Boulder, Colo. – InfoPrint Solutions Company, a Ricoh company, today announced that Dr. Joan Mitchell has been named the recipient of the 2011 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award.  The award, sponsored by Sony Corporation, is a result of Dr. Mitchell's immense contributions to a range of technology solutions including the invention of color printing algorithms, typewriter components and facsimile software.  IEEE is the world's largest professional association advancing technology for humanity.

Dr. Mitchell, who retired in 2009 after nearly 35 years of service to both IBM and InfoPrint Solutions, created an array of game-changing technologies still used today.  These contributions include the co-invention of the ribbon technology used in the IBM Quietwriter typewriter, which enabled more speed and efficiency than other typewriters on the market.  She also worked on the development of a data compression technique that was proposed to the CCITT standards for facsimile.  Another globally recognized creation was an algorithm which is the foundation of G4 data compression used in Internet and fax machines.  Added to this, Dr. Mitchell has written and contributed to four books throughout her career and holds 110 U.S. patents for innovations in printing technology, data compression, image processing and JPEG imaging and coding.

"Dr. Mitchell's work has impacted our everyday lives from the digital cameras, fax machines, printers, scanners, to the image processing used on photos sent from the Mars space rover, to the Internet images that we look at every day," said Dr. Sandra Johnson, senior technical staff member at IBM and one of Mitchell's award endorsers.  "She is truly a technical innovator and leader, especially in the field on image compression theory and applications for printing technology and digital image processing."

In addition to her professional accomplishments, Dr. Mitchell served as a mentor and considers that time a personal highlight of her career.  As a mentor, Dr. Mitchell co-advised an employee on the development of a PhD thesis focused on improving the Discrete Cosine Transform, which won the MPEG IDCT contest.  Extending her expertise further, Dr. Mitchell wrote a mentoring book based on her experience at IBM, "Dr. Joan's Mentoring Book: Straight Talk about Taking Charge of Your Career."

"I am beyond honored to receive this impressive award, especially because I never expected to be remembered with such high regards after my retirement," said Mitchell.  "The most rewarding part of my job was always helping encourage the inventions and creations of others, because I've found that as much fun as it is to accomplish something, it's even better when you can help someone else do something great.  Showing someone they can fly has been invaluable to me and I am so pleased that I've been able to give wings to so many colleagues."

Dr. Mitchell is joined by another honored Fellow at InfoPrint Solutions, the highest and most prestigious technical designation employees can receive.  Dr. Mitchell is joined by colleague Larry M. Ernst, whose expertise lies in the area of print and image quality.  The company also continues to foster innovation and invention through its Distinguished Engineers which presently include Joe Czyszczewski, Reinhard Hohensee and Larry Teklits.

The IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award was named in honor of Dr. Masaru Ibuka, Honorary Chairman and Co-Founder of Sony Corporation, whose innovative achievements and leadership have been an inspiration to several generations of electrical, electronics, and computer engineers.  It was established by the IEEE Board of Directors in 1987 and the recipient is selected through the Technical Field Awards Council of the IEEE Awards Board.  Previous winners have included James Barton of TiVo, Inc, Eugene J. Polley of Zenith Electronics LLC and Ralph Henry Baer of R.H. Baer Consultants.