Academy Honors 17 Sci-Tech Achievements in 2021
Honorees include the inventors of the Teradek Bolt and the Amimon wireless chipset, which together enable wireless video transmission on set.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored 17 scientific and technical achievements — represented by 55 individual award recipients and two companies — in a virtual presentation Feb. 13.
Among the recipients of Scientific and Engineering Awards were the inventors of the Teradek Bolt and the Amimon chipset, which together enable wireless video transmission on set. Nicolaas Verheem, Greg Smokler and Ilya Issenin were honored for the development of the ruggedized Teradek Bolt, and Zvi Reznic, Meir Feder, Guy Dorman and Ron Yogev were honored for the development of the Amimon wireless chipset.
The Teradek Bolt 4K wireless video system transmits 4K HDR to multiple concurrent receivers with high link reliability, superior signal strength and high security. More than 40,000 Bolt transmitters and 60,000 Bolt receivers are in use today, owned by Steadicam operators, DITs, drone pilots production companies and rental houses.
“We’re honored to receive this award for our development of Teradek’s Bolt,” said Verheem, founder and CEO of Teradek. “The Bolt was forged over almost a decade of hard work, with a relentless focus on the customer …. [but] it must be said that we stood on the shoulders of giants, not only our colleagues in California and Israel, but also the many groundbreaking scientists [who] made the magic of wireless video become a reality.”
Amimon’s exclusive technology brings untethered mobility to cameras and other video equipment, allowing 4K HDR content anywhere on any remote display. Its patented zero-latency technology enables instantaneous transmission of uncompressed video across a wireless link. The proprietary chipset is featured within Teradek Bolt wireless video systems and SmallHD wireless monitors, allowing camera operators greater creative flexibility.
“We’d like to thank the Academy for honoring us with this award,” said Reznic, Amimon’s co-founder and chief technology officer. “When we started Amimon in 2004, we knew the challenge of low-latency video transmission was high, but we were ready for it. What caught us by surprise was the type of markets we ended up serving; we started with consumer products and ended up in endoscopy, in drones and on movie sets.”
You can watch the Academy’s edited presentation ceremony here:
The complete list of honorees is as follows:
Technical Achievement Awards (Academy Certificates)
Masato Nakashima, Koichi Ueno, Junji Sakuda and Junro Yonemitsu for the development of the Eizo auto-calibrating SDR monitors that incorporate a built-in sensor, digital uniformity equalizer and accompanying SDK.
Alejandro Arango, Gary Martinez, Robert Derry and Glenn Derry for the system design, ergonomics, engineering and workflow integration of the widely adopted Technoprops head-mounted camera system.
Babak Beheshti and Scott Robitille for the development of the compact, stand-alone, phase-accurate genlock synchronization and recording module, and Ian Kelly and Dejan Momcilovic for the technical direction and workflow integration, of the Standard Deviation head-mounted camera system.
Sven Woop and Carsten Benthin for core development, Attila T. Áfra for motion-picture feature development and Manfred Ernstand Ingo Wald for early research and technical direction, of the Intel Embree Ray-Tracing Library.
Hayley Iben, Mark Meyer, John Anderson and Andrew Witkin for the Taz Hair Simulation System.
Stephen Bowline for the ILM HairCraft Dynamics System.
Kelly Ward Hammel, Aleka McAdams, Toby Jones, Maryann Simmons and Andy Milne for the Walt Disney Animation Studios Hair Simulation System.
Niall Ryan, Christoph Sprenger and Gilles Daviet for the Synapse Hair Simulation System.
Jens-Jørn Stokholm and Ole Moesmann for their innovative development of miniature high-performance DPA lavalier microphones.
Chris Countryman and Omer T. Inan for their engineering of the subminiature high-performance Countryman Associates lavalier microphones.
Fredrik Limsäter, Björn Rydahl and Mattias Lagergren for the design, architecture and engineering of Ftrack Studio.
Don Parker for the product vision and design, Matt Daw for the core architecture and Isaac Reuben, Colin Withers and Neil Brandt for the foundational engineering, of the Autodesk Shotgun postproduction tracking system.
Scientific and Engineering Awards (Academy Plaques)
Zvi Reznic, Meir Feder, Guy Dorman and Ron Yogev for the development of the Amimon wireless chipset, which enables untethered, high-quality, on-set, encrypted digital video monitoring with sub-frame latency.
Nicolaas Verheem, Greg Smokler and Ilya Issenin for the development of the ruggedized Teradek Bolt wireless video transmission system for on-set remote monitoring.
Alexey Lukin and the Team of Mathematicians, Software Engineers, Sound Designers and Product Specialists of iZotope, Inc. for the development of the RX audio-processing system.
Jeff Bloom, Guy McNally and Nick Rose for the original concept and engineering of the Wordfit System for automatic ADR synchronization, and John Ellwood and Jonathan Newland for the engineering and development of VocALign and Revoice Pro.
Sanken Microphone Company Limited for the original innovation and continuous refinement of the Sanken COS-11 series of miniature lavalier microphones.
The Academy also recently published this short video on the history of the Sci-Tech Awards:
