Image Technologies Group Members
Jack is retired. Before retiring, he worked at IBM for over 28 years. His articles have over 120,000 views.
TJ Watson Research Yorktown
Photo by Gerry Thompson
Photo by Gerry Thompson
Introduction
This is a roster of members of the Image Technologies group at IBM Reseach Division. It was active from 1980 till about 2002. In those years, our small group was involved in cutting edge technology relating to digital image capture, processing, compression, transmission, display and printing.
- Jack Lee July 2016
Ali Afzali
Ali is working at Watson Research...
1982-Present Research Staff Member, IBM Research Division, Yorktown Heights, NY
Project in T. J. Watson Research Center:
Printing Materials for Electroerosion Printing
Low K Teflon composites
Photosensitive Polyimides
Conduction Polymers
Photoresists
Organic Semiconductors
Molecular Electronics
Carbon Nanotube electronics
Neuromorphic devices
Ioana Boier
Ioana Boier is a Director in the Global Markets division at BNP Paribas in New York.
Ioana's biography is located here.
Gordon Braudaway
TBD
Albert Cazes
Albert is currently teaching at WCC. He recently retired from teaching at Peekskill HS.
Yi-Hsin Chen and Dan Brand
TBD
Jim Christensen
Jim Christensen (NY) is a photographer, teacher, and speaker from the New York City area; a member and past president of the Westchester Photographic Society; founder of the annual Croton-on-Hudson Fall Arts Festival; and was the Artist in Residence at Acadia National Park in the spring of 2015. His work has been featured in galleries and other venues in NY and CT, and spans landscapes, night-scapes, wildlife, people (in the studio and on the sidewalks on NY), flowers, and abstracts. In addition he designs and builds one-of-a-kind mixed-media frames, and has a deep technical background in digital imaging theory and software as a result of his career as a researcher at IBM. You can see some of his work on Facebook (where he's the Jim Christensen in Westchester NY), and on his website: jimchristensenphotography.com
Alan Cole
Alan is currently a Westchester County Legislator from District 2 Lewisboro. His story is published here.
Also, here is his official title.
Carlo Evangelisti
Carlo is retired and enjoying the good life. He is interested in genealogy and has traced his family roots back many generations. His family tree can be found here.
Ephraim Feig
Ephraim is owner of TopWhats.
Frank Giordano
Frank is retired and enjoying the good life going to the shooting range.
Cesar Gonzales
Cezar is an IBM Fellow Emeritus, and Technology Consultant and speaker at many Technology Conferences.
Christian Gutleben
After leaving Yorktown I followed Joan Mitchell’s advice and went to U of Illinois for a PhD in experimental condensed-matter physics. At UIUC I was able to apply some of my IBM work to hyperspectral imaging in the vacuum ultraviolet range for surface-science research.
After graduating I went to Yokohama to work at the Sony Central Research Center. My work there was mostly focused on the surface science of the group-III nitrides as well as on the development of ferroelectric perovskites for memory applications (FeRAM).
After six years and far too many “enkai”, I returned to my native California and began work at a series of smaller MEMS companies in LA and Silicon Valley. This period culminated in the optical boom and bust for which I had a front-row seat.
This startup-and-stop experience together with my advancing age and the birth of my two daughters, led me to take a “stable” job at Western Digital’s Magnetic Head Operations. My twelve years there were focused on managing Metrology, FA, Data Analytics, and etc. and recently ended when I took early retirement.
Currently I have gone back to my roots and am developing imaging technology for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. Hopefully this will lead to a new startup.
2007 Retirement
Robert Henshaw
TBD
Tom Horvath
I retired from IBM in 2009 but came be back to Watson as a contractor primarily working on system integration in the Next Generation Computing Systems and Technology organization. I am involved with projects dealing with leading edge technologies and am doing what I most loved doing which is logic design for system platforms as well as special function processors. I will probably continue doing this until they get rid of me once and for all.
Alex Jaimes
I am thrilled to announce that I’ve joined DigitalOcean as Head of R&D. I’ll be leading our efforts across the company to advance the state of the art and make AI/ML accessible to developers worldwide. I’m super excited as I view DO as an engine of creativity and economic growth, with wide ranging impact across multiple industries. DigitalOcean is a cloud platform company focused on simplifying the complexities of infrastructure for software developers. DigitalOcean has become the second largest and fastest growing cloud computing platform in the total number of public facing apps and websites, according to Netcraft.com.
Oconel Johnson (OJ)
OJ is on Facebook but I could not get a hold of him as yet...I'm hoping he will respond.
Whan-Soo James Kang
Whan-Soo is working at Nvidia.
Jack Kouloheris
Dr. Kouloheris is currently on assignment in the Corporate Technical Strategy area in IBM headquarters, where he is working directly with IBM clients and client teams
on proof-of- concept projects, getting new technology into the hands of our customers.
Prior to this, Jack was with IBM Research for 21 years. He was a Senior Manager leading departments working on Cloud Computing, Software Defined Networking,
and the application of Storage Class Memories in systems. He has worked on a wide variety of projects at IBM Research, including ATM switch design, video compression and decompression algorithms, architectures, and chips, and embedded systems design. The work on MPEG and DVD encoding and decoding led to the first laptop that played DVDs, software MPEG for IBM's Aptiva computer, and an HDTV encoding system (together with Lucent) that at one time powered 50% of the DTV broadcast stations in the US.
Dr. Kouloheris graduated with a B.S.E.E. from the University of Florida in 1982. After graduation, Dr. Kouloheris joined IBM in Boca Raton, Florida, where he worked on chip and board design for what became IBM's AS/400 and 9370 computer systems. In 1986, he went back to school at Stanford University under the auspices of the IBM Resident Study Program and received the MSEE and PhD degrees in 1987 and 1993, respectively.
Jack Lee
I was a member of the group from 1983-2002. After leaving IBM, I worked at a non-profit organization called Jawonio. We provided a document imaging service bureau for offices and courts. We also employee people with disability to help them lead independent and productive lives. I retired in 2015 and continue to do volunteer work at the Westchester County Archives. I also participate in an online publishing blog on HubPages. I am married to my wife Christina of 34 years and we have three grown children. We live in Yorktown Hts. NY and we also have a coop in Greystone, Yonkers NY
While a member of the Image Technologies group, I worked on various digital library projects with museums and libraries providing them with a high resolution color capture system. Recently, I completed an autobiography documenting my personal and work experiences.
Elliot Linzer
Elliot Linzer is senior principle algorithm engineer Ambarella Incorporated. He works on camera related digital image processing with an emphasis on spatial and temporal noise reduction. Before working at Ambarella, Elliot worked at LSI logic, Afara Websystems, Divicom, C-Cube Microsystems, and IBM. Elliot holds 106 patents in image processing and compression.
Renee Lucchese
Renee or Spankey as we all know her by, is the owner of Posey Express, a silk floral design business.
Karen Magerlein
Karen is just retiring from IBM at the end of Aug. 2016. Her son is an IBMer carrying on the family tradition. Her husband John recently retired from IBM also.
Fred Mintzer
Here is Fred's biography at the IEEE.
Jessa Mittleman
Jessa Mittleman is a staff software engineer at Google, where she has been working on search and building Easter eggs since 2005.
Robert Moorhead
Robert is a professor at Mississippi State University. His biography is here.
Bill Pennebaker
Bill is retired living the good life in Vermont. Here is a story about Bill and his daughter Patty in 2009.
Keith Pennington
This picture was taken at Lincoln city Oregon on Sept 10 2016. ---as is usual for Lincoln City the day was windy BUT otherwise great weather. Presently enjoying retirement between seeing doctors----no big health problems now but have to keep checking after heart valve (2001) , stents and pacemaker 2010. I will be trying to publish some of my poems in the near future. but need to pull them together and add images (photo shopped) and graphics ( Adobe illustrator).
Ravi Rao
Ravi is currently teaching at Fairleigh Dickinson University. His biography is located here.
Bernice Rogowitz
Bernice is the Founder and Principal Scientist at Visual Perspective Consulting. Her biography is located here.
Holly Rushmeier
Holly is currently teaching at Yale University. Her biography is here.
Howard Sachar
Howard is retired and on the Board of the Unison Art Center in New Paltz.
Neil Sarnak
Neil is working at Makwela Solutions Inc.
Gerry Thompson
Gerry is a global traveler and volunteers his time at the church. Here is Gerry on one of his many trips to China and Taiwan and visiting his many friends. He also conducts leadership training for the International School Project (ISP).
Prasoon Tiwari
Prasoon currently live in New Delhi, India and work at Cresco Futures Limited as Chief Technology Officer. He visits US about once a year to visit his son and the reunion would be a great opportunity to meet old friends. He is not sure yet if he will be able to attend in person, but will let us know as we get closer to the date.
Eric Viscito
Since leaving IBM in 1994, I have taken a somewhat rambling tour through the worlds of silicon, algorithms, management, start-ups, consulting and probably a few others since forgotten (oh, farmers markets, yes). Technically the path lead from MPEG and H.263 through H264 encoding systems to video post-processing for television systems, camera signal processing and eventually to computer vision. Organizationally, I have lead a team of 20+ (didn't like that much), worked in lone wolf mode quite a bit, both as an employee and a consultant (I like that) and managed or guided small teams (I like that too). I've had the opportunity to work with engineering teams from overseas, mostly China and India, but also Finland and Texas (joke), and found it very enlivening. Currently I am excited to be part of a world-class DSP processor team at Nvidia developing the most powerful computer vision DSP ever. My role is across group boundaries, from programming that beast to designing optical flow and stereo hardware, to working with various other teams as I see a need arise and when management doesn't stop me doing it. For example, recently, I've been analyzing the complexity of deep neural networks designed by NV Research for optical flow estimation. I have lived in northern Vermont for more than a decade, with my wife Laura and my kids Grace (18) and Luca (14).
Bob Wolfe
Bob is currently working for the MTA helping to improve our commuter trains.
Philip Wong
Philip is currently teaching at Stanford University. His biography is located here.
James Yeh
Here is James's LinkedIn profile.
Minerva Yeung
Minerva is an enterpreneur and owner of Vogue Cuisine.
Some Additional Members Camera Shy...
- Lascoe Allman
- Fausto Bernardino
- Bruce D'Amora
- Don DeCain
- Helen Delp
- Jose Gomes
- Saska Mojsilovic
- Jim Morgan
- Peter Wendt
Some History of Image Technologies...(Keith's Recollections)
As you probably know, I was the original manager of the Images Technology Group. This group had Bill Pennebaker , Fred Hochberg, JoanMitchell, Clem Dunscombe and Mary Potasek. We started Fax Compression and the beginnings of R2T2 printing in this group, as well as magnetic mist (Fred) and mist jet printing (Bill). I started the technology that became the IBM Quietwriter (Resistive Ribbon Thermal Transfer Printer) and continued to interact with the IBM OPD Research groups in San Jose during a sabbatical in OPD Boulder. Returning to Watson Research, I again took over the Image Tech group which later became the Image Tech Dept. This department included Gene Schlig, Frank Giordano, Gerry Goetzel, Bob Henshaw, and later added Mitch Cohen, Ali Afzali, Eva Smonyi. We started the TDI scanner and electroerosion printer with Gene Schlig doing the design and Frank designing the room light scanner and high resolution Image scanner. Then Lou Yao and his group (which you are well aware of transferred into the Department) and the scanner group started to report to Lou. I Have missed out some names because of memory losses. Aviram and Cahill were early members that contributed to the electroerosion printer and one name I have forgotten was the Indian Tech. who worked with Ali and Eva to refine the formulations for the electroerosion substrate.
Some of our Accomplishments...
- Image Compression Standards and algorithms including FAX, JPEG and MPEG
- High resolution color capture system Pro/3000 Scanner
- TDI sensor technology
- DIgital Libraries Solutions (Wyeth, Vatican Library, Hermitage Museum...)
- Commercial Application (Gems, Art Frames...)
- Image Processing algorithms
- Digital Image Watermarking (visible and invisible)
- Electro Erosion Technology for printing
- PDS programming language (VM, PC)
- 3D capture and Visualization
Reunion Dinner - Summer 2017
One of the inspiration for this hub is the planning of a reunion dinner for the Summer of 2017.
The date is Saturday, August 5, 2017.
Location: the Mohansic Grill (5:00 - 7:00 pm)
optional tour of Watson lab. 3:30-4:30 pm
optional live entertainment: 7:30 pm...
The short biographies above helps everyone stay up to date on what is happening in each of our lives. The recent photos remind us what we look like after all these years.
One of the idea I have for the reunion dinner is for people to bring their mementos. There will be a table setup where people can show their photos, artifacts, books, DVDs, whatever that will remind us our extensive projects and their impact on the Imaging world.
For those who cannot make it to this event, we plan to have a table setup with an iPad that will be able to Facetime. How great is modern technology. By the way, those video streams have our technologies embedded within.
We are also planning to have demos running on a laptop of some of our high profile projects...
Every family will be receiving a copy of the Vatican Library paper as a gift.
IN MEMORIAM:
Jerry Goertzel (1919-2002)
Here is Jerry's biography on wikipedia.
Jerry was my mentor and colleague for many years. I wrote about him in another hub called Some Famous People I Met.
Andy Lean (1952-2012)
Here is link to a tribute to Andy Lean by his wife Ruth and three children. The video slide show was very touching.
Tom McCarthy (1939-2012)
Thomas McCarthy of Cortlandt Manor passed away December 9, 2012. Thomas was born on August 19, 1939 in Elizabeth, NJ to Thomas and Anna . He married Judy Barron on September 10, 1960 in New Jersey. Thomas is survived by his wife, four children; Thomas (Katerina), Michael, Christine Kavana (George), James (Lisa). He is also survived by six grandchildren; Caroline, Jacqueline, Emily, Matthew, Katelyn, and Amanda. Thomas was on the parish council for The Church of the Holy Spirit and volunteered at the Food Pantry. Thomas graduated CumLaude from Fairleigh Dickinson University with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He worked for IBM as a Senior Research Engineer for 44 years. He achieved patents both here in the US and in Europe. Throughout all of Thomas' achievements he was also very involved with his children and grandchildren.
Joan Mitchell (1947-2015)
Joan L. Mitchell
May 24,1947 - Dec 2, 2015
Joan L. Mitchell, who grew up in Modesto, CA, passed away peacefully on December 2, 2015. Joan was preceded in death by her parents William and Doris Mitchell, her sister Carol and her brother Donald. She is survived by three sisters, Norma Vance, Sandy Creighton, and Linda Mayer; her sister-in-law, Nancy Walker-Mitchell; her foster brother, Michael Johnson; and her many cherished nieces and nephews...
Her full obituary notice can be found here.
Eugene Schlig (1934-2001)
TBD
Ying (Lou) Yao (1926-2015)
Here is link to Lou's obituary notice.
A personal note. I have to thank Lou for hiring me from IBM CPD in 1983. That changes the trajectory of my life and career. I am grateful for his guidance and friendship. We kept in touch since his retirement in 1995. He was the inspiration for deciding to write my autobiography. His passing late last year was also the inspiration for me to organize this reunion.
How To Track Down Old Colleagues?
This is a summary of what we did to track down most of the former members of the team.
1. By word of mouth - I found people who may have maintained contacts with old colleagues.
2. By LinkedIn - I found quite a few people just by searching their names on LinkedIn.
3. By Social Media FaceBook - I am generally not a fan of Facebook but in this case, I was able to find a few people using their social media account.
4. By Snail Mail - I was able to locate a few people by their name and only found their mailing address. I mailed out a few letters hoping to get a reply.
5. By their extended circle - In a few cases, I wa