NCSA NEWS

Eastman Kodak Co. Wins NCSA Grand Challenge Award

released 05.01.96

 

Contact Information
Karen Green
Public Information Officer
kareng@ncsa.uiuc.edu
217.265.0748 phone
217.265.0460 fax

CHAMPAIGN, IL. - The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will present Eastman Kodak Co. with the 1996 Industrial Grand Challenge Award on Wednesday (May 1) on the U. of I. campus. The a ward recognizes Kodak for its use of leading-edge supercomputing and digital-science software technologies to make major advances in its photo compact disc capabilities.

The award presentation is scheduled for noon in the auditorium of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, 405 N. Mathews Ave., Urbana.

The annual Grand Challenge Award was established by NCSA in 1992 to recognize the corporation that accomplished during the past year a major competitive breakthrough application as a result of its NCSA partnership.

A major thrust of NCSA's mission is to help improve the competitiveness of U.S. industry. The 1996 award specifically recognizes the efforts of Terry Lund and his Digital Science team in Rochester, N.Y.

Kodak developed technology designed to allow people to zoom in and examine small details in particular images transmitted over the Internet. While people today can view low-resolution images over the World Wide Web, zooming in, enlarging or cropping thes e images can be difficult, if not impractical. Kodak's Digital Science solution, being made available free over the Internet, offers users a new level of interactivity with many pictures accessible over the Web.

The technology takes advantage of Kodak Photo CDs and the Kodak IMAGE PAC file-format technologies. The format stores pictures at five different quality levels from low to high resolution. The technology provides a significant leap in capability over ot her image formats that are in widespread use online now. Kodak Photo CD technology implemented with the NCSA partnership supports full 24-bit color with color management, allowing users to work with photo-realistic images. Users now will be able to inter actively crop and enlarge pictures, rotate them and zoom in to see fine details of images available online.

"Through a longstanding relationship, Kodak and NCSA scientists have combined their respective technological strengths in digital science and massively parallel computing to provide Internet users with a more powerful way to access high-quality images and explore them in new ways," said James W. Meyer, Kodak senior vice president, director of research and development, and chief technical officer. "The NCSA Grand Challenge Award confirms our long-held belief at Kodak that technology must be customer focus ed, delivering novel ways for people to use and enjoy pictures."

"The foundation for this award began 10 years ago when Kodak became our first Industrial Partner," said John Stevenson, NCSA's corporate officer and head of the Industrial Partners Program. "Their researchers have been constant leaders in exploring the b enefits of the evolving, leading-edge high-performance computing and communications technologies. The company's top management commitment, combined with the personal initiative of Terry Lund and his team, have led to this significant competitive advancem ent."

NCSA, a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is dedicated to advancing leading-edge technologies in information and high-performance computing and communications in academia and industry. The center is under the leadership of director Larry Smarr. Major funding to support its mission is received from the National Science Foundation, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, corporate partners, the state of Illinois and the University of Illinois.

Kodak is a world leader in developing, manufacturing and marketing photographic and imaging products. It serves a range of markets, including consumer and professional photography, printing and publishing, motion picture and television, office imaging, h ealth imaging and digital imaging. More information is available via the Kodak Web site: http://www.kodak.com.

 
 
More headlines