Engineering news
2015 IET Faraday Medal Winner, Professor Kees Schouhamer Immink FIEEE FAES FSMPTE
Professor Kees Schouhamer Immink is founder and president of Turing Machines Inc, a company based in the Netherlands.
Born in Rotterdam in 1946, Professor Immink received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Rotterdam Academy of Engineering in 1967, and his master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from the Eindhoven University of Technology in 1976 and 1985 respectively.
Today, Immink is regarded as one of the most prolific inventors in the field of consumer electronics of the late 20th Century. His work as a scholar and practitioner of electrical engineering has seen him not only gain world-wide recognition in his area of expertise, but also seen him decorated as a Knight of the Order of Oranje-Nassau – a historic and highly prestigious title given to those who have made an outstanding contribution to Dutch Society. He’s also been recognised as one of the leading pioneers behind the digital revolution.
Starting off his career with Phillips – where he remained for 25 years – he went on to become its Principal Engineer in the creation and development of digital video and audio products. It was while at Phillips that Immink conducted experiments with digital recording that lay the foundation for all digital optical storage media. As part of his research, he also invented a novel coding method, EFM, which offers excellent resilience to disc defects.
It’s thanks to Professor Immink’s pioneering work that the world has been able to enjoy the pleasures of recorded music and films, via the medium of Compact Discs, DVDs and Blu-ray Discs which all rely on the EFM coding technique. As a result of his work in producing the coding for DVDs and Blu-ray discs, Immink received a personal technical Emmy Award in 2004.
What’s more Professor Immink’s story doesn’t just stop there. In 1998 he founded his own company called Turing Machines Inc, and has been influential, along with his colleagues, in improving the reliability of hard disk drives and solid-state (Flash) memories. In a mission to share his knowledge, he has also written around 150 research papers on so called ‘constrained coding’, a type of code usually found in digital storage systems and transmission systems. In fact his monograph ‘Codes for Mass Storage Systems’ has been recognised as a global classic having been translated into Chinese and Japanese from the original English edition.
As a result of his outstanding contribution and achievements in the field of engineering, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) will be honouring Professor Immink with its highest honour – The Faraday Medal.
The IET’s Faraday Medal is a bronze medal established to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the first Ordinary Meeting of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, a predecessor organisation of the IET. The Faraday medal is the IET’s most prestigious award to an individual and dates back to 1922.
To find out more about this year’s IET Achievement Awards and to book your free place at the ceremony, visit www.theiet.org/achievement.