends, Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail. The two had joined the University of Pennsylvania in 2001, where they got to share their room as freshmen. Iqram and Kortina both opted for Computer Science as their major, but later, Kortina switched to philosophy and creative writing. The reason being that he was already able to study computers and programming through homework exercises, so to utilize the university fee, he changed his subjects.

With time, the two became good friends and together, started working on different projects. The first project, on which they worked together, was a college advertisement website. They named the website My Campus Post. Along with the website, they spent most of their time on various other projects, but all they were doing as a hobby.

Venmo founders
Image Source: fastcompany.com

But Kortina realised that the graduation time is near, and they had no plans for their career only when his mother asked him about his career plans. This hit his mind, as he and Iqram, both of them need to make a career plan for them.

Beginning the Career

The two decided to move to West Philly, as the rents were way cheaper there. Here they started advertising about website development services from door to door and started getting some work. They also started their own online music selling project named Philafunk, at the same time. The platform provided the musicians with the facility to sell their music, and the website would charge them a minimal fee on every sale.

The two had skills, but they did not have real-world experience. So they decided to take a job. For the next two-three years, they worked for different technology firms, including iminlikewithyou.com.

They kept their part-time work of developing websites running alongside and continued to look for the life-changing idea. They even developed software for shops that could be used as a ledger or register on a laptop.

They came up with the idea of Philafunk while enjoying a Jazz show in the city. Philafunk enabled the musicians to accept money for the subscription, music or the merchandise people bought from them.

Founding Venmo

While the two were working on Philafunk in NYC, Iqram forgot to bring his wallet and borrowed some money from Kortina and wrote a cheque to him. This hit his mind, as he was using the traditional method of paying the money when he was using their mobile for every other thing. The two knew PayPal was already there for online money-related transactions, but even though people were not using it.

This led them to think of a new idea of developing a method to send and receive money through their mobile. They started working on the project and made use of the text message, i.e. SMS, for sending and receiving the status of money transferred. The working of the new payment method was quite derived from the Philafunk model, where now everyone (not only musicians) could receive the money for anything (not just for selling music).

The two also included the option to add a small description about for what the payment was made, such that people could keep the record of when and who they paid money for. They put the name of the service as Venmo. ‘Ven’ in Venmo has been derived from the Latin word vendere, which means ‘to sell’ and ‘mo’ is short for mobile.

The two were ready with the prototype of Venmo and started meeting people for its seed investment. But unfortunately, they could not convince any major investors. But they had to launch the service, and they took the help of Magon-Ismail’s old boss at Ticketleap and his father with the investments. They launched Venmo in August 2009. But in the next few months, the popularity of the app led the two co-founders to raise a $100,000 in debt financing.

The Rise of the Company

By the end of the year, the company shifted the model from website and SMS to mobile application and launched an iOS app in December. In January 2010, they got the opportunity to represent their product at the Mobile Monday Mid Atlantic Demo Night. Here they asked the audience to send some donation money to the relief fund for people suffering from an earthquake in Haiti. The relief fund raised a $600 in just a few minutes of announcement and in a week, there was a total donation of worth $15,000 through Venmo. This was one of the best marketing moves for the company.

The company raised another $1.2 million in May 2010, in a funding round led by RRE Ventures, followed by another $400,000 in debt financing in June 2010. The next month, Venmo launched its Android app. The coming year, the company partnered with most of the banks running in the U.S, for the payments.

By 2012, the growth rate for the company reached 30 per cent per month, and it was carrying out $10 million in payments every month.

On August 16, 2012, Braintree, another technology and mobile payment company, acquired Venmo for $26.2 million. But in September 2013, eBay acquired Braintree and all its subsidiaries, such that Venmo became the part of PayPal.

Venmo still is one of the famous payment apps in the U.S. and only serve in the U.S. As of 2017, a million users were using Venmo for mobile payments, and it carried out nearly $50 billion worth of transactions in 2018.