The Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers will honor 15 entertainment technology innovators from corporations and universities at a ceremony at its Annual Tech Conference & Expo beginning Oct. 28 in Los Angeles.
The Progress Medal will be given to Birney D. Dayton, chairman and chief technical officer of NVISION, an audiovisual technology company. Dayton designed numerous digital audio, and SD and HD video products and technologies.
The Eastman Kodak Gold Medal, honoring outstanding contributions that lead to new or unique educational programs using motion pictures, television, or photography, goes to David Master, founder of nonprofit educational organization ACME Animation, for his innovations in distance learning for animators.
The Technicolor/Hebert T. Kalmus Gold Medal, recognizing outstanding contributions to the development of color films, processing, techniques or equipment for making color motion pictures, will be given to Michael E. Ryan. Ryan is the film technology director for entertainment imaging at Eastman Kodak Company, and is receiving the award for his contributions to the development of color negative film products and his pioneering work in electron sensitization technology.
The Fuji Gold Medal for the design and development of techniques and equipment advancing photographic or electronic image origination will go to Dr. Albert Theuwissen, professor at Delft University of Technology and founder of Harvest Imaging, for his contributions to solid-state image sensing.
The Samuel L. Warner Memorial Medal for design and development of methods and/or equipment for sound-on-film motion pictures will go to Shawn F. Jones, chief engineer and chief technology officer of NT Audio, for his work in optical negative recording and multiformat digital mastering.
The following industry leaders will be named SMPTE Fellows: Merrick Ackermans, engineering technology fellow, Turner Broadcasting Systems; Jerry Butler, senior director interconnection projects, Public Broadcasting Service; Tze Cheong Fung, production director, Digital Magic; Matthew S. Goldman, VP, Technology, TANDBERG Television; Al Kovalick, Avid fellow, Avid Technology; Lenny Lipton, CTO, Real D; John C. Miller, product technical specialist, Eastman Kodak Company; Ann Marie Rohaly, senior program manager, Microsoft; Ernesto Santos, marketing and sales director, MOG Solutions; and J. Patrick Waddell, technical marketing manager, Harmonic.
