Alumni

Narayanswamy shapes the future of imaging, one lens at a time

Charles Ferrer — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 19:00:02 +0000

Narayanswamy shapes the future of imaging, one lens at a time Charles Ferrer Wed, 07/09/2025 - 13:00

Charles Ferrer

Ram Narayanswamy (PhDElEngr’96) has spent more than 30 years pushing the limits of what cameras and sensors can see and how they see it. With a career spanning optics and 3D sensing at organizations like NASA and Intel Corporation, the CU Boulder alumnus and PhD graduate in electrical engineering has spent his career building innovative imaging systems.

Now a fellow and head of technical marketing at NIL Technology, Narayanswamy is helping to usher in the next generation of ultra-compact imaging systems through flat optics, also known as meta-optics, advancing lenses in the same way compact discs once revolutionized analog music.

“A vinyl record is analog. A CD is digital,” Narayanswamy said. “Meta-optics does the same for lenses, bringing them into the digital age using materials and manufacturing processes from the semiconductor industry.”

His interest in optics began during his time at NASA’s Langley Research Center, where he worked in a group that conducted research in imaging. After four years at NASA, he decided to pursue a PhD in electrical engineering.

His doctoral research, which was advised by former CU Boulder Professor Kristina M. Johnson, focused on detecting cancer cells in cervical smear slides. This work combined optical signal processing and what would now be called machine vision and artificial intelligence.

“Most medical screening slides are normal and hence a medical professional’s attention examining the slide can fade and miss abnormal cells,” he said. “We developed a system that could flag abnormal cells. With the doctor focusing on just the abnormal cells, the screening test leads to improved decision making and diagnosis.”

That fusion of optical systems and artificial intelligence design laid the foundation for a career that would help define how modern imaging technologies are built and applied.

Upon completing his PhD, Narayanswamy joined CDM Optics, a CU Boulder spin-out company, often credited with pioneering the field of computational imaging.

A legacy of innovation and impact

NIL Technology wins the prestigious Prism Award for the NILT metaEye™. (Credit: SPIE Photonics West)

Narayanswamy’s technical accomplishments are as numerous as they are influential. He holds 13 patents; has authored over 40 technical papers and presentations; and helped pioneer technologies like wavefront coding, array cameras and depth sensors.

In 1991, while at NASA, he co-authored a seminal paper on camera characterization, better known today as the ‘slanted-edge MTF test,’ a worldwide standard to measure camera modulation transfer function. While at Intel Labs, he incubated Intel’s RealSense multi-camera system, which won the Best of Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2015 award.

Most recently, his team at NIL Technology won the 2025 SPIE Prism Award for the metaEye™, an ultra-compact eye-tracking camera designed for AR/VR glasses.

Narayanswamy said that the technology could transform user experiences across a wide range of use-cases, including manufacturing, retail, entertainment and health tech.

“Imagine wearing AR glasses that know what you’re looking at,” he said. “In a grocery store, it could show you product info. As a tourist, it could identify cultural and historic landmarks. At a party, it could remind you of someone’s name.”

In a semiconductor fab setting or a hospital operating theater, he said, it can deliver the relevant information needed to complete the complex tasks. The technology also has other powerful applications in medicine and diagnostics.

“There’s huge potential in health technology. I can’t share specifics because of proprietary reasons,” he added, “but if you look up eye tracking in medical technology, you’ll find many exciting developments.”

Narayanswamy was key in bringing the camera project to life, not just as a technical expert, but also strategically for broad use in industry.

“My idea was: let’s not just offer nano-optics as a capability; let’s show it in action. We needed a “show and tell’ moment that would make this science accessible to a broader audience,” he said. “That’s what the metaEyeTM camera does. Metaoptics was no longer just academic, but ready for use commercially.”

What’s next in imaging

Looking ahead, Narayanswamy is excited about the evolution of computational imaging, where lenses, sensors and algorithms are co-designed for future applications.

“Most cameras are still designed like they were in the film era, but today, cameras are digital sensors feeding algorithms. In the future, most camera data won’t be seen by a person since it’ll be analyzed by AI,” he said. “The image becomes data and that data powers decisions.”

From cancer detection and eye tracking to driver safety monitoring and augmented reality, Narayanswamy’s work shows how optics and imaging are reshaping the way we interact with the world.

Narayanswamy's family bleeds black and gold as they all have graduated from CU. (Credit: Ram Narayanswamy)

CU Boulder roots and a legacy of giving back

Narayanswamy credits his time at CU Engineering with shaping his engineering and career journey.

“All my work, whether it’s lenses, sensors, algorithms or full camera systems, traces back to my time at the college,” he said.

He remains deeply connected to the college, serving on the Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering External Advisory Board and previously on the ATLAS Institute’s advisory board. Giving back, he says, is a way to support future engineers and honor the education that empowered his own success.

“I’ve had a great professional and academic career,” Narayanswamy said, “and I want today’s students, who are tomorrow’s leaders, to have the same kind of opportunities I had.”

His commitment to CU extends to his family. All three of his children earned degrees from the �Թ�� of Colorado — ranging from electrical engineering to creative technology & design and music — and his wife earned her master’s in computer science before becoming a high school math teacher.

Advice for the next generation

His advice for aspiring engineers is both broad and practical.

“Don’t restrict yourself. Electrical engineering is foundational since you can go into a wide range of new areas in robotics, aerospace, automotive, medical tech and pretty much anything. The core skills from signal processing, power systems to electromagnetics enable everything digital.”

He referenced how everything digital contains aspects of electrical and computer engineering inside, just like the famous ‘Intel inside’ commercial.

He also encourages students to be lifelong learners.

“This field is always evolving,” he said, “your learning doesn’t end at graduation; it just begins.”

CU Boulder alumnus Ram Narayanswamy is revolutionizing imaging technology through innovations in meta-optics and ultra-compact camera systems. His 30-year career spans NASA, Intel and now NIL Technology, where he's helping shape the future of how imaging and people see the world.

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First MS-EE on Coursera Graduate: Matt Daiter's Story

Rossette Reid — Tue, 06 May 2025 18:44:48 +0000

First MS-EE on Coursera Graduate: Matt Daiter's Story Rossette Reid Tue, 05/06/2025 - 12:44

No Undergrad, No Problem — How Matt Daiter Earned His CU Boulder MSEE Online

Matt Daiter became the first graduate of CU Boulder's online MS-EE on Coursera program without needing a traditional application process. He valued the program's flexibility, stating

"You can choose your own path, you can set your own rules, and you can just go into these niche areas that you really want to explore."

His success demonstrates how performance-based admissions opens doors for motivated students regardless of their academic background.

For more information, read the blog.

No Undergrad, No Problem — How Matt Daiter Earned His CU Boulder MSEE Online

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Interview with an MS-EE alumnus - Allen Xu

Anonymous — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Interview with an MS-EE alumnus - Allen Xu Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/03/2023 - 00:00

Learn how performance-based admissions, rigorous course content, and flexibility of the MS-EE on Coursera program at CU Boulder opened career doors for Allen Xu.

Allen Xu received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics before joining the MS-EE on Cousera program. He enrolled in the Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MS-EE) on Coursera program in September 2019 during the pilot launch.

In May 2021, Allen graduated with a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder. We asked Allen a series of questions about his journey with the program and how performance-based admission helped him achieve his goals.

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500 patents: CU Engineering alumnus now among top 100 most prolific inventors

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 21:43:04 +0000

500 patents: CU Engineering alumnus now among top 100 most prolific inventors Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/26/2022 - 15:43

Emily Adams

At this stage in his engineering career, John Melanson (ElEngrCompSci'74) is well aware of how people might view him.

“The stereotype would be ‘now you’re an old engineer, and you do things the same way you always have,’” he said. “I never suffered from that. I never found something that I wanted to do the same way.”

That could be why he just hit a huge milestone: 500 patents, putting Melanson among the top 100 most prolific inventors.

Many of those patents are in the field of audio and electronics, particularly in analog-to-digital signal processing technologies that are instrumental in today’s digital devices. Titled “Driver Circuitry and Operation,” his 500th patent was granted on June 21. He also has 68 pending U.S. patent applications.

Melanson has spent 30 years as an engineer with Cirrus Logic, which he joined when it purchased AudioLogic, a company he co-founded. He credits Cirrus Logic with providing the space for him to continue to be creative and explore new ways of doing things.

“We’ve developed a good attitude toward each other,” Melanson joked. “I go find something interesting to work on, and they've decided, ‘Well, whatever John's doing, it’s hopefully of some use to us, so we'll let him.’”

He also enjoys mentoring the next generation of engineers at Cirrus Logic.

“I love working with young engineers,” Melanson said. “I love working with people that have challenging ideas and different ways to do things and feeling a part of that.”

He credits CU Boulder with putting him on the path to a successful engineering career. Growing up in Boulder, Melanson was always making things — or unmaking them.

“Our neighbor was a chemistry department head, and I tried to go get chemicals that no young boys should be allowed to put their hands on,” he said. “I was always trying to make something that burned, blew up or caused a pretty fire.”

While a student at Fairview High School, he loved his math classes, had a summer programming job at the National Institute of Standards and Technology — where his dad worked — and ran a side business repairing teletype machines. But when it came time for college, he said he wasn’t the kind of student most admissions departments were looking for.

“CU did some really good things for me because they basically let me in when I was not really admissible anywhere,” Melanson said.

He said he’s grateful for professors like Dick Roberts, who saw his potential and allowed him to take a flexible approach to course requirements.

“I got good grades for the first time in my life, and I really, really studied and really liked it, so it was a good environment for me,” Melanson said.

Some of those professors became long-term friends and provided advice as Melanson was starting his first company, NBI, in 1972. His next company would evolve into digital audio companies that would become AudioLogic, which was Cirrus Logic’s first audio customer in 1986.

Melanson’s father also played a unique role in his professional pursuits.

“His hearing had been damaged, and I've been interested in how hearing works and how human perception works,” he said. “Here was somebody who had damaged hearing and could describe to me what he was hearing, who knew what frequencies and sine waves and this technical gobbledygook meant. He was retired and had infinite time to answer my questions about what things sounded like when I changed them and processed them.”

During his time at Cirrus Logic, Melanson has split his time between Austin, Texas, and a home in Estes Park, Colorado. Recently, he bought a home in Larkspur, Colorado, but the move proved challenging, thanks to all of his hobby equipment. Rolling mills, oxyacetylene torches, a 1,000-pound band saw, 5-horsepower table saw — you get the picture.

Melanson calls engineering the “best career you could ever have.”

“It's fun – you get to work on neat and interesting things,” he said. “When you get done with that, you get to work on something else.”

So what has Melanson always wanted to tackle, but hasn’t gotten a chance to yet?

“Something will probably come up this afternoon.”

Photo courtesy of Cirrus Logic

Many of John Melanson's patents are in the field of audio and electronics, particularly in analog-to-digital signal processing technologies that are instrumental in today’s digital devices.

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Interview with an MS-EE alumnus - Luis Plata

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 18:53:14 +0000

Interview with an MS-EE alumnus - Luis Plata Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/23/2022 - 12:53

Discover how Luis Plata was able to gain a master’s degree and graduate certificate while working full time.

Luis Plata was a senior mechanical engineer before joining the MS-EE on Coursera Program.

In January 2021, Luis obtained the Industrial Internet of Things Graduate Certificate, and in December 2021, Luis graduated with a master's degree in electrical engineering from the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder and attended the May 2022 graduation ceremony.

Read more about his experience with performance-based admission in the MS-EE on Coursera program here.

Discover how Luis Plata was able to gain a master’s and certificate while working full time.

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Interview with an MS-EE alumnus - John Trytko

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 00:31:00 +0000

Interview with an MS-EE alumnus - John Trytko Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/20/2022 - 18:31

Learn how performance-based admissions, affordability, and flexibility of the MS-EE on Coursera program at CU Boulder helped John Trytko achieve his goals.

John Trytko graduated with a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder.

We interviewed John regarding his background, active role, and overall experience with the Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MS-EE) program, hosted by Coursera, and how the program helped him achieve his goals.

For more information, read the blog.

Learn how performance-based admissions, affordability, and flexibility of the MS-EE on Coursera program at CU Boulder helped John Trytko achieve his goals.

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Mission ready: Alumnus launches startup at CU to inspire climate action

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 14:46:04 +0000

Mission ready: Alumnus launches startup at CU to inspire climate action Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/14/2022 - 08:46

Scott King's goal with Mission Zero is to harness the knowledge of faculty, passion of students and growing interest from alumni and the business community to engage people in changing their behavior.

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Alumna wins federal honor for 3D printing innovations

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 22:31:14 +0000

Alumna wins federal honor for 3D printing innovations Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/21/2021 - 15:31

Catherine Arnold

When Callie Higgins (MElEngr’14, PhD’17) went to Washington, D.C., this fall to receive a federal medal for emerging leaders, she found herself sharing the Kennedy Center stage with two researchers who developed the COVID-19 vaccine.

It was humbling, said Higgins, “but it also helped fortify why I want to continue in public service and stay at NIST and in the government. I do research to give back to everyone, and I hope my research will give back.”

A researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Boulder Laboratory, Higgins was among 13 winners of the 2021 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal, honoring excellence in the federal workforce.

Known as the Oscars of government service, the “Sammies” are allocated by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. Finalists for the medal were selected from more than 350 nominations.

Higgins was honored for her invention of groundbreaking technology to detect, remedy, and reverse-engineer microscopic flaws that threaten the safety and reliability of 3D-printed products. The work potentially revolutionizes the medical, plastics, coating, optics and additive manufacturing fields.

She started at NIST as a postdoctoral fellow in 2017, after completing her PhD in Professor Bob McLeod’s lab. NIST hired her as a research engineer in 2019, and Higgins said she is thrilled with the collaboration available in Boulder and the state.

“Colorado is an incredible hotbed of researchers, with so much talent in industry, government and academia,” Higgins said. “And being at CU Boulder was a terrific opportunity to have such access to collaborators. So many people here see value in collaborating, not reinventing the wheel. That’s had me excited, pushing this field forward with wonderful collaborators.”

At NIST, Higgins joined forces with fellow research engineer Jason Killgore to launch the 3D-printing project in 2018. As a postdoc, Higgins had proposed finding ways to detect manufacturing imperfections that occur in 3D printing, as part of understanding fundamental properties of materials containing natural or synthetic substances called photopolymers that contain very large molecules and react to light.

Unseen, microscale weaknesses sometimes occur in materials as polymers or plastic form into a solid. A 3D printed heart or lung, for instance, could fail if its makeup contained tiny flaws.

To solve the problem, Higgins and the team developed a method to measure how and where a material’s physical composition changes in real time at the smallest proportions as curing occurs. Prior to Higgins’ work, product analysis could only be done at millimeter-length scales, but her method allows products to be assessed at the sub micrometer level.

She and her team continue to research and refine the work, which Higgins calls “an opportunity to dive deeply into the fundamental science of this really neat printing technology, knowing our research is adding value and driving innovation for the U.S. in the commerce space.”

At CU, Higgins learned about photopolymer manufacturing by building models, and she began applying for roles in tissue engineering at the end of her doctoral program. She was eager to take her skills into that field, which combines cells, engineering, materials methods, and biochemistry to restore or replace human tissues.

Now that her work is giving back in that field, she has hopes for the near future.

“I would like to see us get closer to printing a small version of a lung, a kidney, or bone cartilage interface,” Higgins said. “I think we are getting very close to doing that.”

Higgins was among 13 winners of the 2021 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal, honoring excellence in the federal workforce.

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CU alum creates AI robots to sort recyclables

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jul 2021 19:28:20 +0000

CU alum creates AI robots to sort recyclables Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/07/2021 - 13:28

Matanya Horowitz (ApMath, CompSci, Econ, ElCompEngr’10; MElEngr’10) is the founder of AMP Robotics. His vision? Use artificial intelligence to elevate the recycling industry.

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Alumna a finalist for federal Service to America Medal

Anonymous — Thu, 06 May 2021 19:29:35 +0000

Alumna a finalist for federal Service to America Medal Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/06/2021 - 13:29

Callie Higgins (MElEngr'14, PhD'17) is a materials research engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

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