Inventors of Charge-Coupled Device and Founders of Learning Factory Receive Highest Engineering Honors for 2006

WASHINGTON—The engineering profession’s highest honors for 2006, presented by the National Academies’ National Academy of Engineering (NAE), recognize an invention that revolutionized imaging technologies and an undergraduate education program designed to create leaders in engineering by solving challenges posed by industry.

Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith will share the Charles Stark Draper Prize—a $500,000 annual award that honors engineers whose accomplishments have significantly benefited society—“for the invention of the Charge-Coupled Device (CCD), a light-sensitive component at the heart of digital cameras and other widely used imaging technologies.”

Jens E. Jorgensen, John S. Lamancusa, Lueny Morell, Allen L. Soyster, and José Zayas-Castro will receive the Bernard M. Gordon Prize—a $500,000 award issued annually that recognizes innovation in engineering and technology education—“for creating the Learning Factory, where multidisciplinary student teams develop engineering leadership skills by working with industry to solve real-world problems.”

The prizes will be presented at a gala dinner in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 21.

The Charles Stark Draper Prize
At Bell Laboratories in 1969, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith were brainstorming about a way for semiconductors to store data and compete with new magnetic bubble memory technologies. “We were always coming up with new ideas, but most of them didn’t work,” joked Boyle. One day, however, they sketched out the design of the CCD, and soon researchers at Bell Laboratories and other companies were abuzz about the tiny, simple device. Boyle and Smith’s invention became the first practical solid-state imaging device.

“Because they are small, accurate, and reliable, CCDs have found many applications as imaging devices,” said Smith. They have become a ubiquitous component of electronics such as digital cameras, video cameras, and scanners. They are essential to many medical imaging devices, such as the tiny cameras that permit diagnostic procedures and smaller surgical incisions. Because CCDs are much more sensitive than photographic film, they are now used in space telescopes and remote sensing cameras. The Hubble Space Telescope, Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and the many surveillance satellites circling Earth all incorporate the rugged and energy-efficient device and are thus able to transmit spectacular images to the world.

The CCD’s flat array of semiconductor capacitors detects photons, and each capacitor holds an electrical charge that is proportional to the intensity of light striking it. Boyle and Smith’s device was novel because it could hold this discrete, isolated charge, and then move it without circuitry interconnects to a single output detector. This makes the device very sensitive. The CCD’s electronic read-out can be readily digitized and displayed and analyzed by a computer.

The Bernard M. Gordon Prize
The Learning Factory was developed to produce engineering graduates who could easily translate engineering theory into practice and manage projects independently. In this innovative undergraduate program, students tackle real problems from industry, such as designing a collapsible crutch, turning coal ash into a pavement, and making the mechanism that adjusts the position of car seatbacks safer. Multidisciplinary teams of students define and characterize the problem, build a solution prototype, write a business proposal, and make presentations about their idea. “Learning Factory students see firsthand the importance of teamwork, effective communication, and engineering ethics,” says NAE President Wm. A. Wulf. “Mastering such qualities is essential for engineers to become leaders in a dynamic workplace.”

The Learning Factory originated from a coalition between three universities, Sandia National Laboratories, and 36 industrial partners that shared a desire to give students firsthand experience in design, manufacturing, and business. A 1994 National Science Foundation/Advanced Research Projects Agency grant funded the creation of the Learning Factory as a Manufacturing Engineering Education Partnership (MEEP).

Within three years, the university partners—Pennsylvania State University, the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPRM), and the University of Washington (UW)—successfully integrated the Learning Factory into their institutions and curricula. Since then, Learning Factory concepts and course materials have spread to other departments within these institutions, and to other universities in the U.S. and Latin America. More than 10,000 students have created over 1,200 Learning Factory design projects involving more than 200 industry partners.

Jens E. Jorgensen is Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington. He led facilities development at all three partner universities and directed the Learning Factory at UW until his retirement in 2000.

John S. Lamancusa is professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Learning Factory at Pennsylvania State University. He was a principal investigator there, and designed the Product Realization curriculum, the Product Dissection course, and the facilities for the university’s Learning Factory.

Lueny Morell is the Hewlett Packard Co.‘s director of university relations for Latin America and former professor of chemical engineering at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. She led the Learning Factory curriculum development at UPRM, and continues to conduct dissemination workshops and assessment activities. More than 35 Learning Factory workshops have been offered in the U.S. and abroad since 1998.

Allen L. Soyster is professor and dean of the College of Engineering at Northeastern University. When he was head of the department of industrial engineering at Penn State, Soyster led the administration of the MEEP and was responsible for assembling the Learning Factory faculty and staff and for establishing the Industry Advisory Board.

José L. Zayas-Castro, professor and chair of industrial and management systems engineering at the University of South Florida (USF), established the Learning Factory at UPRM and has adapted Learning Factory concepts to other U.S. universities. In 1999 Zayas-Castro implemented the Entrepreneurial Manufacturing Innovation Learning Experience program at the University of Missouri at Columbia. At USF, he has redesigned the capstone project to include elements of the Learning Factory.

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The Draper Prize was established in 1988 at the request of the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Inc., Cambridge, Mass., to honor the memory of “Doc” Draper, the “father of inertial navigation,” and to increase public understanding of the contributions of engineering and technology. The prize is awarded annually.

The Gordon Prize was established in 2001 as a biennial prize recognizing new modalities and experiments in education that develop effective engineering leaders. Recognizing the potential to spur a revolution in engineering education, NAE announced in 2003 that the prize would be awarded annually.

The National Academy of Engineering is an independent, nonprofit institution. Its membership consists of the nation’s premier engineers, who are elected by their peers for seminal contributions to engineering. The academy provides leadership and guidance to government on the application of engineering resources to social, economic, and security problems. Established in 1964, NAE operates under the congressional charter granted to the National Academy of Sciences in 1863.

For additional information about these and other prizes, contact Sherrill Fortinberry, NAE awards administrator, at 202-334-1237 or

, or Randy Atkins, NAE senior media relations officer at 202-334-1508 or

. Visit the NAE awards site at http://www.nae.edu/awards.