Professor Marvin White wins Emmy Award for television engineering innovation
The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Marvin White will receive an Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for his contributions to television imaging.
According to the Engineering Achievement Committee, the award helps honor the “tool makers” of the industry who crafted the modern television viewing experience.
White said he never dreamed of winning a technology and engineering Emmy, “The whole thing was quite a surprise."
White and Northrop Grumman Mission Systems Group received the award for work on Correlated Double Sampling for Image Sensors, a critical component of high-definition video capture and image noise reduction.
White’s pioneering technological contributions and patents span decades in the field of engineering. Many are still found today in personal cameras, televisions, satellite imaging systems and even the Hubble Space Telescope.
“Screen actors are always cited for Oscars. Stage performers are similarly proud of their Tony Awards. Television journalists are quick to add an Emmy Award to their resume – and with good reason,” the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) letter to White stated. “Your work on Correlated Double Sampling (CDS) for Image Sensors showed excellence in engineering creativity and you join a distinguished group of honorees that are chosen each year by dozens of industry experts and peers.”
This year’s recipients will be honored at the 73rd Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards Ceremony tentatively scheduled for April 25 at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas.
“Historically, TV began with image orthicons and vidicons to capture scenes at low-light levels, but were later replaced by lightweight, high-resolution, solid-state imagers,” White said. “In the late 1960s and early 1970s at Westinghouse, I and a team of engineers worked on a way to process images from these solid-state imagers and we called the method Correlated Double Sampling or CDS, which is widely used today.”
The Technology & Engineering Emmy Award was the first Emmy Award issued in 1949.
“This year’s awarded categories and companies are a testament to the technological innovation we continue to see in the delivery, consumption and monetization of television,” said Dina Weisberger, Co-Chair, NATAS Technology Achievement Committee.
Born in 1937 in Bronx, New York, White began his educational journey in the 1940s, during the tail end of the Great Depression. His immediate family had no previous scientists, so he became a first-generation engineer, eventually earning his Ph.D. from Ohio State in 1969. From countless odd jobs as he paid his way through school, to a successful career in both industry and academia, White's legacy in engineering is respected on numerous levels.
He joined the Ohio State ECE faculty in 2010 after many years teaching at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he was the Sherman-Fairchild Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of the Sherman-Fairchild Center for Solid State Studies. He also served two decades at Westinghouse Electric Company, as well as two stints at the National Science Foundation and Naval Research Laboratory. He has authored or co-authored over 300 technical papers, contributed chapters to four books, and has 27 U.S. patents.
White is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and an IEEE Life Fellow. In 2011, he received Ohio State's Distinguished Alumnus Award.
by Ryan Horns, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
