Eric Fossum to Receive 2026 American Innovator Award

Professor Fossum's image sensor lab is researching the next generation of solid-state image sensors for photon-counting and gigapixel cameras. (Photo by Katie Lenhart)

The Coalition's annual award honors individuals whose groundbreaking work, made possible by the Bayh-Dole Act (aka Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act), demonstrates the personal commitment, sacrifice, risk, and determination required to transfer a federally-funded invention from the lab to the marketplace.

Fossum, currently Dartmouth's John H. Krehbiel Sr. Professor for Emerging Technologies, led the team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that developed the complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) sensor. That innovation dramatically miniaturized cameras used in space missions onto a single chip, subsequently making digital photography and imaging widely accessible. He will be recognized alongside Sabrina Kemeny, engineer and entrepreneur who co-invented the CMOS sensor at JPL with Fossum and later co-founded Photobit, the company that commercialized the technology for worldwide use. 

This recognition is the latest in a series of distinguished accolades throughout Fossum's career, including the National Academy of Engineering's 2026 Charles Stark Draper Prize, and the 2017 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, both considered to be among the world's foremost prizes for engineering achievement. He has also been honored with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from the White House, a Technical Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal from IEEE.

Since joining the Dartmouth Engineering faculty in 2010, Fossum has been a driving force for innovation across the university. As vice provost for entrepreneurship and technology transfer, he has helped lead Dartmouth's efforts to move research discoveries out of the lab and into the marketplace. He is also director of Dartmouth's PhD Innovation Program, the nation's first doctoral program designed to train engineers to bridge technical research and real-world application.

At Dartmouth, he developed the "Quanta Image Sensor" photon-counting technology with his engineering PhD students, and co-founded Gigajot, continuing to push the boundaries of what imaging technology can do.

Fossum and Kemeny join six other honorees profiled in the Bayh-Dole Coalition's annual "Faces of American Innovation" report. They will receive the award in Washington, DC on June 3, and participate in a Capitol Hill briefing on June 4 to discuss the recognition as well as the future of US innovation policy.