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Biographies

Dragan Ahmetovic Assistant Professor, University of Milan Dragan Ahmetovic is an assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Milan. His research focuses on assistive technologies designed to augment the cognitive capabilities of users and overcome barriers that limit their access to information and physical world. Within this field, he investigates embodied sensing, knowledge retrieval, intelligent user interfaces and human computer interaction, mediated by mobile and pervasive devices. He completed his doctoral studies in 2015 at the University of Milan, and has since worked as a postdoctoral fellow and project scientist at the Cognitive Assistance Lab at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA), and as a postdoctoral researcher at the “S. Polin” Laboratory for Research and Experimentation with Novel STEM Assistive Technologies at the University of Turin, Italy.
Jill M. Boyce Intel Fellow and Chief Media Architect, Intel Jill M. Boyce is Intel Fellow and Chief Media Architect at Intel, responsible for defining media architectures for Intel’s video hardware designs. She represents Intel at the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) and Joint Video Exploration Team (JVET) of ITU-T SG16 and ISO/IEC MPEG, and in the Alliance for Open Media. She serves as Associate Rapporteur of ITU-T VCEG (Study Group 16 Question 6), is an editor of the MPEG-I Immersive Video draft standard, and was an editor of the Scalability High Efficiency Video Coding extension (SHVC). She was named an IEEE Fellow in 2019 “for contributions to video coding.”
Benjamin Bross Project Manager, Video Coding & Analytics Department, Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications - Heinrich Hertz Institute, Berlin Benjamin Bross is a Project Manager at the Video Coding & Analytics Department of the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications - Heinrich Hertz Institute, Berlin and a part-time lecturer at the HTW University of Applied Sciences Berlin. Since the development of the H.265 \| MPEG-H High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) Standard, which started in 2010, Benjamin was very actively involved in the standardization process as a technical contributor and coordinator of core experiments. In July 2012, Benjamin was appointed as a co-chair of the editing Ad Hoc Group and became the chief editor of the HEVC video coding standard. Besides giving talks about recent video coding technologies, Benjamin Bross is an author or co-author of several fundamental HEVC-related publications, and an author of two book chapters on HEVC and Inter-Picture Prediction Techniques in HEVC. He received the IEEE Best Paper Award at the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics – Berlin in 2013, the SMPTE Journal Certificate of Merit in 2014 and an Emmy Award at the 69th Engineering Emmy Awards in 2017 as part of the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding for its development of HEVC."
Renaud Doré Project Leader, Immersive Format, Interdigital Renaud Doré graduated from Ecole Centrale de Marseille (France), followed with a specialization grade in Aerospace Electronics from ENSAE in 1987. Renaud has a long experience in technical management, as project leader and as technological evangelist in various international showcases. He worked first on digital communications for military satellite system at Alcatel Espace; his domain has been the wireless field and the video processing skills at Thomson research center and then Technicolor research center. In the frame of the big emerging momentum around the immersive media, he now leads projects related to graphics and video engineering for immersive experience within Interdigital, a visual & wireless technology company, and is an active member in MPEG-I Visual group for the MPEG-I future immersive standard.
Touradj Ebrahimi Professor, EPFL Touradj EBRAHIMI is Professor at EPFL heading its Multimedia Signal Processing Group. He is also the Convenorof JPEG standardization Committee. Prof. Ebrahimi has been the recipient of various distinctions and awards, such as the IEEE and Swiss national ASE award, the SNF-PROFILE grant for advanced researchers, severalISO-Certificates for key contributions to standardization, the best paper award of IEEE Trans. on Consumer Electronicsand the first IEEE Star Innovator award in multimedia. He became a Fellow of the international society for optical engineering (SPIE) in 2003. Prof. Ebrahimi has initiated more than two dozen National, European and International cooperation projects with leading companies and research institutes around the world. Heis a member of Scientific Advisory Board of various start-up and established companies in the general field of Information Technology. He has served as Scientific Expert and Evaluator for Research Funding Agencies as well as a number of Venture Capital Companies active in the field of Information Technologies and Communication Systems. His research interests include still, moving, and 3D image processing and coding, visual information security (rights protection, watermarking, authentication, data integrity, steganography), new media, and human computer interfaces (smart vision, brain computer interface).
Noah Luo Chairman of ITU-T SG16 Noah Luo is the Chairman of ITU-T SG16, which covers and produces standards in a multitude of areas including IPTV, video and public safety, AI and multimedia, AI and health, automotive multimedia, drones and technologies digital culture. A senior international standardization expert, Noah joined Huawei in 1998 and currently is president of the Industry Standards Department of Huawei Technologies, leading Huawei's global standardization work. He was based in Europe 2013-2019 and managed a pan-European standards team towards establishing Huawei's standardization leadership in European countries. He has participated in and led more than 50 standard projects, and holds more than 70 international and Chinese technical patents.
Jiro Nagao Research Engineer, NTT Jiro Nagao received the PhD degree from Nagoya University in Japan. He joined NTT in 2007. After working for NTT Communications as a technical leader of commercial video streaming services, he is currently a research engineer at NTT Service Evolution Laboratories. His research interest includes image processing for computer recognition and presentation.
Ken McCann Director, Zetacast Ken McCann is a Director and co-founder of Zetacast, an independent technology consultancy that specialises in providing standardisation and regulatory support services to the consumer electronics, multimedia and broadcasting industries. Prior to founding Zetacast in 2002, Ken worked at Philips, Symbionics and NTL. He was involved with video coding since the days of MPEG-1 and chaired the DVB technical group responsible for audio-visual coding specifications (TM-AVC) for over 20 years. He was an active participant in the development of the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard and is currently a Project Leader for the development of the MPEG-5 Essential Video Coding (EVC) standard (ISO/IEC 23094-1).
Guido Meardi CEO and Co-founder, V-Nova Guido is CEO and co-founder of V-Nova, and a former senior partner at McKinsey. Guido has extensive business experience as well as technical depth. He directly contributed to the development of V-Nova’s technology. A unique library of compression technologies, including P+ and PPro, that provide a step-change in the quality, reliability and cost-efficiency of image and video services, with over 200 patents co-authored and filed.
Jens-Rainer Ohm RWTH Aachen University, Germany Jens-Rainer Ohm holds the chair position of the Institute of Communication Engineering at RWTH Aachen University, Germany since 2000. His research and teaching activities cover the areas of multimedia signal processing, analysis, compression, transmission and content description, including 3D and VR video applications, bio signal processing and communication, application of deep learning approaches in the given fields, as well as fundamental topics of signal processing and digital communication systems. Since 1998, he participates in the work of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). He has been chairing/co-chairing various standardization activities in video coding, namely the MPEG Video Subgroup 2002-2018, the Joint Video Team (JVT) of MPEG and ITU-T SG 16 VCEG 2005-2009, the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) since 2010, as well as the Joint Video Experts Team (JVET) since 2015. Prof. Ohm has authored textbooks on multimedia signal processing, analysis and coding, on communication engineering and signal transmission, as well as numerous papers from the fields mentioned above. He has served on editorial boards of Journals and TPCs of various conferences, and is currently member of the organization team for ICIP 2020. Prof. Ohm has served as Dean of Study for the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of RWTH Aachen 2002-2010, has been Vice Dean 2016-2018, and was elected as Dean of the Faculty, starting from the period of October 2018.
Marius Preda Associate professor, “Institut Polytechnique de Paris” and Chairman of the 3D Graphics group of ISO MPEG Marius Preda is an associate professor at “Institut Polytechnique de Paris” and Chairman of the 3D Graphics group of ISO MPEG. He contributed to various ISO standards with technologies in the fields of 3D graphics, virtual worlds and augmented reality and has received several ISO Certifications of Appreciation. Academically, he received a Degree in Engineering from Politehnica Bucharest, a PhD in Mathematics and Informatics from University Paris V and an eMBA from IMT Business School, Paris.
Wojciech Samek Head of the Machine Learning Group, Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, Berlin, Germany Wojciech Samek is head of the Machine Learning Group at Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, Berlin, Germany. He studied Computer Science at Humboldt University of Berlin as a scholar of the German National Academic Foundation, and received his PhD in Machine Learning from the Technical University of Berlin in 2014. He was a visiting researcher at NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA, and a PhD Fellow at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin. He was co-organizer of workshops and tutorials about interpretable machine learning at various conferences, including CVPR, NIPS, ICASSP, MICCAI and ICIP. He is part of the MPEG AHG on Compression of Neural Networks for Multimedia Content Description and Analysis and the ITU/WHO Focus Group on AI for Health. He is associated with the Berlin Big Data Center and the Berlin Center of Machine Learning and is a member of the editorial board of Digital Signal Processing and PLOS ONE. He has co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, predominantly in the areas deep learning, interpretable machine learning, neural network compression, robust signal processing and computer vision.
Peter Schelkens Professor, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Peter Schelkens holds a professorship with the Department of Electronics and Informatics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium and is a Research Group Leader at imec, Belgium. In 2013, he received an EU ERC Consolidator Grant focusing on digital holography. He is the co-editor of the books The JPEG 2000 Suite (Wiley, 2009) and Optical and Digital Image Processing (Wiley, 2011). He is chair of the Coding, Test and Quality subgroup of the ISO/IEC JTC1/ SC29/WG1 (JPEG) standardization committee and Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (2013-2018), Signal Processing: Image Communications and JPhys Photonics.
Jack W. Stokes Principal Research Software Development Engineer, Microsoft Jay Stokes works in the Cloud and Infrastructure Security Group in Microsoft Research, and his primary area of interest is using machine learning, artificial intelligence and signal processing for computer security. He is particularly interested in understanding how deep learning can improve computer security. In the past, Jay has also done research in the areas of audio signal processing, adaptive filtering, statistical signal processing, biomedical signal processing and wireless communications. He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington.
Gary J. Sullivan Video and Image Technology Architect, AI & Research group, Microsoft Corporation Gary J. Sullivan has been a chairman and co-chairman of various video and image coding standardization activities in ITU-T VCEG, ISO/IEC MPEG, ISO/IEC JPEG, and in their joint collaborative teams since 1996. He is best known for leading the development of the Advanced Video Coding (AVC) standard [ITU-T H.264 \| ISO/IEC 14496-10], the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard [ITU-T H.265 \| ISO/IEC 23008-2], and the various extensions of those standards. Most recently he has co-chaired the Joint Video Experts Team (JVET) since October 2015 for developing the upcoming Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard. He is a Video and Image Technology Architect in the AI & Research group at Microsoft Corporation, where he has also been the originator and lead designer of the DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) video decoding feature of the Microsoft Windows operating system. The team efforts that he has led have been recognized by three Emmy Awards. He was recently announced as the recipient of the upcoming 2019 Digital Processing Medal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. He has also received the IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award, the IEEE Consumer Electronics Engineering Excellence Award, two IEEE Trans. CSVT Best Paper awards, the INCITS Technical Excellence Award, the IMTC Leadership Award, and the University of Louisville J. B. Speed Professional Award in Engineering. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and SPIE.
Thomas Wiegand Executive Director, Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute and Professor, Information Technology, TU Berlin, Germany Thomas Wiegand is a professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Technical University of Berlin and is jointly heading the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, Berlin, Germany. He received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, Germany, in 1995 and the Dr.-Ing. degree from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, in 2000. As a student, he was a Visiting Researcher at Kobe University, Japan, the University of California at Santa Barbara and Stanford University, USA, where he also returned as a visiting professor. He was a consultant to Skyfire, Inc., Mountain View, CA, and is currently a consultant to Vidyo, Inc., Hackensack, NJ, USA. Since 1995, he has been an active participant in standardization for multimedia with many successful submissions to ITU-T and ISO/IEC. In 2000, he was appointed as the Associated Rapporteur of ITU-T VCEG and from 2005-2009, he was Co-Chair of ISO/IEC MPEG Video. The projects that he co-chaired for the development of the H.264/MPEG-AVC standard have been recognized by an ATAS Primetime Emmy Engineering Award and a pair of NATAS Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards. For his research in video coding and transmission, he received numerous awards including the Vodafone Innovations Award, the EURASIP Group Technical Achievement Award, the Eduard Rhein Technology Award, the Karl Heinz Beckurts Award, the IEEE Masaru Ibuka Technical Field Award, and the IMTC Leadership Award. He received multiple best paper awards for his publications. Thomson Reuters named him in their list of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds 2014” as one of the most cited researchers in his field. He is a recipient of the ITU150 Award.
Yan Ye Head of Video Technologies, Machine Intelligence Technology Labs, Damo Academy, Alibaba Group U.S Yan Ye is the head of Video Technologies at the Machine Intelligence Technology Labs, Damo Academy, Alibaba Group U.S., where she oversees video standards development at the ITU-T/VCEG and ISO/IEC/MPEG, video encoding and decoding implementations, and video content analysis and video understanding research and development. Prior to Alibaba, she was with InterDigital Communications as Director of Engineering, Video Standards and Platforms, leading the video standardization efforts as well as the prototyping of end-to-end video delivery systems. Before InterDigital, she was with Image Technology Research at Dolby Laboratories and Multimedia R&D and Standards at Qualcomm. She has been involved in the development of various video coding and streaming standards, including the H.266/VVC standard, the H.265/HEVC standard and its scalable, multi-view, and screen content coding extensions, MPEG Point Cloud Compression (MPEG PCC), MPEG DASH, MPEG CMAF, etc. She is a co-editor of the VVC test model and the 360Lib algorithm description, and was previously co-editor of the scalable extensions and the screen content coding extensions of the HEVC standard. Her research interests include machine-learning based video coding, processing and content analysis, virtual and augmented reality, video coding, processing and streaming, and real-time and immersive video communications. She received her Ph.D. from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at University of California, San Diego, and her M.S. and B.S. degrees from the University of Science and Technology of China. She is a Senior Member of the IEEE.
Yuan Zhang Rapporteur ITU-T Q12/16, Chairman MPEG AhG VCM, Senior Expert, China Telecom Ms. Yuan Zhang is the Rapporteur of ITU-T Q12/16, focusing on standardization on video perception and intelligent analysis. Yuan is Chairman of MPEG AhG VCM, focusing on video coding for machine vision and hybrid human & machine vision. Yuan is a senior standardization expert in IoT Research Center, China Telecom, responsible for R&D, standards, products, industry collaboration, ecosystems of multimedia, AI, V2X, IoT, etc. She is active in various standards fields and standards organization, including video perception, video analysis, machine vision, video coding for machines, AI, autonomous driving, etc.