Bedabrata Pain

Background

Bedabrata Pain was born on March 27, 1963, in Calcutta, West Bengal, India. His father was born in Dhaka and his mother came from Faridpur, linking his family background with the Bengali cultural region of eastern South Asia.

Pain attended St. Lawrence High School and South Point High School in Calcutta. He later pursued engineering and applied physics, moving from India to the United States for graduate study and a scientific career before turning increasingly toward filmmaking and historical subjects.

Education

Pain attended St. Lawrence High School and South Point High School in Calcutta. St. Lawrence, founded in the nineteenth-century educational tradition of the Christian Brothers, became one of Kolkata's established schools, while South Point developed into a prominent modern school in the city.

He received a Bachelor of Technology degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 1986. IIT Kharagpur, established in 1951 as India's first Indian Institute of Technology, combined advanced technical education with the country's post-independence program of scientific and industrial development.

Pain continued at Columbia University in New York, receiving a master's degree in electrical engineering in 1989 and a PhD in electrical engineering in 1993. Columbia's applied-physics and engineering programs provided a research setting for his work on semiconductor devices, imaging sensors, and integrated electronics.

Career

Pain began his scientific career in the early 1990s at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology. He joined JPL as a postdoctoral research associate in 1993 and became a member of the technical staff in 1994. His work involved image sensors, focal-plane technology, CMOS active-pixel imagers, infrared sensors, and integrated detectors for space and other demanding imaging applications.

At JPL, Pain was part of the research community that developed CMOS active-pixel image-sensor technology. The technology integrated photosensitive pixels and electronic processing in semiconductor circuitry, supporting compact, low-power cameras for scientific instruments and later consumer and professional imaging systems. His research included low-noise and low-power imaging, on-focal-plane analog-to-digital conversion, back-illuminated sensors, and sensor systems for space science.

Pain also taught and lectured on CMOS imaging at the University of California, Los Angeles, and participated in international image-sensor conferences. He left NASA in December 2008 after approximately fifteen years of work at JPL. Scientific publications and patent records associate him with numerous inventions in active-pixel sensors, image processing, focal-plane electronics, and array-camera systems.

Pain subsequently developed a career in film. He served as executive producer of Amu, a 2005 feature directed by Shonali Bose, and worked as a researcher on the documentary Lifting the Veil. He wrote Behind the Events in Kashmir and directed, produced, and co-wrote Chittagong, a historical film about the 1930s uprising in British India. Chittagong was produced by Jonai Productions and used digital imaging technology related to the sensor research with which Pain had been associated at JPL.

Achievements

• Pain was a member of the research team that developed CMOS active-pixel image-sensor technology at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The technology combined light-sensitive pixels with integrated electronic processing and became important in compact digital imaging for scientific, professional, and consumer applications.

• Pain's scientific work resulted in numerous invention patents involving CMOS image sensors, focal-plane electronics, back-illuminated imagers, array cameras, and related imaging systems.

• Pain directed Chittagong, a historical film about the 1930s uprising in British India, and combined his filmmaking with digital imaging technology related to his earlier scientific work.

Works

• article

  • CMOS Active Pixel Image Sensors for Highly Integrated Imaging Systems

    (IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits paper co-authored by...)

    1997

  • CMOS Active Pixel Sensor Star Tracker with Regional Electronic Shutter

    (Research paper co-authored by Pain on a CMOS active-pixel...)

    1997

  • CMOS Active Pixel Sensor with On-Chip Successive Approximation Analog-to-Digital Converter

    (Research paper co-authored by Pain on integrating analog-...)

    1997

  • Progress in CMOS Active Pixel Image Sensors

    (Research paper co-authored by Pain on the development and...)

    1994

  • Multiresolution Image Sensor

    (Technical paper co-authored by Pain on image-sensor archi...)

    1997

  • 256×256 CMOS Active Pixel Sensor Camera-on-a-Chip

    (Technical paper co-authored by Pain describing a CMOS act...)

    1996

• book

  • Behind the Events in Kashmir

    (Book written by Pain on events and political developments...)

• documentary film

  • Lifting the Veil

    (Documentary about the social impact of globalization and ...)

    1997

• feature film

  • Amu

    (Hindi feature film directed by Shonali Bose; Pain served ...)

    2005
  • Chittagong

    (Hindi historical feature film directed, produced, and co-...)

    2012

• technical report

  • Analysis and Enhancement of Low-Light-Level Performance Photodiode-Type CMOS Active Pixel Imagers Operated with Sub-Threshold Reset

    (NASA technical report co-authored by Pain on improving lo...)

    1999

Views

Pain has described scientific research and filmmaking as connected by curiosity, imagination, and a willingness to explore unfamiliar subjects. His public reflections emphasize exploration as an intellectual activity that can proceed through theory, technology, and creative work as well as through physical travel.

His films and documentary interests have focused on historical memory, political change, social consequences of globalization, and the relationship between individual lives and larger public events.

Interests

• Historical documentary and social subjects; image technology; filmmaking.

Connections

Pain was married to filmmaker Shonali Bose. Bose was a co-screenwriter of Chittagong, which Pain directed and produced.

Wife:

Shonali Bose

Filmmaker and co-screenwriter of Chittagong.

References

• 60th National Film Awards Official Catalogue Documents Chittagong, its director and producer, its historical subject, and its receipt of the Indira Gandhi Award for Best Debut Film of a Director.
  2013
• List of Awards Announced in Various Categories for the 60th National Film Awards Official award announcement identifying Pain as producer and director associated with the award-winning Chittagong.
  2013
• Bedabrata Pain: Jack of Many Trades Interview covering Pain's scientific work, CMOS camera technology, NASA career, patents, filmmaking, and personal reflections on exploration.
  2013
• Active Pixel Imager Research & Development Team Jet Propulsion Laboratory publication documenting Pain's participation in a team recognized for advances in CMOS active-pixel sensor technology.
  1998
• CMOS Active Pixel Image Sensors for Highly Integrated Imaging Systems Technical paper identifying Pain as a co-author of influential research on highly integrated CMOS active-pixel imaging systems.
  1997