Dr Tinku Acharya is an inventor, entrepreneur and internationally acclaimed technologist. He received his BSc (Honours in Physics), BTech and MTech in Computer Science from the University of Calcutta, and his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Central Florida, USA.

Dr Acharya was elevated to the ‘Fellow of IEEE’ in 2010 for his “contributions to the advancement of very large scale integration algorithms and architectures for electronic image processing”. He became the first innovator to receive the prestigious ‘NASI-Reliance Platinum Jubilee Award for Innovation in Physical Sciences’ from the National Academy of Science in India (2009). He is a recipient of the first ‘Acharya PC Ray Memorial Award’ for distinguished achievements in science and entrepreneurship from the Institute of Pulmocare and Research (2010). Dr Acharya received the ‘Outstanding Engineer’ award from IEEE Southwest Region, USA and ‘Engineer of the Year’ award from IEEE Phoenix, USA (both 2008). He was recognised as the ‘Most Prolific Inventor’ in Intel Corporation worldwide (1999 and 2001), and in Intel Arizona site for five consecutive years (1997-2001). As a Principal Engineer in Intel Corporation (USA), Dr Acharya led several R&D teams to develop electronic imaging systems, digital camera, reprographics architecture for colour photocopiers, high performance microprocessor, among others. He developed the key ‘image processing chain’ and related algorithms to pragmatically map them into a small footprint silicon for the first dual-mode digital camera (the first webcam from Intel).

His work significantly influenced the design of digital cameras in the early days, and paved the way for the transition of analog to digital photography. It also laid the foundation for the MXP5800/5400 processor from Intel, which was capable of processing 10 BOPS and enabled successful implementation of a set of Internet-capable photocopiers from Xerox and Fuji-Xerox. DR TINKU ACHARYA Fellow IEEE, Founder & Managing Director, Videonetics Technology Pvt Ltd tinku.acharya@videonetics.com Dr Acharya’s work in VLSI mapping of lifting-based Discrete Wavelet Transformation with reduced computation is pioneering. The versatile architectural framework to design the very ‘first’ VLSI architecture for JPEG2000 image compression standard is well-known in literature. His JPEG2000 book is the definitive reference book in academia and industry circles worldwide, for both software and VLSI implementation of this standard. His work on the ‘co-processor architecture for fast protein structure prediction’ in bioinformatics is the first published VLSI architecture known in this domain. Besides Intel Corporation, Dr Acharya has served in many organisations worldwide – AT&T Bell Laboratories, University of Maryland Institute of Advanced Computer Studies at College Park (USA), Department of Electrical Engineering in Arizona State University (USA), Avisere Inc (USA), Intellectual Ventures (Bangalore), and visiting professor in Electronics & Electrical Communication Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He has collaborated with many institutions worldwide including Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Eastman Kodak, Bengal Engineering and Science University, Indian Statistical Institute, among others.

After returning from the USA in 2008, Dr Acharya founded Videonetics as an R&D-led organisation with the mission to solve challenging problems facing the world, by creating and leveraging Indian intellectual property and deploying Indian technologies worldwide. Videonetics is now a global player developing applications based on its Intelligent Video Management Software and Intelligent Video Analytics, across various domains including Intelligent Traffic Management, Smart City Surveillance, Retail Analytics, Critical Infrastructure Surveillance, and more.