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From left to right:
Lord Broers, FREng, FRS; Professor Wang; Professor Lu; Dr Renshaw; Professor Denyer; The Earl of Selborne, KBE, FR
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Four researchers from the University of Edinburgh who played a key role in the development of the mobile phone camera will be honoured at a ceremony in London on Monday, 4 February.
The electronic engineers will be awarded the Rank Prize for their work in developing and commercialising technology which is used every day by millions of people.
Peter Denyer, David Renshaw, Wang Guoyu and Lu Mingying will receive the £80,000 prize - set up by the late Lord Rank to recognise scientific advances that have benefited mankind - for their camera design work which began in the early 1980s.
The team began by producing simple black and white cameras, before moving on to more complex devices. By 1993, they had taken the steps necessary to generate colour images from a tiny electronic sensor produced in CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) technology.
The researchers formed VLSI Vision, an early Scottish university spin-out business, which subsequently became the first such spin-out to become a public company. ST Microelectronics acquired the business in 1999, and today hundreds of millions of CMOS cameras are in everyday use, in mobile phones and optical computer mice.
Dr Renshaw is still based at the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering and Electronics, where Professor Denyer holds an honorary chair, complementing his external roles as an angel investor and serial entrepreneur. Professor Wang and Professor Lu also pursue both academic and entrepreneurial careers in China and Britain.
Professor Denyer said: "We are immensely pleased to receive this recognition. Our work was not always so well regarded, certainly in its earliest days when the doubters were many and the believers were ... well, just ourselves. It is a pleasure for any engineer to see their work in use every day by millions of people, and a great honour to receive this award." |
