Joseph Christenson, Director of Finance at Nonin Medical, Inc., was presented with the 2010 Automated Imaging Achievement Award during a ceremony held at the Automated Imaging Association's (AIA) 18th Annual Business Conference in Orlando, Florida, USA. He is being honored for his industry leadership and outstanding contributions to the machine vision and imaging industry for more than two decades. The award was presented by Michael Cyros, AIA's Chairman and President of Allied Vision Technologies, Inc.

Joe Christenson served for 23 years at PPT Vision, Inc. PPT Vision was an early pioneer in the development and application of machine vision technology for high end manufacturing applications reaching back to the early 1980's. During his tenure at PPT Vision from 1986 through 2008, the company successfully deployed over 5,000 machine vision solutions in the electronics, automotive, medical device, packaging and general manufacturing industry categories worldwide. At PPT Vision, Christenson served most of his tenure as President and CFO. Prior to that post he held a variety of financial management, general management and sales and marketing roles at the company.

Since January of 2009 Christenson has been serving as Director of Finance at Nonin Medical, Inc., a privately held Plymouth, Minnesota based manufacturer of medical devices. In business since 1986, Nonin Medical is a global market leader in the development and application of near infrared spectroscopy technology and advanced signal processing techniques for non-invasively measuring oxygen saturation in blood and tissue. The company's products are accepted as a standard of care by healthcare professionals' worldwide.

Christenson served as a member of the Automated Imaging Association Board of Directors from 1990 through 2008. He was also a member of AIA's parent company, the Automation Technologies Council, Board of Directors from 2001 through 2006. During his tenure on the AIA and ATC Boards, he served one two-year term as Chairman of the AIA Board and one two-year term as Chairman of the ATC Board.

"Joe was one of the industry leaders most responsible for AIA's growth from a handful of members to nearly 300 today," said Jeffrey A. Burnstein, AIA President. "He was a great example of the ‘leave your logo at the door' philosophy that has been critical to AIA's success."

Prior to joining PPT Vision, Joe received a BA degree in Economics from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, an MBA with a concentration in Finance and Marketing from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and worked for three years in commercial banking.

The annual award, sponsored by the AIA, honors one industry leader for outstanding contributions in promoting market acceptance of industrial and/or scientific imaging. Among the past winners are industry leaders such as Toshi Hori, Gevicam; Don Cochran, Pressco Technology Inc.; David Dechow, Aptúra Machine Vision Solutions; the late Dr. Steven Case, CyberOptics Corporation; Dr.-Ing. Norbert Stein, Vitronic; Dr. Savvas Chamberlain, Dalsa Corporation; Perry West, Automated Vision Systems, Inc.; Amir Novini, Applied Vision Company; Nello Zuech, Vision Systems International; Dwight Carlson, Perceptron; Dr. Robert Shillman, Cognex Corporation; Ken Levy, KLA-Tencor; Pat Costa, RVSI, Inc.; and the late Stan Karandanis, Datacube.