Thomas Wiegand (born 6 May 1970 in

Wismar Wismar (; Low German: ''Wismer''), officially the Hanseatic City of Wismar (''Hansestadt Wismar'') is, with around 43,000 inhabitants, the sixth-largest city of the northeastern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and the fourth-largest city ...

) is a German

electrical Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by ...

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

who substantially contributed to the creation of the H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, and H.266/VVC video coding standards. For H.264/AVC, Wiegand was one of the chairmen of the

Joint Video Team Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distri ...

(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 the H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, and H.266/VVC video coding standards. Wiegand also holds a chairmanship position in the

ITU-T The ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is one of the three sectors (divisions or units) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It is responsible for coordinating standards for telecommunications and Information Commu ...

VCEG The Video Coding Experts Group or Visual Coding Experts Group (VCEG, also known as Question 6) is a working group of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) concerned with standards for compression coding of video, images, audio, ...

ITU-T Study Group 16 The ITU-T Study Group 16 (SG16) is a statutory group of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) concerned with multimedia coding, systems and applications, such as video coding standards. It is responsible for standardization of ...

and previously in

ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...

IEC The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; in French: ''Commission électrotechnique internationale'') is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and r ...

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...

standardization organizations. In July 2006, the video coding work of the

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 The ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is one of the three sectors (divisions or units) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It is responsible for coordinating standards for telecommunications and Information Commu ...

and ITU-T in their 50-year history. Since 2018, Wiegand has served as chair of the

ITU The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Unio ...

WHO Who or WHO may refer to: * Who (pronoun), an interrogative or relative pronoun * Who?, one of the Five Ws in journalism * World Health Organization Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Who, a creature in the Dr. Seuss book ''Horton Hear ...

Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health (FG-AI4H). 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.

Current work

Wiegand is Professor at the

Technical University of Berlin The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was ...

and executive director of the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, 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).

Early background

Thomas Wiegand was born in and spent his early life in

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

, 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 The National People's Army (german: Nationale Volksarmee, ; NVA ) were the armed forces of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1956 to 1990. The NVA was organized into four branches: the (Ground Forces), the (Navy), the (Air Force) an ...

which he chose to avoid. After the "'' Wende''" he started to study electrical engineering at the

Technical University of Hamburg The Hamburg University of Technology (in German Technische Universität Hamburg, abbreviated TUHH (HH as acronym of Hamburg state) or TU Hamburg) is a research university in Germany. The university was founded in 1978 and in 1982/83 lecturing fol ...

, where he earned his

Diplom A ''Diplom'' (, from grc, δίπλωμα ''diploma'') is an academic degree in the German-speaking countries Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and a similarly named degree in some other European countries including Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus ...

in 1995. In 2000 he earned his Ph.D. at the

University of Erlangen-Nuremberg A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

. As a student, he was a Visiting Researcher at

Kobe University , also known in the Kansai region as , is a leading Japanese national university located in the city of Kobe, in Hyōgo Prefecture, Hyōgo. It was established in 1949, but the academic origins of Kobe University trace back to the establishment of ...

, Japan, the

University of California at Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the Un ...

and

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, USA, where he also returned as a visiting professor.

Standardization

* Since 2000: Associated Rapporteur of

(Video Coding Experts Group -

SG16 Q.6) * Since 2001: Associated Rapporteur / Co-Chair of JVT * Since 2002: Editor of the

H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distri ...

/ AVC video coding standard and its extensions (FRExt and SVC) * 2005-2009: Associated Chair of

Video (Moving Pictures Experts Group -

JTC1/SC29/WG11) * Since 2018: Chair of the

Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health (FG-AI4H)

Awards

* 1998:

SPIE SPIE (formerly the Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers, later the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers) is an international not-for-profit professional society for optics and photonics technology, founded in 1955. It ...

VCIP Best Student Paper Award (together with Eckehard Steinbach, Peter Eisert and Bernd Girod) * 2004: Fraunhofer Award (together with Detlev Marpe and Heiko Schwarz) * 2004: ITG Award of the German Society for Information Technology (together with Detlev Marpe and Heiko Schwarz) * 2006: The video coding work of the ITU-T led by Gary 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 The Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards, or Engineering Emmys, are one of two sets of Emmy Awards that are presented for outstanding achievement in engineering development in the television industry. The Primetime Engineering Emmys are presented by ...

(awarded to the JVT standards committee by the

Academy of Television Arts and Sciences The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), also colloquially known as the Television Academy, is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the television industry in the United States. It is a 501(c)(6) non-prof ...

for development of the High Profile of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, for which Wiegand served as associated rapporteur/co-chair, editor, and technical contributor) * 2009: Paired

Technology & Engineering Emmy Award The Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards, or Technology and Engineering Emmys, are one of two sets of Emmy Awards that are presented for outstanding achievement in engineering development in the television industry. The Technology and Engineer ...

s
one awarded to VCEG and one to MPEG
by the

National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) is an American professional service organization founded in 1955 for "the advancement of the arts and sciences of television and the promotion of creative leadership for artistic, edu ...

for development of the H.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 of ''

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology'' (together with Heiko Schwarz and Detlev Marpe) *2009: Innovation Award of Vodafone Foundation for Research in Mobile Communications *2010: Technology Award of Eduard Rhein Foundation (together with Jens-Rainer Ohm) *2011:

Fellow of the IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

for contributions to video coding and its standardization *2011: Best Paper Award of EURASIP (European Association for Signal Processing) (together with Karsten Müller, Aljoscha Smolic, Kristina Dix, Philipp Merkle and Peter Kauff) *2011: Karl Heinz Beckurts Award (together with Heiko Schwarz and Detlev Marpe) *2012:

IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award The IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award is a Technical Field Award of the IEEE given for outstanding contributions to consumer electronics technology. It is named in honor of Masaru Ibuka, co-founder and honorary chairman of Sony Corpor ...

- IEEE Technical Field Award *2013: Best Paper Award of ''

Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology'' (together with Gary Sullivan, Jens-Rainer Ohm, and Woo-Jin Han) *2013: Best Journal Paper Award of the IEEE Communications Society MMTC (together with Patrick Ndjiki-Nya, Martin Koppel, Dimitar Doshkov, Haricharan Lakshman, Philipp Merkle and Karsten 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 AwardAward''
/ref> (the other ITU 150 awards went to

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

, Robert E. Kahn, Mark I. Krivocheev, Martin Cooper, and

Ken Sakamura Ken or KEN may refer to: Entertainment * ''Ken'' (album), a 2017 album by Canadian indie rock band Destroyer. * ''Ken'' (film), 1964 Japanese film. * ''Ken'' (magazine), a large-format political magazine. * Ken Masters, a main character in t ...

) *2016: Elected member of the German National Academy of Engineering (Acatech) *2017:

(awarded to the JCT-VC standards committee of

and

by the

for development of the H.265/MPEG-H HEVC standard, for which Wiegand served as associated rapporteur of

and technical contributor) *2018: Elected member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina) *2019: Best Poster Presentation Paper Award, Picture Coding Symposium, Ningbo, China (PCS 2019) (together with Wang-Q Lim, Heiko Schwarz, Detlev Marpe) *2022: EURASIP Best Paper Award for the Signal Processing: Image Communication Journal (together with R. Reisenhofer, S. Bosse, G. Kutyniok)

Other positions held

* 1993–1994: Visiting Researcher,

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

* 1995: Visiting Scholar,

U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

* 1997–1998: Visiting Researcher,

, California, USA * 1997–1998: Consultant to 8x8 Inc.,

Santa Clara, California Santa Clara (; Spanish for " Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Located in the southern Bay Area, the cit ...

, USA * 2006–2011: Member of technical advisory board, Vidyo, Inc.,

Hackensack, New Jersey Hackensack is a city in and the county seat of Bergen County, New Jersey, United States.New Jers ...

, USA * 2006–2008: Member of technical advisory board, Stream Processors, Inc.,

Sunnyvale, California Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County in the U.S. state of California. Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the nort ...

, USA * 2007–2009: Consultant, Skyfire, Inc. (acquired by Opera Software ASA),

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the ...

, USA * 2011–2012: Visiting Professor,

, USA

External links

* *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wiegand, Thomas 1970 births Living people People from Wismar People from Bezirk Rostock Engineers from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania University of Erlangen-Nuremberg alumni Technical University of Berlin faculty Fellow Members of the IEEE Members of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina Primetime Emmy Engineering Award winners