2017 QEPrize Winners
Digital Imaging Sensors

The 2017 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering was awarded to Professor Eric Fossum, Dr George Smith, Professor Nobukazu Teranishi and Dr Michael Tompsett for their work on Digital Imaging Sensors.

Three innovations across three decades have revolutionised our visual world: the charge-coupled device (CCD); the pinned photodiode (PPD) and the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor.

Together, this image sensor technology has transformed medical treatments, science, personal communication and entertainment - from Skyping, selfies, computer games and feature length digital movies - to reporting live from wars using the small camera on a smartphone. It saves lives, by using non-surgical pill cameras and endoscopes inside our bodies to diagnose medical problems, as well as helping to reduce X-ray doses to patients and improving dental care.

Image sensors inside cars increase driver safety, enhance security on the streets and expand our knowledge of the Universe through images from the surface of Mars or a comet, from spacecraft in orbit around other planets, and the breathtaking pictures of some of the billions of galaxies surrounding the Milky Way.