Inerview with Nobukazu Teranishi

Nikkei publishes an interview with Nobukazu Teranishi, inventor of the pinned PD who recently was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.

"Now... except for Sony, which leads the world in the image sensor sector, Japanese companies have fallen behind, particularly in the semiconductor industry.

Teranishi said that changes are necessary for Japan to continue to compete globally.

He also suggested that engineers and technical experts should be held in higher esteem in Japan.

"Excellent engineers are a significant asset. Companies overseas shouldn't be able to lure them out of Japan just with better salaries. If they are that valuable, their value should to be recognized in Japan as well," he said.

Determining salaries by how long people have been at the company seems like "quite a rigid structure," he said.

He added that engineers get little recognition for the work they do, with individual names rarely mentioned within the company or in the media.

Looking ahead to the future of image sensors, Teranishi feels one peak has been reached, with around 400 million phones produced annually that incorporate his technology. Next, he says, is the era of "images that you don't see."

For facial recognition and gesture input for games, he said, "No one sees the image but the computer is processing information. So there are many cases where a human doesn't see the image."