Rate My Professor Guy Meynants

Guy Meynants is a professor within the Faculty of Engineering Technology at KU Leuven's Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT), heading the Advise division that develops smart sensing systems and microelectronics for high-reliability environments. With nearly 30 years of experience, he specializes in CMOS image sensors, focusing on their operation in harsh radiation environments to mitigate degradation. He earned his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electronics engineering from KU Leuven in 1994 and 1998, respectively. During his Ph.D. at IMEC, he began developing CMOS active pixel sensors for space applications, co-designing the radiation-tolerant VMC camera for the Mars Express mission—operational for over 20 years—and the STAR-1000 image sensor.

Meynants co-founded Imec spin-off FillFactory in 2000, advancing low-noise high dynamic range pixels for industrial, digital photography, and space uses. From 2006 to 2007, he worked at IMEC-NL on ultra-low power analog sensor interfaces. In 2007, he co-founded CMOSIS as CEO, later becoming VP R&D and CTO, leading development of sensors for machine vision, aerospace—including extreme-UV imagers for ESA's Solar Orbiter and engineering cameras plus the Supercam for NASA's Mars Perseverance rover—broadcast, cinema, and high-end photography. Following AMS's 2015 acquisition of CMOSIS, he served as engineering fellow until early 2019. He then became managing director of Photolitics, a Bulgarian industrial image sensor startup, and joined KU Leuven as research assistant in 2019, ascending to professor in October 2021. He teaches courses on image sensors and processing, mathematics, control systems design, and entrepreneurship. Meynants holds 33 patents in image sensors and analog circuits, has co-authored over 70 publications—including highly cited papers such as 'Random addressable 2048×2048 active pixel image sensor' (2002, 191 citations) and 'Total dose and displacement damage effects in a radiation-hardened CMOS APS' (2003, 186 citations)—and contributes to the field as board member, webmaster, and former secretary of the International Image Sensor Society, Technical Program Chair of IISW 2021, and General Co-Chair of IISW 2023.