Xerox honors top inventors with Anne Mulcahy Award
- Researchers based at the Xerox Research Center in Webster receive company's highest honor.
More than 400 local Xerox Corp. employees received patents in 2013, and members of the company's research and development community gathered Monday to recognize the inventors whose work has made the greatest impact.
Nine local researchers were singled out as recipients of the Anne Mulcahy Inventor Award, the company's highest recognition for innovation. The award is named for the company's former CEO and recognizes significant contributions to the creation of intellectual property.
This is the fifth year the award has been given, and Mulcahy was on hand to help recognize the 2013 honorees. They are:
• Kenny Dinh for contributions in photoreceptor design.
• Samir Kumar for innovations in design characteristics of toner.
• Donald Brown for work on product appearance and design strategy.
• Robert Herloski for contributions that enable low-cost high-quality printing.
• Paul Conlon for technologies critical to the Xerox ConenctKey systems.
• Dave Mantell for his image processing work in the advanced technology group.
• David Salgado for workflow improvements and increased print job capabilities.
• Beilei Xu for computer vision algorithms in healthcare and transportation.
• Peter Paul for innovations in managing large unstructured data.
All of the recipients are based at the Xerox Research Center in Webster.
Mulcahy, who served as Xerox CEO from 2001 to 2009, said the company's focus on innovation was what helped it survive tough times.
"Innovation is what has defined and differentiated Xerox throughout its history," she said.
"Stay focused on solving the world's biggest challenges," she urged the crowd of several hundred in attendance. "Our future will always be tied to the innovation that's fueled by the creative capabilities of those of you who sit in this room."
The company received more than 1,000 new patents in 2013, according to Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox's Chief Technology Officer and the president of Xerox's Innovation Group. Roughly half of those patents were issued to researchers who work in Monroe County.
"Patents serve as a reminder of how important new ideas are for our company," Vandebroek said, and that's particularly true as the company expands its research into new technologies.
"These folks here today are working in areas way beyond what (xerography inventor) Chester Carlson could have imagined," she said.
SLAHMAN@gannett.com