Mohit Gupta has just received a Sony Research Faculty Innovation Award for his work on single-photon imaging. Single-photon sensors are an exciting new sensor technology that have the unique ability to capture individual photons of light with extremely high timing resolution. This extreme sensitivity and time resolution makes single-photon sensors ideal candidates for low-power long-range 3D cameras. Gupta also received an NSF Career Award this year for pursuing this innovative line of research.
Gupta’s lab at UW-Madison is collaborating with Professor Edoardo Charbon at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, an expert in packing together a type of single-photon sensors called single-photon avalanche diodes, or SPADs, in ever-larger arrays. The researchers are using SPADs for what they call quanta burst photography — taking many images in bursts, and then processing those many images to squeeze one good picture from a poorly lit or fast-moving subject.
The Sony Research Faculty Innovation Awards are given annually and provide funding for cutting-edge academic research. Sony provides funding, and their researchers partner with university faculty “to engage in pioneering research that could drive new technologies, industries and the future.” Congratulations, Professor Gupta!