Advisory Board

Dr Dimitra Darambara is developing and implementing novel molecular imaging technologies and techniques for the detection and characterisation of cancer and its response to treatment. Dr Darambara is a detector physicist who started her career at CERN building a calorimeter for quark-gluon plasma and finally moved to medical physics to translate basic science to routine clinical practice.

She is a Member of the Institute of Physics (IOP), the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). She is the current Chair of the IOP Medical Physics Group, the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Mayneord-Phillips Trust and member of the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) Panel for Biomedical Engineering.

Albert Theuwissen was born in Maaseik (Belgium) on December 20, 1954. He received the degree in electrical engineering from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) in 1977. His M.Sc. thesis work was based on the development of supporting hardware around a linear CCD image sensor. From 1977 to 1983, his work at the ESAT laboratory of the Catholic University of Leuven focused on semiconductor technology for linear CCD image sensors. He received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 1983. His dissertation was on the implementation of transparent conductive layers as gate material in the CCD technology.

Biju Jacob received his PhD at the department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, The University of Sheffield, UK working on impact ionization in avalanche photodiodes in 2002. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Integrated Systems Laboratory, ETH, Zurich where lead Swiss TOP NANO 21 collaborative research project named ‘High Speed and Quantum Well Photodetectors’.  From 2004 to 2008 he was with Synopsys Switzerland where he developed TCAD methodologies for photodetectors and image sensors. In 2008 he moved to ESPROS Photonics AG, Switzerland as a Senior Device Engineer where he designed and developed 3D-TOF pixels. Since 2011 he works at the General Electric Global Research Headquarters, New York where he leads X-ray detector research for medical applications. He is passionate about developing detector technologies that are clinically more impactful and accessible.

Nobukazu Teranishi was born in Kobe, Japan in 1953. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in physics from University of Tokyo, 1976 and 1978, respectively. He developed image sensors and cameras at NEC Corporation from 1978 to 2000 and at Panasonic Corporation from 2000 to 2013. He is now professor of University of Hyogo and Shizuoka University, where he develops photon counting image sensor, imagers for various wavelength; visible, infrared, X-ray, and new functions for image sensors. He invented pinned photodiode (PPD) for no image lag, low noise and low dark current at CCD image sensors in 1980. In the late 1990’s, PPD was introduced into CMOS image sensors, which performance became competitive to CCD’s. The high performance of PPD drove the pixel size shrinkage, and realized higher resolution. Now, almost all CCD image sensors and CMOS image sensors came to utilize the PPD. He has authored and co-authored 80 papers and holds 46 Japanese patents and 21 US patents. His leadership at academic societies and industry and his PPD invention have been honored by government organizations as well as societies around the globe. He won the Prize of the President of KEIDANREN of National Invention Awards in 1994, Commendation by Minister of State for Science and Technology in 1997, Niwa-Takayanagi Award from the Institute of Image Information and Television Engineers (ITE) in 2000 and 2013, Progress Medal and Hon. Fellowship from Royal Photographic Society in 2010, Progress Medal from Photographic Society of America in 2011, Yamazaki Teiichi Award, IEEE Electron Devices Society J. J. Ebers Award in 2013. His group won the Emmy Award in 1991 by the broadcast-use CCD camera development. He is a fellow member of ITE, where he served as a chair of the paper editor committee and a chair of the Information Sensing Committee. He is also a fellow member of IEEE, where he served as a general chair for 1999 and 2005 IEEE Workshop on Charge-Coupled Devices & Advanced Image Sensors. He also served co-general chair of International Image Sensors Workshop (IISW) 2011. He is now President of International Image Sensors Society and a program committee member of IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging.

Claudio Bruschini (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne – EPFL) holds an MSc in high energy physics from the University of Genova and a PhD in Applied Sciences from the Free University of Brussels (VUB). He started his career with INFN (Italy), then moved to CERN and eventually EPFL in 1995. He is now with EPFL’s Advanced Quantum Architecture (AQUA) laboratory, whose research mission is to model and develop hardware/software systems based on photonic/electronic quantum devices, high-speed and time-resolved 2D/3D optical sensing as well as their applications (medical, security, ranging), pushing the limits of CMOS technology, imaging architectures, and applications. His scientific interests have spanned from high energy physics and parallel computing in the early days, to challenging sensor applications in humanitarian demining, concentrating since 2003 on quantum photonic devices and applications thereof. He has been involved in a number of European projects starting from ESPRIT back in 1993, most lately at EPFL within MEGAFRAME (Single Photon Avalanche Photodiode – SPAD – arrays and related in-pixel time stamping electronics in deep submicron CMOS technology) and SPADnet (networked SPAD arrays for Positron Emission Tomography), and at CHUV (Lausanne University Hospital) within EndoTOFPET-US (endoscopic PET) as well as on the development of a new hand-held standalone tool for radiotracer- and fluorescence guided medical procedures. Dr. Bruschini is co-author of over 90 articles and workshop/conference presentations and one book.

Phil Marsden received his MPhys degree from the University of Southampton in 1997 and PhD in 2001 from the Optoelectronics Research Centre, Southampton for work on electron spin relaxation in III-V semiconductors. With an interest in quantum information, he moved to KTH Stockholm to work on entangled photon pair production in PPKTP. A subsequent move to the University of Toronto in 2003 meant a return to solid state physics, investigating ultrafast spin switching in GaAs using all-optical coherent-control techniques. He moved into the commercial world in 2005, initially developing imagers for the motion picture industry, subsequently in MedTech, with the emergence of high-performance CMOS sensors at PerkinElmer. Phil is hugely motivated by bridging the gap between academia, industry and the clinicians who are the end users. In 2014 he founded his own company, Unitive Design and Analysis Ltd, to provide specialist imaging and sensing know-how to the MedTech and BioTech sectors. Now a government-grant-awarded company, Unitive Design and Analysis specialises in imaging in oncology, in-vivo and spectral imaging in molecular biology. Phil is a long time member of the IOP and the IEEE and a tireless advocate of the capability of physics to push the boundaries of diagnostics and healthcare.

Bob’s research interests are in large-area electronic materials and devices, including amorphous silicon (a-Si), flat panel x-ray image sensors, and more recently, printed organic semiconductors, flexible electronics, nanowire devices, and solar cells. He is exploring: printing technologies that could replace the photolithographic techniques traditionally used to create thin-film transistors; and solution-based organic materials to create large-area transistor and sensor arrays.

Bob’s previous work on digital x-ray imaging has been commercialized through PARC spin-off dPix, the world’s leading source for high-resolution a-Si sensor arrays that provide the foundation for medical, industrial, military, and security X-ray imaging. dPix was acquired by Trixell (a Siemens Medical/ Phillips Medical/ Thomson-CSF joint venture), Planar Systems, and Varian Medical in 1999.

Bob has over 75 patents and has been honored with the American Physical Society David Adler Award and The American Institute of Physics prize for Industrial Applications of Physics. He has published more than 350 papers and articles and has served as Associate Editor of both the Journal of Materials Research and Solid State Science and Technology. Bob has also served on the National Research Council Committee for Material Science and Engineering, as well as the ICAMS (International Conference on Amorphous and Microcrystalline Semiconductors) Program Committee and International Advisory Committee.

Dr. Bob Street holds a Ph.D. and B.S. in physics, both from Cambridge University in England. He joined PARC in 1976.

Dr Renato Turchetta graduated in Applied Physics at Milan University (Italy) in 1988 and obtained his PhD from Strasbourg University (France) in 1991. He was Associated Professor in Electronics at the University there until he joined the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK) in 1999 as a Senior Designer. In RAL Renato started and developed the CMOS Image Sensor Design Group that he led until 2016. He focused the group activity on the design of image sensors for advanced applications, both scientific and industrial. As examples of his activity, he led the development of the first rad-hard 16Mpixel CMOS Image Sensor for direct detection of electrons, which is now at the heart of the camera products from FEI; a wafer-scale, high speed CIS for low-energy X-ray detection; and a 5million frames per second, snapshot, megapixel CIS for ultra-high speed visible light imaging. He authored or co-authored over 100 papers in journals and 10 patents. In 2015 he was one of the founding inventors of vivaMOS, a spin-off of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, whose first products are based on Renato’s team’s work on wafer-scale CMOS image sensor for X-ray detection. In 2016, Renato left STFC and started his own CMOS image sensor design house, IMASENIC. IMASENIC is based in Barcelona, Spain, and develops full custom image sensors. The company focuses on bio-medical and scientific applications.

Koichi Mizobuchi received the Ph.D. degree in management science & technology from Tohoku University, Japan working on wide dynamic range CMOS image sensors using a lateral overflow capacitor (LOFIC) in 2008. From 1983 to 1989, he was with Hoxan Corp. R&D Center, where worked on superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUID) and their medical applications. From 1989 to 2010, he was with Texas Instruments Inc., Ibaraki and Dallas where he worked for advanced semiconductor memories and CCD/CMOS image sensors developments. He was a senior member of the technical staff and a development manager of image sensor products since 2002. He also served as a member of the technical program committee of the international image sensor workshop (IISW) in 2009 and 2011. He is currently, with Olympus Corp., in charge of research and development of advanced image sensing devices and modules for medical endoscopes.

Professor Henderson gained his PhD from the University of Glasgow before becoming a research engineer at the Swiss Centre for Microelectronics in Neuchatel. There he worked on low-power sigma-delta analogue-to-digital and digital-to-analogue converters for portable electronic systems. In 1996 he was appointed senior Very-Large-Scale Integration (VLSI) engineer at VLSI Vision Ltd, in Edinburgh, and worked on the world’s first single chip video camera. In 2000 he became principal VLSI engineer in STMicroelectronics Imaging Division and designed the first image sensors for mobile phones. Professor Henderson joined the University of Edinburgh as a lecturer in 2005 and progressed to senior lecturer and then reader, leading research in CMOS single photon avalanche diodes (SPADs). In the MegaFrame EU project he developed the first SPADs in nanometer CMOS technologies. These SPAD detectors are now being commercially exploited in laser autofocus systems for mobile phones.

Sandro F. Tedde received his PhD at the department of nanoelectronic of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), working at Siemens Corporate Technology on the development of organic photodetectors (OPDs) for medical and industrial application. He joined Siemens AG in Erlangen, Germany in 2008 covering the function of Senior Research Scientist responsible for the OPD technology and project manager. Since then, his research area is the integration of OPDs and hybrid photodetectors in medical imaging systems. Since May 2015 he joined Siemens Healthcare GmbH working as Senior Key Expert Research Scientist and project manager in the Technology Centre.

Dr Karim has received the 2009 Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Science to Business Fellowship, the 2008 Ontario Early Researcher Award, the 2004 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Doctoral Prize and Canadian Association of Graduate Studies (CAGS)/University Microfilms International (UMI) Award for the Best Doctoral Thesis in Science and Medicine in Canada for his work on large area digital medical imaging technology.

Professor Karim’s research group is investigating large-area circuit, device and process development using amorphous selenium, polycrystalline silicon and Complementary-symmetry Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor (CMOS) semiconductor technologies.

Dr Karim S. Karim received his PhD from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 2002. He subsequently joined Simon Fraser University where he was an Assistant Professor from 2003 to 2007. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. In the past four years, his group has received 10 best paper and poster awards for research papers authored by his graduate students. He has over 100 publications in the field of large area digital imaging electronics and more than 15 patents filed or awarded. Dr Karim is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a Full Member of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), and a member of the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) and the Electrochemical Society (ECS).

As a Technology & Market Analyst, Dr Marjorie Villien is member of the Medical Technologies (MedTech) business unit at Yole Développement, the “More than Moore” market research and strategy consulting company. She is a daily contributor to the development of MedTech activities with a dedicated collection of market & technology reports as well as custom consulting projects.
As an example, Marjorie was involved in a project focused on videoscopy for endoscopy application, to understand the benefits of the CCD/CMOS solution and identify business opportunities. In parallel, she performed an analysis of the PET detectors technology to evaluate the impact of innovative Solid-State technologies on the evolution of the nuclear medicine industry.
After spending two years at Harvard, Marjorie served as a research scientist at INSERM in the field of MRI & PET imaging for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and cancers.
She has spoken in numerous international conferences and has authored or co-authored 11 papers and 1 patent.
Marjorie is daily exchanging with clinicians, researchers and industrial partners to understand technology issues and ensure the connection between R&D and applications.
Marjorie Villien is graduated from Grenoble INP and holds a PhD in physics & medical imaging.