German electrical engineer (born 1970)
Thomas Wiegand (born 6 May 1970 inWismar) is a Germanelectricalengineer who substantially contributed to the creation of theH.264/AVC,H.265/HEVC, andH.266/VVC video coding standards. He has been elected to the German National Academy of Engineering (Acatech) and the National Academy of Science (Leopoldina).
ForH.264/AVC, Wiegand was one of the chairmen of theJoint Video Team (JVT) standardization committee that created the standard and was the chief editor of the standard itself. He was also a very active technical contributor to theH.264/AVC,H.265/HEVC, andH.266/VVC video coding standards. Wiegand also holds a chairmanship position in theITU-TVCEG ofITU-T Study Group 16 and previously inISO/IECMPEG standardization organizations. In July 2006, video coding work of the ITU-T was jointly led by Gary J. Sullivan and Wiegand for the preceding six years. It was voted as the most influential area of the standardization work of the CCITT and ITU-T in their 50-year history.[1] Since 2018, Wiegand has served as chair of theITU/WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health (FG-AI4H).[2] Since 2014, Thomson Reuters named Wiegand in their list of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” as one of the most cited researchers in his field.
Wiegand is Professor atTechnische Universität Berlin and executive director of theFraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute,[3] Berlin, Germany. He heads research teams working on:
- Video processing and coding
- Multimedia transmission
- Machine learning
- Mobile Communications (management)
- Computer Vision (management)
Since 2020 he is a principal scientist at the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD).[4]
Thomas Wiegand was born in and spent his early life inEast Germany. He decided to take an apprenticeship as an electrician instead of studying to avoid having to serve for three years in theNational People's Army. After the "Wende" he started to study electrical engineering at theHamburg University of Technology, where he earned hisDiplom in 1995. In 2000, he earned his Ph.D. at theUniversity of Erlangen-Nuremberg. As a student, he was a visiting researcher atKobe University, Japan, theUniversity of California at Santa Barbara andStanford University, US, where he also returned as a visiting professor.
- Since 2000: Associated Rapporteur ofVCEG (Video Coding Experts Group -ITU-T SG16 Q.6)
- Since 2001: Associated Rapporteur / Co-chair of JVT
- Since 2002: Editor of theH.264/AVC video coding standard and its extensions (FRExt and SVC)
- 2005-2009: Associated Chair ofMPEG Video (Moving Pictures Experts Group -ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11)
- Since 2018: Chair of theITU/WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health (FG-AI4H)[5]
- 1998:SPIE VCIP Best Student Paper Award (together with E. Steinbach, P. Eisert andB. Girod)
- 2004: Fraunhofer Award (together withD. Marpe and H. Schwarz)
- 2004: ITG Award of the German Society for Information Technology (together withD. Marpe and H. Schwarz)
- 2006: The video coding work of the ITU-T led byGary Sullivan and Thomas Wiegand jointly since 2000 was voted as the most influential area of the standardization work of the CCITT and ITU-T in their 50-year history
- 2008:Primetime Emmy Engineering Award (awarded to the JVT standards committee by theAcademy of Television Arts and Sciences for development of the High Profile ofH.264/MPEG-4 AVC, for which Wiegand served as associated rapporteur/co-chair, editor, and technical contributor)
- 2009: PairedTechnology & Engineering Emmy Awards (one awarded to VCEG and one to MPEG by theNational Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for development of theH.264/MPEG-4 AVC standard)
- 2009: Group Technical Achievement Award of EURASIP (European Association for Signal Processing) for active contributions to video coding research and standardization activities
- 2009: Best Paper Award ofIEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (together with H. Schwarz andD. Marpe)
- 2009: Innovation Award of Vodafone Foundation for Research in Mobile Communications
- 2010: Technology Award of Eduard Rhein Foundation (together withJ.-R. Ohm)[6]
- 2011:Fellow of the IEEE for contributions to video coding and its standardization
- 2011: Best Paper Award of EURASIP (European Association for Signal Processing) (together with K. Müller, A. Smolic, K. Dix, P. Merkle and P. Kauff)
- 2011: Karl Heinz Beckurts Award (together with H. Schwarz andD. Marpe)
- 2012:IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award - IEEE Technical Field Award
- 2013: Best Paper Award ofIEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (together withG. J. Sullivan,J.-R. Ohm, and W.-J. Han)[7]
- 2013: Best Journal Paper Award of the IEEE Communications Society MMTC (together with P. Ndjiki-Nya, M. Koppel, D. Doshkov, H. Lakshman, P. Merkle and K. Müller)
- 2013:International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) Leadership Award
- 2013: Research Award for Technical Communication of Alcatel Lucent Foundation
- 2014: Best Paper Award of EURASIP (European Association for Signal Processing) (together with P. Merkle, Y. Morvan, A. Smolic, D. Farin, K. Müller and P.H.N. de With)
- 2014: Richard Theile Medal of the German Television and Cinema Technology Society
- 2015: ITU150 Award[8] (the other ITU 150 awards went toBill Gates,Robert E. Kahn, Mark I. Krivocheev,Martin Cooper, andKen Sakamura)
- 2016: Elected member of theGerman National Academy of Engineering (Acatech)
- 2017:Primetime Emmy Engineering Award (awarded to the JCT-VC standards committee ofVCEG andMPEG by theAcademy of Television Arts and Sciences for development of theH.265/MPEG-H HEVC standard, for which Wiegand served as associated rapporteur ofVCEG and technical contributor)
- 2018: Elected member of theGerman National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina)
- 2019: Best Poster Presentation Paper Award, Picture Coding Symposium, Ningbo, China (PCS 2019) (together with W.-Q. Lim, H. Schwarz,D. Marpe)
- 2022: EURASIP Best Paper Award for the Signal Processing: Image Communication Journal (together with R. Reisenhofer, S. Bosse, G. Kutyniok)
- 2022: Fellow of the Information Technology Society in VDE (ITG) 2022, for his "outstanding achievements in the field of communications and information technology, noted by the entire professional community, in conjunction with [his] commitment to our professional society."
- 2024: IEEE SPS Best Paper Award (together with S. Bosse, D. Maniry,K.-R. Müller, and W. Samek)
Other positions held
[edit]- 1993–1994: Visiting Researcher,Kobe University,Japan
- 1995: Visiting Scholar,University of California at Santa Barbara,U.S.
- 1997–1998: Visiting Researcher,Stanford University, California, USA
- 1997–1998: Consultant to8x8 Inc.,Santa Clara, California, USA
- 2006–2011: Member of technical advisory board,Vidyo, Inc.,Hackensack, New Jersey, USA
- 2006–2008: Member of technical advisory board,Stream Processors, Inc.,Sunnyvale, California, USA
- 2007–2009: Consultant, Skyfire, Inc. (acquired byOpera Software ASA),Mountain View, California, USA
- 2011–2012: Visiting professor,Stanford University, USA
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