Thomas Wiegand

Thomas Wiegand
Born Thomas Wiegand
(1970-05-06) May 6, 1970
Wismar
Citizenship German
Fields Electrical engineering
Institutions Berlin Institute of Technology
Alma mater Technical University of Hamburg,
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
Known for H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video coding standard
Notable awards Primetime Emmy Engineering Award (2008),
Karl Heinz Beckurts Award (2011),
IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award (2012)

Thomas Wiegand (born 6 May 1970 in Wismar) is a German electrical engineer who substantially contributed to the creation of the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC and H.265/MPEG-H HEVC video coding standards. For H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, Wiegand was one of the chairmen of the Joint Video Team (JVT) standardization committee that created the standard and was the chief editor of the standard itself. He was also an active technical contributor to both standards. Wiegand also holds a chairmanship position in the ITU-T VCEG and previously in ISO/IEC MPEG standardization organizations. In July 2006, the video coding work of the ITU-T jointly led by Gary J. Sullivan and Wiegand for the preceding six years was voted as the most influential area of the standardization work of the CCITT and ITU-T in their 50-year history.[1]

Current work

Wiegand is Professor at the Technical University of Berlin and executive director of the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute,[2] Berlin, Germany. At both institutions, he heads research teams[3] working on

Early background

Thomas Wiegand was born in and spent his early life in East Germany, where he decided to make an apprenticeship as an electrician instead of studying, because everyone who wanted to go to the university had to serve for three years in the National People's Army which he chose to avoid. After the "Wende" he started to study electrical engineering at the Technical University of Hamburg, where he earned his Diplom in 1995. In the same year Wiegand stayed for some time as a guest scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2000 he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

Standardization

Awards

Other positions held

References

  1. ↑ "Video Coding Work Voted Most Influential". ITU-T Newslog. International Telecommunication Union. October 2, 2006. Retrieved 11 April 2012.
  2. ↑ Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute official web site.
  3. ↑ Image Processing research department, Heinrich Hertz Institute.
  4. ↑ Technology Award of Eduard Rhein Foundation 2010
  5. ↑ CSVT Transactions – Best Paper Award, IEEE Circuits and Systems Society web site.
  6. ↑ ITU150 Awards
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