Gooitzen van der Wal, a senior principal research scientist in SRI’s Vision Systems Laboratory, has more than 34 years of experience in real-time system and chip design and advancing the state-of-the-art in vision technologies.

Specializing in low-power, high-performance, embedded vision systems, van der Wal was the principle architect for the Acadia® I and Acadia II application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Key vision functions of the Acadia chips are multi-resolution based low-latency multi-spectral fusion, contrast enhancement, image stabilization, video tracking, and computing depth from stereo cameras. Current projects involve hybrid architectures for a range of vision systems using a variety of processing platforms including the Acadia chip, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), multi-core processors, and smartphone/tablet processors.

Van der Wal received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering at Twente University, Netherlands. He started his career designing the RCA Telephone Codec chip at RCA Laboratories, in what is now SRI’s Princeton, NJ, location. He is a member of IEEE, has received 10 RCA/Sarnoff Achievement Awards, holds 18 U.S. patents, and has authored/co-authored 25 professional publications and presentations.