Fraunhofer's Mp3 Inventors Inducted Into The Consumer Electronics Hall Of Fame

March 29, 2007

The Consumer Electronic Association (CEA) has elected Dr. Dieter Seitzer, Dr. Heinz Gerhaeuser and Dr. Karlheinz Brandenburg, representing a team of Fraunhofer researchers, into the CE Hall of Fame. The award honors their work on inventing and introducing the mp3 compression format. Seitzer, Gerhaeuser and Brandenburg are well known for their seminal work in digital audio coding exploiting the properties of the human hearing process. Still, they represent a large team of researchers and engineers involved in the mp3 development. In the late 1970s, Dr. Dieter Seitzer had the basic idea to compress audio data and to transmit music in high quality over phone lines. Seitzer (73) was the founding director of Fraunhofer Insitute for Integrated Circuits IIS, which he headed from 1985 to 1998. Dr. Heinz Gerhauser was directly involved in the development of real-time implementations of mp3 predecessors. Following Dr. Seitzer, Gerhauser (60) led the Institute to the largest and most successful of the 56 Fraunhofer Institutes. In his Ph. D. work, Dr. Karlheinz Brandenburg laid the foundation for development of mp3 and many other modern audio coding schemes. Today, the 52 year old heads the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology in Ilmenau, Germany. Founded in 1985 the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Erlangen, today with 480 staff members, ranks first among the Fraunhofer Institutes concerning headcount and revenues. With the development of the audio coding method mp3, Fraunhofer IIS has reached worldwide recognition. It provides research services on contract basis and technology licensing. The research topics are: Audio and video source coding, multimedia realtime systems, digital radio broadcasting and digital cinema systems, integrated circuits and sensor systems, design automation, wireless, wired and optical networks, localization and navigation, imaging systems and nanofocus X-ray technology, high-speed cameras, medical sensor solutions and communications technology in transport and logistics. The budget of 58 million Euro is mainly financed by projects from industry, the service sector and public authorities. Less than 20 percent of the budget is subsidized by federal and state funds.

Read More: