“To preserve our quality of life and edge in innovation, the nation needs more and better engineers. Penn State, as a leading provider of engineering graduates, must be in the forefront of this important mission. The Leonhard Center is spearheading this drive on behalf of the College of Engineering to define and produce World Class Engineers.”

James E. Carnes

President and CEO, Retired
Sarnoff Corporation

Dr. James E. Carnes retired as President and CEO of the Sarnoff Corporation, a subsidiary of SRI International, on June 1, 2002. He returned on an interim basis in August 2006 for ten months. Sarnoff conducts industry- and government-supported electronics, information and biomedical research and development in areas such as digital HDTV, solid state lasers, integrated circuits, flat panel displays, computer vision, drug discovery tools and drug delivery systems. Previously a director of C-COR.net (CCBL), a public company headquartered in State College, PA, he now serves on the Board of Sarnoff Corp.

Dr. Carnes, who had 33 years combined service with Sarnoff and its RCA predecessor, became Sarnoff’s President in 1990. A recognized authority in the field of charge-coupled devices, he played a major role in the development of Digital and High Definition Television (DTV/HDTV) in the U.S. and has been recognized as a DTV Pioneer by the Academy of Digital Television Pioneers.

He joined RCA Laboratories in 1969 as a Member of the Technical Staff and in 1977 he transferred to RCA’s Consumer Electronics Division in Indianapolis. In 1982 he was appointed Vice President, Engineering, at the Consumer Electronics Division. He returned to Princeton in 1987 as Vice President, Consumer Electronics and Information Sciences Research, when Sarnoff became a subsidiary of SRI International.

Dr. Carnes has been issued nine U.S. patents and is the author of more than 100 technical papers and presentations. In 1981 he was a recipient of the David Sarnoff Award for Outstanding Technical Achievement “for the development and implementation of a CCD comb filter in color television receivers.” Dr. Carnes is a Fellow of the IEEE, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and European Academy of Sciences.

Since 1990 Dr. Carnes has served on eleven business boards of directors and several not-for-profit and educational boards, including President of the Penn State Alumni Association and Committee Chair for the Hintz Family Alumni Center.

A native of Hagerstown, Maryland, he received a B.S. degree in Engineering Science from Penn State in 1961. In 1970, after serving four years in the U.S. Navy, he earned a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University.

In 1992, Dr. Carnes received an Outstanding Engineering Alumnus award, in 1996 was named a Penn State Distinguished Alumnus and in 2003 an Alumni Fellow.

He is married to the former Nancy Zolto of Middlebush, NJ and has one daughter.