Biographies

Gunilla Berndtsson (Ericsson Research, Sweden) Gunilla H. Berndtsson received the M.S. degree in Engineering Physics from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, in1988, and the PhD degree in Music Acoustics from the Department of Speech Communication and Music Acoustics at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, in 1995. Since 1997 she has been employed as a Senior Research Engineer at Multimedia Technologies, Ericsson Research. Her main research area is subjective test methodologies for quality assessment of audio and video.

Prof Jens Blauert (University of Bochum, Germany) Jens Blauert was born in 1938. He studied communication engineering at the RWTH Aachen University, where he received a Doctor-of-Engineering degree in 1969. In 1973, he delivered an inaugural dissertation to the Technical University of Berlin (habilitation), and in 1994 he was awarded an honorary degree (Dr. Tech.) by the University of Aalborg, Denmark. In 1974 he became chair professor at the Ruhr-University of Bochum where he founded the Institute of Communication Acoustics (IKA) and headed it until 2003. Subsequently, he was assigned emeritus professor. He has been visiting professor in various countries worldwide. He is currently a distinguished visiting professor of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY – adjunct to its program on architectural acoustics. He is a professional acoustical consultant, chartered in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia. Prof. Blauert is the author/co-author of more than 150 papers and monographies, supervisor of 52 successful PhD projects and has been awarded several patents. He has received various reputable scientific medals and awards. His major scientific fields of interest are spatial hearing, binaural technology, aural architecture, perceptual quality, speech technology, virtual environments & telepresence. He has also provided services to the science community in positions such as chairman of the ITG committee on electroacoustics, dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering & Information Technologies and senator of the Ruhr-University of Bochum, chairman of the board (and co-founder) of the European Acoustics Association, EAA, president and vice president of the German Acoustical Society, DEGA, associate board member of the International Commission for Acoustics, ICA, member of the Environmental-Protection Council of the State of North-Rhine Westphalia, board member (and cofounder) of the European Speech-Communication Association, now ISCA, and board member (and cofounder) of the section on noise and vibration, NALS, of the German Standard Association, DIN. Prof. Blauert was elected fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, ASA, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, IEEE, the Institute of Acoustics, IoA, and the Audio Engineering Society, AES, He is an honorary member of the German audiological society, DGA, and the Polish acoustical society, PAS.

Thierry Etamé (France Telecom, France) Thierry ETAME was born in Cameroon, in 1979. In 2004, he received the Dipl.-Ing. Degree in Electronics & Computer Engineering from ENSSAT, Lannion, France and the Master’s Degree in research with a major in signal processing and telecommunications from the University of Rennes, Rennes, France. In 2005, he worked as a contractor for France Télécom R&D/TECH/SSTP, developing softwares for speech enhancement for embedded real-time systems design. He is now a Ph.D student at University of Rennes, Rennes, France with France Télécom R&D/TECH/SSTP laboratory, Lannion, France. He works on the evaluation of the perceived quality of coded speech and sound.

Ruchir Davé  (Cisco, San Jose, CA) Ruchir Davé holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. His research thesis focused on development of ultrasound microscope for medical imaging. Ruchir joined Cisco in 2000 and currently works in the IP-Phone DSP team as a Senior Hardware Design Engineer in Acoustics. His exposure ranges from network design, telephony, voice gateways to echo cancellers, acoustics and regulatory compliance. He has authored several patents and white papers related to acoustics and IP telephony at Cisco.

Dr.-Ing. H. W. Gierlich (HEAD acoustics GmbH) H. W. Gierlich was born in 1957 in Bergisch Gladbach, FRG. In 1976 he graduated from high school and began his studies of electrotechnique at the university RWTH Aachen. In 1983 he received his diploma and from 1983 March to 1988 December he worked at the Institute for Communication Engineering at RWTH, Aachen. In 1988 February he received a Ph. D. in electrical engineering. Special topics of his work: Speech intelligibility aspects of telephones and hands-free telephony. In 1988 he was the leader of the acoustic research group at this institute. In 1989 he joined HEAD acoustics GmbH in Aachen where he is as vice president responsible for research and development. He is mainly involved in acoustics, specifically psychoacoustics, binaural simulation, measurement technology and speech transmission in telecommunication. His main activities are in the fields of speech intelligibility and speech quality especially in modern telecommunication systems, binaural signal processing especially binaural simulation technology and digital signal processing. He is active in the international standardization organizations ITU-T, ISO and ETSI as well as in the national standardization DIN and ZVEI. Amongst other he is currently involved in various European projects. He is author of more than 150 scientific papers in the field of binaural technology, telecommunication and signal processing published in various magazines and proceedings. H. W. Gierlich holds three patents in the field of telecommunication and two patents in binaural technology. He is member of DEGA and VDE and vice president of ETSI STQ.

Dr.-Ing. Christian Hoene (University of Tübingen) Dr. Christian Hoene is a postdoc at the “Computer Networks and Internet” group at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He is a researcher covering areas about Internet based voice communication, wireless transmissions, location tracking, and charging. Christian has studied at Technical University of Berlin in the TKN Group. He is author of several publications, provided contributions to standards of ITU and IEEE, and received one best paper award. In 2005, he finished his Ph.D. studies on voice over WLAN with distinction. Since 2007, he is a supported within the elite programme for postdocs, which is funded by the Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg, and the junior scientist programme of the University of Tübingen.

Pascal Huart (Cisco, France) Pascal Huart is a Technical Lead in the IP Communication Business Unit ip-phone dsp team at Cisco. His experience has been on voice gateways and ip-phone development starting at Incite and Selsius Systems. Thanks to being involvement in product development at Cisco, he has been author or co-author of a few more than a dozen issued patents in the IP-telephony field. Pascal holds a Diplôme d'Ingénieur from École Supérieure d'Électricité (Paris, France) and a Master in Electrical Engineering as well as a Master of Business and Administration from Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX).

Peter Hughes (BT Group, UK) Peter Hughes joined the Post Office Research Centre as an Apprentice in 1975. After graduating from Leeds University with a degree in Electronic Engineering he worked on a range of audio and signal processing projects including speech band modem development, speech processing, echo cancellation and specialised audio. His current interests include audio perception and technologies for accessibility. He is a member of the Audio Engineering Society.

Mansoor Hyder (University of Tübingen, Germany) Mansoor Hyder has a M.Sc. in electronics. He has studied at University of Sindh Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan. He has been awarded a scholarship jointly funded by DAAD Germany and HEC Pakistan in 2007. Currently he is pursuing his PhD studies on 3D Telephony at Computer Networks and Internet Group in the University of Tübingen. His research interest areas are VoIP and network security.

David Isherwood (Nokia Corporation) David Isherwood joined Nokia Corporation in 1999 as a Research Scientist working in the fields of psycho-acoustics and sensory evaluation, focusing on codec development, spatial-sound and speech enhancements. He currently holds the position of Audio Specialist for audio performance and measurement within Nokia's Devices R&D organization. Current work focuses on the performance of subjectively-motivated objective metrics. David has represented Nokia and contributed to several international standardization study groups including the ITU-T, ETSI and 3GPP. He is a graduate of the University of Salford's Acoustics faculty, U.K., and is currently based in Tampere, Finland."

Sridhar Kalluri (Starkey Hearing Research Center, USA) Sridhar Kalluri has been a research scientist at the Starkey Hearing Research Center since 2004. He studies the interaction of hearing aids with binaural and spatial hearing, with the goal of ensuring that hearing aids preserve or restore the benefits that normal-hearing individuals get from binaural and spatial perception. Sridhar’s scientific background and previous expertise is in the neurophysiology of the auditory system. He acquired this background as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maryland and as a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Gerald Lecucq (Alcatel, France) Gerald Lecucq is currently working in Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise as Quality Assessment Manager and an expert in Voice Quality. He joined Alcatel in 1979 after 7 years in Jeumont Schneider where he developed digital access boards and vocoders and began an expert in Digital Interface and Switching including synchronization of digital links (Phase Lock Loops). Then, he initiated the development of Digital Signal Processing in Alcatel PBXs and participated to the definition of a Private Branch Exchange based on ATM technology. So he introduced the DSP technology in Alcatel products in 1982 and was a precursor in ATM. He led a dsp firmware development team and introduced the speech compression techniques in Alcatel, mainly used for leased line applications and after in IP gateways. He was also Group rapporteur in standardization body ITU-SG12 and now Co-Chairman of WP1 since October 2007.

Gaetan Lorho (Nokia Corporation) Gaëtan Lorho joined Nokia in 1999 and worked for 5 years as a research scientist at the Nokia Research Center in Helsinki, Finland. He holds now a position of audio specialist at Nokia Devices R&D. His work in the Audio Performance and Measurement team relates to perceptual evaluation and modeling of audio quality and his research interests include spatial sound, binaural techniques, subjective testing, sensory evaluation and data analysis. Gaëtan was born in Vannes, France, in 1972. He received a master’s degree in fundamental physics from the University of Paris VII, France, in 1996, and a master’s degree in sound and vibration studies from the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton, UK, in 1998. He is now completing a D.Sc. (Tech.) degree at the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT). His doctoral thesis is on the topic of perceptual evaluation of quality with an application to spatial sound reproduction over headphones."

Luc Madec (B&K, Denmark) Luc Madec was born in 1959 and received the Master Degree in Applied Acoustics from Le Mans University in 1981. He has been employed as a Telecom & Audio specialist at Bruel &Kjaer since the last 10 years. Prior to this he had already been part of the B&K French staff from 1984 to 1987 as a sales engineer for the whole range of test equipment. In the meantime, Luc Madec has been working at Matra Nortel Communication, as a R&D engineer in the Acoustics Development team, working on the acoustic design of both analog and digital phones ( ISDN, DECT and GSM ) . Luc Madec is involved in the Telecom Standardisation and is currently the rapporteur at the ITU-T Study Group 12 of the Question 5 dealing with "Handsets and headsets measuring methodologies".

Jean-Yves Monfort (France Telecom, France) Currently Deputy Director of Standards Steering in France Telecom, and Senior Expert in France Telecom. During 5 years, he was Deputy Head of DIH/EQS Laboratory (Human Interactions/ Evaluation and acceptability of Services Quality), in charge of studies on subjective and objective assessment of media (speech, video, audio,…) and of Usability testing of new equipments and services. He was before Manager of Research and Development Units specialized in voice transmission quality, telephony terminals and Electroacoustics. Doctor Engineer of Applied Acoustics, Le Mans Electronics Engineer, ENSEEIHT, Toulouse Currently Chairman of ETSI TC STQ (since October 2004), and Vice Chair of APSC-Telemov. He is the author of a lot of technical specifications for France Telecom, France, of ETSI standards and ITU-T Recommendations, and of technical papers. He gave numbers of conference on speech quality, performance and QoS in seminars, workshops and congresses, including in close relationship with his activity of SG 12 Chairmanship (for APT, West Africa, ETSI, ITU-T workshops,…) General Secretary of French Acoustical Society during 5 years Professor of Electro-acoustics at the University (Sound and mage) during more than 10 years. Chevalier des Palmes Académiques.

Prof Sabine Meunier (CNRS LMA, Marseille, France) Sabine Meunier is a researcher in Psychoacoustics. She works at the Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique in Marseille (France), a laboratory of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), where she is the head of the psychoacoustics group. Her main works were concerned with loudness, sound quality, masking and adaptation in the auditory system. These works have resulted in several publications in different journals of acoustics. She also teaches Psychoacoustics at the Université de Provence and the Ecole Centrale in Marseille and supervises several PhDs. She is a member of the French Society on Acoustics and of the specialized Sound Perception group of this society. She received her Ph. D in Acoustics in 1995.

Arnault Nagle (France Telecom, France) Arnault Nagle graduated with a diploma in Electronics and Signal Processing from ENSSAT Lannion (2004), France, and with a PhD in Signal Processing from France Telecom and Eurecom (2007), France.His PhD deals with spatialized audio conferencing over VoIP. He joined France Telecom in 2007 and has been working on various projects related to audio quality on VoIP and Mobiles networks.

Catherine Quinquis  (France Telecom, France) Mrs. Catherine Quinquis received the master degree in mathematics from the Pierre et Marie Curie University, Paris, France in 1978. She was accepted into the French telecommunications service in 1980, and obtained the engineer diploma from the INT University (France) in 1990. She was then accepted into the national "Corps des telecommunications" in 1991, obtaining the final diploma from this institution in 1993. She joined the national research centre for telecommunications (CNET) in 1993 and started doing research in the speech coding area. She began working in the field of speech coding for the mobiles in 1998, and as such participated to the activities of ETSI and 3GPP. She was vice chair of 3GPP-SA WG4. She is co-chair of working party 1 (Telephonometry, terminals and subjective assessment) of ITU-T SG12 (Performance and quality of service), and co-Rapporteur of Q. 7/12 " Methods, tools and test plans for the subjective assessment of speech and audio quality ".

Alexander Raake (Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, Germany) Alexander Raake joined the Deutsche Telekom Laboratories in 2005 as a senior scientist. From 2004 to 2005, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Man-Machine Communication Department of the LIMSI-CNRS in Orsay, France, working on speech intelligibility in multi-party virtual chat-rooms. From the Ruhr-University Bochum, he obtained his Doctoral Degree (Dr.-Ing.) in January 2005, as a result of his work as a research scientist at the Institute of Communication Acoustics (Jens Blauert). During his thesis work from 1999 to 2004, he studied the auditory quality of future user-interfaces, and quality under impairments due to packet-based transmission such as VoIP. He also investigated the perceived quality of enhanced services such as wideband speech transmission. After his graduation in 1997, he worked as a researcher at the Technical University in Lausanne (EPFL), studying properties of ferroelectric thin films. Before, he studied Electrical Engineering in Aachen (RWTH) and Paris (ENST/Télécom), involving student research in Colorado-Springs, USA. Since 1999, he participates in the standardisation activities of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) on transmission performance of telephone networks and terminals, where he currently acts as a Co-Rapporteur for question Q.12/12, and as an Editor of different Recommendations. His reasearch interests are in the assessment of the Quality of Experience of speech, audio and audiovisual services and applications such as VoIP, IPTV, multimedia conferencing and virtual auditory environments.

Thomas Sporer (Fraunhofer, Germany) Thomas Sporer earned a M.Sc. in computer science (Diplom-Informatiker) from the Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in 1988 and received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1998. From 1988 to 1989 he worked at the Fraunhofer Institut für Integrierte Schaltungen at Erlangen in the audio research group on perceptual audio coding. In 1989 he returned to the university where he was working in the department of electrical engineering as a research and teaching assistant. From 1990 to 1993 his work on perceptual measurement was furthered by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). In June 1997 he returned to the Fraunhofer Institut in Erlangen where he was working in the multimedia department. In Y2k he moved to a newly founded Fraunhofer group in Ilmenau/Thüringen, which became the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Mediatechnology IDMT in 2004. He is currently head of the department acoustics and vice-director of the institute. His research topics include perceptual audio coding, subjective and objective assessment of audio quality, spatial audio and techniques for the protection of multimedia data like scrambling and watermarking. Since 1999 he also teaches at the Technical University of Ilmenau. Thomas Sporer authored and coauthored several papers on perceptual audio coding, filter-banks, psychoacoustics and perceptual audio measurement. He was involved in the standardization efforts for perceptual audio measurement in ITU-R TG10/4. He was vice-chair of ITU-R WP6Q (old structure) and currently is Rapporteur on audio quality assessment in ITU-R WP6C, member of WP6A and WP6B, EBU B/MAE, SMPTE DC28, TC100 and several standards committees of the AES.

Yu Jiao  (University of Surrey, UK) Yu Jiao graduated with a Master's degree in Signal and Information Processing from Beijing University, China. In October 2005, Yu Jiao started his PhD at Institute of Sound Recording with the support of Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme (ORSAS).

Slawek Zielinski (University of Surrey, UK) Dr Slawek Zielinski holds a position of a Lecturer at the University of Surrey, before which he worked as a Research Fellow at the same university and as a Lecturer at the Technical University of Gdansk (Poland). His current responsibilities include teaching Electroacoustics, Audio Signal Processing and Sound Synthesis to the undergraduate students. He is also responsible for co-supervision of six PhD students. Dr Zielinski is in charge of the EPSRC-funded research project investigating new bandlimitation strategies for 5.1 surround sound. He is also involved in a number of other projects concerning topics such as quality evaluation of audio codecs, car audio optimisation, and objective assessment of audio quality. Dr Zielinski is a committee member of the British Section of the Audio Engineering Society.

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