Biographies

Peter Olaf Looms, Chairman of ITU-T Focus Group on Audiovisual Media Accessibility (FG AVA)
“Making Television accessible in Africa and the role of ITU-T FG AVA”

Peter Olaf Looms is Danish. He was born and educated in the UK, where he was awarded a BA and MA in animal behaviour & experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge.

He has worked for more than 30 years on policy and strategy in broadcasting. Since 2006 this has included television accessibility to so that as many persons as possible can use and enjoy television. He was instrumental in setting up the DTV4ALL consortium that assisted the European Commission in promoting e-inclusion and television across Europe. He is currently chairman of the ITU-T Focus Group on Audiovisual Accessibility that aims to produce a roadmap for accessibility actions by the end of 2012.

Peter has also lived and worked on rural development in Bolivia and on training and knowledge transfer in the dairy and cement industries in Kenya and Tanzania.

He retired from DR, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation in April 2011 and continues to work internationally as a consultant on media accessibility and as an external professor at universities in Europe and Asia.

Peter also holds part-time posts as

- visiting associate professor at the University of Hong Kong ECOM/ICOM Masters programme (DAM, Digital Assets, Convergence and Digital Entertainment)

- Programme Director (Masters in IT - interactive design and multimedia) and

- External Associate Professor at the Danish Technical University (Innovation & Digital Media; Business Models for Digital Media; Agile Project Management)

Solomon E. Luvai, Former Director of Programmes for African Union of Broadcasting, AUB/UNESCO Consultant
“A contribution from the African Union Broadcasting”

Mr Solom Luvai is the Former Director of Programmes for African Union of Broadcasting. He is currently a consultant for the African Broadcasting Union and UNESCO.

Masahito Kawamori, NTT, Senior Research Scientist, Vice-chairman of ITU-T FG AVA
“ITU-T FG and IPTV: an overview of Working Group H and the key performance indicators”

Masahito Kawamori is a senior research engineer of NTT. His major interests are in telecommunication/broadcasting convergence and broadband/mobile convergence.

He is currently the vice-chair of ITU-T Focus Group on Audiovisual Media Accessibility. He is also the Working Group coordinator of the IPTV area (WG H).

He has been involved in the development of a PVR-based broadcasting system, multimedia systems for mobile phones, and an IP-based broadcasting system, which has been in service for two years in Japan. He is currently developing a high-definition IPTV system for NGN. Masahito Kawamori is a co-leader of the WG6,"the middleware, application and content platforms", of ITU-T FG IPTV.

David Wood
EBU, Deputy Director European Broadcasting Union (EBU)

David Wood was educated at Southampton University in the UK, the Popov Institute in the Ukraine, and the Harvard Business School. He has been a fanatic for 3D TV since the early 1980s, and made the first proposal to the SMPTE to study 3D TV in 2006. He chairs the activity on 3D TV in the ITU-R, and in the DVB Commercial Module, which may lead to a major step forward for 3D TV standards on 23 June 2010. He has been coordinating activities across standards activities with the SMPTE group, the ISO/IEC group, and the 3D@home consortium.

Xiaoya Yang, ITU-T/TSB, Head, WTSA Programme Division
“The ITU-T Focus Group on Audiovisual Media Accessibility (FG AVA): an overview”

Ms. Xiaoya Yang is the Head of the WTSA Programmes Division in the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-TSB). She was the Co-counsellor of ITU-T Study Group 2 on 'Operational aspects of service provision and telecommunications management' and Study Group 3 on 'Tariff and accounting principles including related telecommunication economic and policy issues' from 2009 to 2010; Counselor of ITU-T Study Group 17 on 'Telecommunication security' from 2007 to 2008; and Workshop Project Coordinator from 2004 to 2006.

Before joining ITU, she worked in the Ministry of Information Industry of China from 1998 to 2004. There she was the division director responsible for administration of Internet and information security. From 1997 to 1998 she worked in China Telecom as a network engineer and service manager in their Internet service department. She has a M.S. in Computer Science from Tsinghua University, China and a MBA from Hongkong Polytechnic University.