Saturday, June 11, 2011

News from IISW 2011

I received these announcements from Eric Fossum:

June 10, 2011

News from the 2011 International Image Sensor Workshop in Hokkaido, Japan

The parent organization of the 2011 IISW is changing its name to the International Image Sensor Society, Inc., from ImageSensors, Inc. The renamed organization, IISS, also has added two directors to its Board – Junichi Nakamura and Johannes Solhusvik. They join Eric Fossum, Albert Theuwissen and Nobukazu Teranishi.

The IISS will become a member-based Professional Society and will solicit members in the coming months. In addition to sponsoring the biennial IISW and the Walter Kosonocky Award, plans for an on-line open-access peer-reviewed IISS Journal of Image Sensors are being developed by Dr. Solhusvik. It is hoped that cooperation with other professional societies such IEEE, SPIE or OSA can be implemented.

At the 2011 IISW, it was announced that the winner of the 2011 Walter Kosonocky Award is Hayato Wakabayashi and his co-authors from Sony Corporation for the paper titled “A 1/2.3-inch 10.3Mpixel 50frame/s Back-Illuminated CMOS Image Sensor” which was presented at the 2010 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference.

A new award has been established by the International Image Sensor Society for Exceptional Service. The 2011 IISS Exceptional Service Award was presented to Vladimir Koifmann for the creation and editorship of the Image Sensors World blog, which has proved to be valuable for many in the image sensor community. Mr. Koifman is currently with AdvaSense in Israel.

The International Image Sensor Society congratulates its award winners on achieving excellence and contributing to the image sensor community.

14 comments:

  1. Congratulations!

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  2. It isn't useful to create another society when the others listed are already doing the job. The IEEE already exists and the IISW could well be a workshop under that society.

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  3. Why IEEE affiliation is so essential for you?

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  4. The service award is well-deserved. Congratulations!

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  5. Thank you. It was a big honor for me!

    In a hindsight, over the years the blog has developed in a quite different direction than I initially thought, but I'm glad it went this way.

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  6. THe IISW was under the IEEE umbrella at one point in time. perhaps Eric, Jerry, albert and the others who know the history can chime in as to why it spun out.

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  7. A purly money issue I guess ...

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  8. As mentioned in the conference, there are several issues related to IEEE.

    First, we have and expect to continue technical co-operation with IEEE. Every IISW since 1986 has either been sponsored or technically co-sponsored by IEEE. So IEEE association has been and will remain important to us. The 3 directors of ImageSensors Inc are all IEEE Fellows and heavily engaged with IEEE.

    Second, the main problem with IEEE has been financial. Every workshop sponsored by IEEE has to apply for sponsorship and start up funding (on a year by year basis). Such sponsorship is not guaranteed despite 20+ years of association. There is a vast amount of paperwork to be prepared. The IEEE expects about 20% return on all Gross receipts, so basically 20% of the registration fee goes directly to IEEE with little direct return benefit to our attendees. Any funds leftover from the meeting, independent of the 20% guideline, are swept back into the IEEE general fund with no benefit to our members. The next meeting starts again from scratch. There is no ability to carry over funds to improve the next workshop or reduce registration fees. We found this to be a real nuisance after 20+ years.

    Third, the IEEE strictly controls publications. It is possible that under IEEE sponsorship one would need to pay in order to retrieve workshop material from the web. We find this philosophically wrong, esp. since any payments to access technical material are not shared with the authors.

    We will continue to try to get IEEE to change its ways from the inside. In the meantime, and without a lot of hope for success in that endeavor, we needed to form ISI, and now IISS.

    We note that IISS is focused on image sensors and quite interdisciplinary according to IEEE Society silos. IISS embraces optics, devices, circuits and ISP algorithms, and some applications. You should not need to belong to 5 or 6 IEEE societies to have access across these areas. For those of us working in image sensors, I think you understand what I am saying. Maybe in the future there will be an IEEE IISS but for now we are on our own. It will be an interesting adventure. If it does not work out well, we can always revert to the present situation. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I think there is always room for improvement and for trying new things.

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  9. IEEE is non-profit so they must run themselves very inefficiently in order to not be sitting on a pile of money.

    Thanks to the IISS for posting access to papers and for holding a more modern philosophy about this issue.

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  10. First of all, my sincere congratulations to Vladimir Koifman for the Exceptional Service Award, well done, this blog is great. Regarding the society, as an IEEE member (including CAS and SSCS), and as Prof. Fossum says, I do find the lack for a specialized society IS society in IEEE. This year I attended the workshop for the first time and the experience couldn't have been better.

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  11. Congratulations, Sir

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  12. Congratulations to Wakabayashi-san and his co-authors, and to Mr. Koifman, as well!

    E.Stevens

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  13. Eric:
    THanks fo r the cogent explanation, seems like a very reasonable approach.

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