Terry Adams began his career at TPC in Pittsburgh at the beginning of the independent TV facilities era. Eight years later, he went to Los Angeles to join Ruxton, Ltd. After two years, he returned to TPC (now Unitel Mobile) continuing with technological advancements, including the first triax repeater that enabled cameras to operate more than 10,000 ft., gaining a reputation for quality that led to the formation of a division special-izing in entertainment television. In 1998, Dave Mazza invited him to join the newly formed NBC Olym-pics Engineering Group. Having a multigames rights arrangement in place, they were tasked with designing and building a reusable technical infrastructure that culminated in the Racks-In-A-Box system still in use today. This platform allows for a system of 20 racks to be wired, tested, and transported via sea container, sig-nificantly reducing installation time and improving reli-ability. Adams attended the Ohio University School of RTV from 1969 to 1973.

Jeff Beachy is a Research and Development (R&D) architect and design engineer whose hard-ware and software works cover a wide range of areas such as computer graphics, engineering workstations, PC servers,supercomputers, and cloud services. In 2014, Beachy cofounded SDVI, a company dedicated to the media’s distribution of the supply chain. As a chief technology officer, he led strategic architecture and technology, operations, and security for the Rally Media Supply Chain Management Platform, using key cloud-based IT technologies. Throughout his career, Beachy has taken on strategic architectural, technological planning, and technical leadership in the lifecycle of critical enterprise-scale technologies. Beachy’s background includes a focus on computer architecture as well as sys-tem architecture and hardware design. His successful work in large, multiproduct line companies and small, start-up ventures positioned him to become an innovator for leading media and entertainment companies. He has three patents.

Andy Beale joined the innovative and disruptive British broadcaster BT Sport at the beginning of its journey in 2012 to oversee the technology and construction of the landmark production hub in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, U.K. He played a pivotal role in the development and launch of Europe’s first commercial live sports ultra high-definition (UHD) channel BT Sport UHD, and its high dynamic range (HDR) successor BT Sport Ultimate. He led BT Sport’s pioneering Dolby Atmos launch and ground-breaking advances in live virtual reality (VR) 360. He has recently delivered world firsts in remote 8K and 5G production. Previously, he was the head of engineering for Sports Media House, Octagon, and before that he was in charge of delivering projects worldwide for the respected system integrator IPK.
 

Lynn Claudy joined NAB in 1988 as its staff engineer and held positions of the director of advanced engineering and 
technology and the vice president before assuming his current position in 1995. Before joining NAB, he was employed by Hoppmann Corp., a communications systems integration firm, where he held a variety of technical and management positions, and he was also a part-time professor in the Physics Department at the American University in Washington, DC, where he taught courses in acoustics and audio technology. He is a member of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), the Association of Federal Communications Consult-ing Engineers (AFCCE), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Society for Broadcast Engineers (SBE), and a Life Member of SMPTE. He is also a member of the Federal Com-munications Commission (FCC) Technological Advi-sory Council and was the 2016 recipient of the IEEE BTS Jules Cohen Outstanding Engineering Achieve-ment Award. He currently serves as the chairman of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) Board of Directors.

Don Eklund began his career with JVC in 1983. He worked as a field engineer and then moved on to Sony Broadcast in 1988. With the opportunity to support the launch of what became the digital video disc (DVD) format, Eklund transferred to Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) in 1995. DVD became a key revenue stream for SPE and was notably the first fully digital video product for con-sumers. Later, Eklund and his team led in launching Blu-ray with the development of Blu-print. This author-ing tool was widely used in the entertainment industry for Blu-ray title authoring, further adapted to support 3D. With HDR presenting new opportunities and chal-lenges, Eklund joined SCA to work on standards and solutions. In 2017, Eklund rejoined SPE in the role of chief technology officer. In this role, he and his team supported forward-looking innovations and strategies as the studio industry adapted to the exponentially acceler-ating rate of technology change. Eklund holds more than  20 patents on packaged media, authoring, and 3D.

Ricardo R. Figueroa is the program director and an associate professor of the Motion Picture Science Program and interim co-director of the School of Film and Animation at Roch-ester Institute of Technology (RIT). He joined RIT after ten years at Eastman Kodak. During his tenure at Kodak, he worked on numerous digital and hybrid (film and digital) projects, including developing a pro-totype motion-picture electronic camera in 2002. He also worked on developing an algorithm for process-ing film-originated images and matching film color and tone in motion-picture digital display systems. He received a patent in 2006. He holds BSEE and MSEE from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and a PhD in computing and information sciences from RIT.

Simon Gauntlett began his career working as a research engineer for the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC). He worked on the development of high-definition television (HDTV), culminating in the world’s first HD transmission using H.264 over digital video broadcasting (DVB)-S2 at the 2004 IBC Conference in Amsterdam. From 2006, he spent ten years as the chief technology officer of the Digital TV Group, introducing HDTV and Connected TV to the U.K. specification for digital terrestrial television. From 2016, Gauntlett has worked for Dolby Laboratories in London, representing Dolby’s CTO Office in standards and technology innovation across Europe. Currently, his focus is on immersive video technolo-gies, including HDR and spatial computing. Gauntlett is also the chair of the SMPTE U.K. Region. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology and an Honorary Fellow of the British Kinematograph, Sound and Television Society.

Before his founding of both GrayMeta and Archimedia, Mark Gray has had a long and successful career comprising guiding, developing, and leading technology companies. Most recently, he served as the executive vice president of Front Porch Digital. He joined Front Porch Digital through his engineering of the acquisition of SAMMA Systems, Inc., where he served as the president and chief executive officer (CEO). The SAMMA archival migration process was recently awarded an Emmy for outstanding technological development. His career includes a successful ten-ure with Kasenna as its chairman, president, and CEO from 2000 to 2006. Before Kasenna, he served as the chairman, president, and CEO of Pluto Tech-nologies from 1995 to 2000. Gray was the chairman, president, and CEO of Chyron Corp and has held several senior executive positions at Sony Corporation of America. He has also held positions at Pinnacle Systems Inc., Ampex Corp., Harris Corp., and Tektronix, Inc. 

Rob Hummel’s career has revolved around cinematography, motion-picture laboratories, for-mats, restoration, archiving, ani-mation, postproduction, digital cinema, visual effects, and stereo-scopic 3D. Renowned for finding solutions to production challenges, Rob began his career at the Technicolor Camera Department overseeing dai-lies processing and shepherded films in postproduc-tion up to answer print. He also served in production, postproduction, and technology positions at Disney, DreamWorks, Sony, and Warner Bros., where he over-saw the digital restoration of Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, among others. Awarded NATO’s Pioneer of Digital Cinema, he led the development of some of the first Digital Cinemas by Technicolor. He served on Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) and the Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards Committee, Science and Technology Council, co-chaired its Public Programs Committee. He edited and contributed to the 8th edition of the “American Cinematographer Manual” and is currently co-editing its  11th edition.

Michael Johnson’s career started as a maintenance technician at CFTO-TV, a broadcast station based in Toronto, ON, Canada. The current technology at the time included 2 in. videotape record and playback transport supporting postproduction and news pro-gramming along with tube-based image pick-up in cameras. Johnson has experienced a steady pace of change in technology throughout his career. This included moving through three versions of tape-based formats and ultimately leading to disk-based storage, camera image capture from tubes to CDD, and now complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS). He worked with Omnibus in Canada on early efforts for computer-generated imagery (CGI). During his tenure, he worked through bridging computer-generated, frame-based images in a cell animation style feeding into an early disk-based system that contributed to the current video postproduction environment. Johnson participated in delivering the first HD live production facilities in Canada and, eventually, the first UHD live production facilities. He has been a SMPTE member since the early 1980s.

Thomas Kernen serves in the networking group at NVIDIA, where he focuses on defining architectures transforming the media and broadcast industry to an all-IP infrastructure. He currently serves as the co-chair of SMPTE’s 32NF Technology Committee and the chair of the PTP Monitoring Drafting Group. He is an active participant in many standards forums and a member of the IEEE Communications and Broadcast Societies. He also served as an editor of the DVB for the TS 101 154 “Specification for the use of Video and Audio Coding in Broadcasting Applications Based on the MPEG-2 Transport Stream.” He has authored over 30 publications in leading jour-nals, holds six issued patents that cover both network and video coding for media transport and delivery. He is a frequent speaker at leading broadcast technology events and conferences worldwide. Before joining Nvidia, he spent more than 20 years in the IP industry, including driving Cisco’s entry into live media production.

Kommer Kleijn SBC is an award-winning cinematographer, a digital imaging pioneer, a visual effects and motion control specialist, and a renowned stereographer.   He is also active in perception research, technology development, and standardiza-tion. At the forefront of the digital revolution, Kleijn was the first to shoot digital cinematography in more than 2K and to shoot digitally for a large-format movie. He pioneered the now-common single-chip large sensor digital cinematography technique, as well as stereography for the first 3DTV direct live broadcasts in Belgium, France, Italy, and the first live 3D Eurovision show. In 2011, he worked on the first theatrical HFR feature that used a short exposure time per frame. He is highly decorated with a number of technical achievements, festival, and  honorary awards. He is a film-school teacher and an instructor in workshops for professionals. He chaired the IMAGO Technical Committee for a decade and served on the board of SBC, UP3D, and European Digital Cinema Forum. 

Timothy Macmillan is the founder and CEO of TimeSlice Films from 1997 to 2019. In 1980, he developed the TimeSlice Camera System, introducing the technology to TV and film. Between 2004 and 2008, he was a specialist in HD camera at Grass Valley Cameras. From 2012 to 2016, he worked at GoPro as the senior manager of advanced products. He was responsible for a range of products, including GoPro array technology, Dual Hero Stereo System, Odyssey 360° VR System for Google, GoPro’s Omni Spherical System, and their Fusion Spherical Action Camera. In May 1993, Mac-millan introduced the first broadcast TV example of TimeSlice Camera-Array technology. The technology was first used for television programming in 1995 and later for commercial use in 1996. He holds more than 37 patents. He is a member of the Visual Effects Society and IEEE.

Ajit Ninan has a long history in imaging and media that spans 25 years. His work at both startups and large companies were centered around building and standardizing video codecs and network protocols like 802.17. His projects range from display systems, laser light sources, HDR eco-systems, formats, and augmented reality (AR)/VR ecosystems. His work encompasses all aspects of imaging from display, optics, color, tone, and display mapping to computer vision algorithms. His recent accomplishments include Dolby Vision, building the first 4000 nits HDR display “Pulsar” that was rec-ognized by the AIS Lumiere award for “pioneering HDR in Hollywood.” With more than 300 patents in imaging, many of them centered around quantum dots; he helped drive the adoption of quantum dot TVs. He received the Society of Information Dis-plays Best in Show award with Nanosys for the first QD monitor. He was also a key inventor and author of Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG)-XT  Part 2, also known as JPEG-HDR. His passion for this work continues into AR/VR and immersive imaging.

Félix Poulin grew up in studios and control rooms, thanks to his parents who worked in television production. He has been with the national public broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada since 2007,where he is the director of Media-over-IP Architecture & Lab. Before that, Poulin was a lead expert on Live IP at the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in Swit-zerland for six years. He cochaired the Joint AMWA/EBU/SMPTE/VSF Task Force on Networked Media (JT-NM), produced the yearly Network Technology Seminar (NTS), and led multiple expert groups. He was part of the VRT Sandbox LiveIP project—an early proof-of-concept of an all-IP studio, which won mul-tiple awards, including the prestigious IBC Innovation Award in 2016. Poulin completed his diploma in elec-trical engineering at Montréal’s Polytechnique and his final thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol-ogy (MIT) in 2002. Poulin is an active contributor to the SMPTE, EBU, and VSF. He co-chairs the AMWA NMOS Steering Committee.

Dr. Wolfgang Ruppel is a technology expert and consultant with more than 20 years of experience in broadcasting and media. Ruppel has been a professor for Media Technology at the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden, Germany, since 2006. Ruppel serves as a consultant to a number of leading media companies and institutions across North America and Europe, including Netflix, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft. His recent work includes software development of enhanced Open Source IMF tools and workflow automation for digital transfers and postproduction workflows. Prior to 2009, Ruppel was the head of T-Systems Development of a Digital  Cinema distribution platform. Ruppel received a Dipl.-Ing. degree in 1989 and a Dr.-Ing. degree in 1994 from the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany.

Yvonne Thomas graduated with a degree in television technologies and electronic media engineering from the University of Applied Science Wiesbaden, Germany, in 2010. She received a prominent award from the ARD/ZDF Academy for her thesis in 2011 at the IFA in Berlin. Following these studies, she began working at the EBU in the Technology & Innovation Department as a project manager in 2011. She was responsible for projects and strategic programs on 3D and future television technologies, such as ultrahigh-definition television (UHDTV) or light-emitting diode (LED) studio lighting and was closely involved in their stan-dardization. In September 2015, Thomas joined Arvato Systems’ Broadcast Solution division. As a product manager, she was responsible for the journalistic front-end “VPMS MediaPortal” and included trends like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. She received the Technology Women to Watch Award from TVNews Check in 2017. In 2019, Thomas was appointed the DTG’s strategic technol-ogist overseeing the IPTV transition and UHDTV workstream. She is active in various industry bodies and is former SMPTE Education Director and current Governor EMEA & Latin America.

Willem Vermost recently moved to VRT as its design and engineer-ing manager. Before this role, he was involved in the transition to IP-based studios at the EBU. With 20 years of experience in broadcast, he is an expert and project manager of international strategic, expert groups, and events. He has worked on several projects, including the multiaward-winning VRT Live IP proof of concepts, the JT-NM Tested Pro-gram. He acted as a deputy in the JT-NM admin board and the AWMA board of directors. As a faculty member of the EBU Academy, he provides training on the tran-sition to live IP-based media facilities and is passionate about the underlying mechanisms of IP-based media. Vermost started the open-source project EBU Live IP Software Toolkit project (LIST), which has grown into an international project. He has a master’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s in applied  computer science.