Eric Fossum, a professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, is being recognized by the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his contributions that led to the development of digital imaging available on cell phones.

Fossum, an engineering professor at Dartmouth, was part of a team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that created the CMOS active pixel sensor camera-on-a-chip.

CMOS image sensors are now found in camera phones and other digital devices including digital SLR cameras, embedded Web-cams, automotive safety systems, swallowable pill cameras, toys and video games and wireless video-security networks.

Worldwide annual revenue for the technology is estimated to reach $6 billion in 2011.