Lester Kozlowski CTO and Founder, Altasens Information Engineering

Les Kozlowski is CTO and Founder of AltaSens. He is a respected visionary in the imaging sensor community and is globally recognized for his groundbreaking efforts in developing many first-of-a-kind, high-performance sensors for scientific, military and commercial use. His team at AltaSens in Thousand Oaks, CA, was the first to deliver on his thesis that CMOS would ultimately replace CCDs due to their intrinsic noise advantage for multi-megapixel imaging such as high definition video and high frame rate still capture. The latest CMOS imaging sensors have low random noise and power dissipation at high video rates via system-on-chip (SoC) integration including a recently developed technique that suppresses kTC noise without correlated double sampling.

He was previously Chief Technologist at Rockwell Scientific and was honored as Rockwell Engineer of the Year for 1995. As Principal Investigator on many imaging sensor development programs, he helped develop the world’s first infrared imaging sensors at 256x256, 640x480, 1024x1024, 2048x2048 formats. One example whose images are commonly available is the infrared focal plane array still in use aboard the Hubble Space Telescope, which has helped revolutionize astronomy and our understanding of the universe. His last collaboration at RSC involved the 16 million pixel focal plane array and supporting ASIC developed for the Next Generation Space Telescope.

Prior to joining Rockwell Science Center when it was the corporate R&D center for Rockwell International, Les was Principal Scientist at Hughes Aircraft in Canoga Park, CA. At Hughes, Les helped develop the 1st 64x64 and 128x128 infrared focal plane arrays; these were integrated and field-tested in advanced missile systems. These sensors instead used advanced meander channel Charge Coupled Device technology for signal readout, but migrated to nascent CMOS technology in the mid-1980’s.

Les received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1975 and 1977, respectively. His areas of expertise include compact, low-noise analog circuits, and readout architectures for high-speed, low noise, low-power focal plane arrays using either CMOS or CCD technology. He has developed over 100 imaging sensors, has over 150 publications, twenty issued patents, is a Senior Member of the IEEE Electron Devices Society, and a member of SMPTE and SPIE.

To view the video, you need to download the FREE RealOne Player (link provided on the right.) Click on the icon to the left to view the video

Back to course information