AdCom & Officers

Today Paul Shulins is President of Shulins’ Solutions, a radio and tv broadcast consulting firm based in Andover Massachusetts, specializing in remote control solutions, studio design and construction, antenna protection systems and ratings metrics. Previously, Paul joined Burk Technology as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer in September of 2017. Prior to joining Burk Technology, Paul had been the Director of Technical Operations for Greater Media’s Boston, Massachusetts five FM Radio Stations for twenty-nine years. He has been working as a Radio Chief Engineer for forty years. Paul has been responsible for the planning and day-to-day management of one of the first major market studio consolidations in 1998 for Greater Media’s Boston radio stations. He has designed and constructed many custom, on-air program playback systems, technical facility monitoring and control systems. He is a member of the Society of Broadcast Engineers and has held an SBE Radio Engineer Certification since 1982. Paul is also a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society and has co-chaired the BTS Broadcast Symposium for several years. And was recently elected by the BTS AdCom as a distinguished lecturer. Paul has presented numerous papers at the IEEE Broadcast Symposium, the NAB Broadcast Convention, and the NAB Radio Show. He has also been a frequent contributor to Radio World Magazine and authored several chapters in the 11th edition of the NAB engineering handbook. Paul has also served as an elected member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society's administrative committee for three years. Today he is the Vice President for IEEE’s Broadcast Technology Society. Paul earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of New Hampshire System in 1979 with majors in physics, chemistry and natural sciences. He is a private pilot, and enjoys astronomy, skiing, and photography, and operates his Arizona observatory remotely collecting deep sky images.

Dave Siegler is Vice President of Technical Operations for Cox Media Group (CMG) at the company’s Atlanta, Ga. headquarters.  In this role, Dave is responsible for leading and growing the integrated media company through the rapidly changing technologies and consumers’ growing digital demands. Specifically, he manages CMG’s Technical Operations groups to integrate new technologies and processes across various platforms for all of CMG’s broadcast television stations, one local cable television station, radio stations and newspaper. Prior to his current position, Siegler was Cox’s Director of Broadcast Operations & Engineering for the company’s television operations in Charlotte, NC and served 13 years in various positions with Post-Newsweek Television Stations. Dave is a Fellow Member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and Life Member of the Society of Broadcast Engineers. He is a recipient of Broadcasting & Cable’s Technology Leadership Award. He currently is Chair of the ATSC 3.0 Personalization Interactivity & Interactivity Implementation Team, serves as Chair of NAB’s Television Technology Committee and is a member of the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers, Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. He also sits on the Board of Directors of the Society of Broadcast Engineers and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Broadcast Technology Society.

Samina Husain received her Bachelor of Electrical Engineering in 1987 from Concordia University, Montreal and her executive M.B.A in “Management of Technology” in 2008 from University of Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. In her role at Reycom AG, in Switzerland, her areas of responsibilities were within IPTV/OTT solutions business development.  In her role previous she focused on IPTV and Hybrid STB business development and headed corporate marketing, at Albis Technologies Ltd. (a spin-off from Siemens Switzerland Ltd.).  Prior to this her responsibilities were within solution management for the Nokia Siemens Networks end-to-end IPTV solution.  From 2005 to 2006 she was responsible for business development in the China market for the Siemens Home Entertainment IPTV solution.  She has over 25 years experience in the satellite and telecommunications industry and has held various roles from customer operations, product management to project management in North and South America, and Europe. She joined IEEE as a university student, and later became a professional member active both in WIE and BTS.  At the 2009 BTS symposium she presented a joint paper on the “Business Case and Technical Requirements for IPTV STB”.

I received a Bachelor's Degree in Communications in 1977. I have worked in broadcasting since 1973 in both radio and television. I have planned and constructed two start-up full power television stations. I have extensive experience in planning, design and the construction of all facets of a television station. I am currently responsible for the planning and development of all technology projects at Iowa Public Television including RF transmission facilities, and studio origination facilities throughout the State of Iowa. I am active in future broadcast planning on the national level and serve on a number of committees developing standards for emerging technologies such as hybrid television, mobile digital television and 3D television. I am a member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Society of Broadcast Engineers and the Society of Cable Television Engineers ACTIVITIES: SBE: I am the current treasurer for SBE Chapter 109. I have been the chair and vice chair of the chapter. IEEE: I am the current vice president of the Broadcast Technology Society. I served two terms as the BTS president. I chair the IEEE-USA Communications Committee. I am a member of the IEEE.tv advisory committee, the IEEE Future Directions Committee, and IEEE Technical Activities Products and Services Committee SMPTE: I am the Central Region Governor for the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. ATSC: I am an active member of the ATSC 3.0 working group creating the standards for the next generation of television broadcasting. MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS: From 1999 - 2009, working at Iowa Public Television I lead the team that puts together the Iowa DTV Symposium, an education event attended annually by more than 400 people which provided industry engineers a forum to learn and understand the challenges, opportunities and technologies applied in the conversion of the television system in the United States from analog to digital. In 2008 I was honored as the Educator of the Year by the Society of Broadcast Engineers for the work I have done with educating the public and professionals regarding digital television. I presented keynote addresses to the China Content Broadcasting Network (CCBN) in March of 2010-12 at their conferences in Beijing, China. In 2011, I was a member of the committee that started the Future of Broadcast Television (FoBTV) initiative in Shanghai, China. The purpose of the initiative is to work on harmonized global standards for digital television broadcasting. I planned, engineered and managed the $47M project for converting Iowa Public Television from analog to digital which included 17 transmission facilities and the studio origination facility. I began writing for TV Technology magazine in 1987 and I have authored a monthly column called The Digital Journal for TV Technology since 1999.

As a Distinguished Lecturer, Guy is willing to travel to any BTS Chapters. Guy Bouchard is director, transmission systems at Télé-Québec. He is responsible for digital delivery infrastructure at Télé-Québec. During his 33 years with the CBC, Guy has worked in analog and digital television transmission and production systems, as well as satellite and terrestrial microwave communication systems. He holds a degree in telecommunications from the Université du Québec. He is a board member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society AdCom. Guy has served the broadcast industry since 1979 with a special interest in digital communications systems. He has written and delivered papers on DTV, Satellite and MPEG Transport Technology for the NAB, CCBE, IEEE, Canadian Digital Television (CDTV), and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE)

Shuji Hirakawa received Ph.D. degree from University of Tokyo in 1978. As a Ph.D. student, he pioneered research on “coded modulation”. His ground-breaking work was published in a paper, co-authored with Professor Hideki Imai, in the IEEE Transactions on Information Technology (Vol. IT-23, pp.371-377, 1977.) and was selected as one of seventeen papers to receive IEEE Golden Jubilee Paper Award in 1998. Additionally, the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) in Japan gave him the honor of IEICE Centennial Milestone in September 2017 identifying their work as one of the origins of “Codec Modulation.”

Dr. Hirakawa joined Toshiba Corporation in 1978. In late 80’s and early 90’s, he was deeply involved in the development of MUSE encoder for analog HDTV transmission. From 1998, his group developed a new broadcasting satellite service (BSS) system for digital sound broadcasting and was adopted by Japanese industrial standardization body (ARIB) as the domestic standard. In ITU-R, he developed Recommendation BO.1130 System E for Japanese BSS (sound) in 1999 and 2000. He left Toshiba Corporation in March 2017 and joined Japanese Standards Association in July 2017.

Dr. Hirakawa has been a key member in many international standardization organizations. He was a vice-chairman of ITU-R WP 6M (multimedia and interactive broadcasting system) and WP 6B (broadcast service assembly and access) until Oct. 2015 for digital broadcasting transmission side standardization. In parallel, he was the Secretary of IEC TC 100 (audio, video and multimedia systems and equipment) from 2004 to 2010 for digital broadcasting receiving side. From 2011 to 2016, he was the IEC Standardization Management Board (SMB) member representing the IEC National Committee of Japan. Currently, he is the Chair of IEC TC 124 (wearable electronic devices and technologies) from June 2017.

In IEEE, he was an editorial board member of the Proceeding of the IEEE from 2006 to 2012. He was the Secretary 2004-05, the Vice Chairman 2006-07 and the Chairman 2008-09 of IEEE Broadcast Technology Japan Chapter. Additionally, he hosted IEEE International Symposium on Broadband Multimedia Systems and Broadcasting (BMSB) 2016 in Nara City, Japan.

Dr. Hirakawa is an IEEE Life Fellow and an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting.

shuji.hirakawa@ieee.org

Recognized worldwide as long‐time digital television industry leader, Luplow was Zenith's representative for the "Digital HDTV Grand Alliance" and the FCC’s ACATS, which selected Zenith’s technology as the ATSC DTV transmission system.   Luplow, recently retired, is now a consultant for his former employer, Zenith Electronics.  Luplow and LG/Zenith, are extremely involved with the Standardization and Deployment of Next Gen Television (aka as ATSC 3.0). An IEEE Life-Fellow, Luplow served as editor of the IEEE's Transactions on Consumer Electronics for 35 years.  He has contributed articles to numerous IEEE and other industry publications. Luplow is a 2006 recipient of the prestigious IEEE Masaru Ibuka Award, for “contributions to the development of the vestigial sideband (VSB) digital transmission system for digital television broadcasting.”  Wayne is a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society’s Administrative Committee (AdCom) and is a decades-long member of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society’s Board of Governors. Luplow has been a member of the ATSC Board of Directors since 1988, serving as Board-Chair in 2010, and chaired CTA’s Video Systems Standards Development Organization (R4) from 1998 thru 2017. With degrees from the Universities of Wisconsin (1962) and Pennsylvania (1964), Luplow resides with his wife Judy in Libertyville, IL.  They have 4 adult children and nine grandchildren.

James E. O’Neal has been involved in broadcast technology for more than half a century, beginning with employment during his early teen years at a commercial radio station (KXAR) in his hometown of Hope, Arkansas. He continued to work in both radio and television operations on a part-time basis throughout his high school and college years, beginning a fulltime broadcast engineering career after receiving his college degree. James worked in broadcast engineering for nearly 37 years before retiring in 2005 and launching a second career as technology editor at TV Technology magazine. He held this position for nearly a decade, and now serves as technology consultant for that publication. More than 30 years of Mr. O’Neal’s broadcast engineering career was spent with U.S. Government television operations, including the United States Information Agency’s Television and Film Service, WORLDNET Television, and VOA-TV. During his association with these organizations, James assisted in launching the USIA’s first global satellite-delivered television network, and was heavily involved in both television facility design and satellite transmission engineering operations. He enjoys researching and writing about broadcasting history and persons who have made important contributions in this field. He is a frequent contributor to TV Technology and its sister publications, Radio World. He enjoys collecting and restoring both consumer radio and television items and commercial broadcasting equipment, including an operating replica of the 1947-vintage small town radio station where he began his broadcasting career. Mr. O’Neal is a 1969 graduate of the University of Arkansas and holds both commercial and amateur radio licenses. He is holds Professional Broadcast Engineer and Broadcast Networking Engineer certification from the Society of Broadcast Engineers. He is a Life Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, and a Life Member of the Society of Broadcast Engineers, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. In addition, he serves as a member of the IEEE’s Editorial Advisory Board and is a member of the IEEE’s BTS administrative committee. James serves as editor-in-chief of the BTS’s Broadcast Technology publication and is also the organization’s historian. He also serves on the SMPTE Board of Editors, and is an associate editor of that organization’s Motion Imaging Journal.

Studied Electronic Engineering at the University of Buenos Aires, worked in Broadcast Automation and Data Center Infrastructure for 17 years, 10 of them in Turner International Argentina a Time Warner Company, as Senior Manager of Systems Assurance and Operations. Now she works in Globant as Technical Director for Cloud Operations Technologies Studio She is IEEE Argentina Secretary since 2013, President of Women in Engineering since 2011, and also Secretary of BTS Argentina and BTS AdCom member since 2012.

Dr Peter Siebert  career spans 35 years.  He has held various positions within the Broadcast industry, most recently he was the Executive Director at the DVB Project Office in Geneva, where he was responsible for all organizational and technology related aspects of the DVB.  Prior to this with Siemens AG, he was influential in the design of the end-to-end IPTV and set-top box solution; at SES-ASTRA he was instrumental in the introduction of digital television via satellite for Europe, based on the DVB/MPEG-2 standards; and at Philips Kommunikations AG, he managed digital audio and video transmission.

His involvement has been on all aspects of audio-video transmission such as video transmission over telecommunication networks (PDH/SDH), satellite and IPTV networks. He was responsible for a number of ETSI specifications in the area of satellite transmission as well as for DVB standards.  He holds several patents for various aspects of audio-visual data transmission. 

Dr. Peter Siebert received his M.Sc. degree in 1984 and his Ph.D. degree in 1989 in physics from the University in Frankfurt, Germany.  In addition, he holds a degree in economics from the University in Hagen, Germany and an MBA from the Open University Milton Keynes, UK. He is a Senior IEEE Member and an elected Adcom member of IEEE Broadcast Technology Society (BTS).

Education: PhD in Telemmatics Engineering, Universidad de Vigo. Vigo, Spain.2010 MBA, Universidad de Montevideo. Montevideo, Uruguay. 1999 Electrical Engineer, Universidad de la República. Montevideo, Uruguay. 1994 Professional Positions:  Advisor of the Ministry of Industry-National Telecommunications Agency (Dirección Nacional de Telecomunicaciones, Ministerio de Indutria, Energía y Minería, Uruguay). 2011 to the present  20+ years of experience on Engineering and Technical Management of TV station and cable and satellite head-ends in Uruguay. 1991-2010 at SAETA TV Canal 10 and TCC media group. Consultant Engineer at GEOCOM Uruguay. 2000-2005. VoIP, Multimedia POS.  Responsible or co-responsible for scientific and professional projects.  Academic Positions: Director of the ICT Department at the School of Engineering of Universidad de Montevideo. 2002 to the present. Professor at Universidad de la República. 1995 to the present. Prizes and Recognitions:  Member of the National Research System (SNI-ANII) at Uruguay.  Member of National Engineering Academy, Uruguay (Academia Nacional de Ingeniería). PhD Thesis: "Audiovisual contents recommender systems for groups". Sobresaliente Cum-Laude. Universidad de Vigo, 2010.  Award for the best thesis from the National Engineering Academy, Uruguay, 2010.  Publications: See: http://scholar.google.com.uy/citations?hl=en&user=F8eRrgIAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate Author of the book “TV-Anytime. Paving the Way for Personalized TV” Authors: Gil Solla, Alberto, Sotelo Bovino, Rafael G., Springer 2013 http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783642367656 Present Positions at IEEE: Chair of IEEE Cono Sur Council (2017). Cono Sur Council groups IEEE Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay Sections. Member of Administrative Committee of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society (2016-2018) Associate Editor of IEEE Broadcast Technology Magazine IEEE Senior Member Chair of IEEE Uruguay Section (2015-2016) Chair of the Uruguay Chapter of IEEE Broadcast Technology Society (Founder) Vice-Chair of the Uruguay Chapter of IEEE Communications Society

Peter Symes worked in the television and related industries from 1967 until his retirement in 2016.

His early career included BS (honors) 1967 from University of Wales, and positions in the BBC Studio Planning & Installation Department, Philips Broadcast, and Central Dynamics Ltd.

In 1983 he joined Grass Valley Group (subsequently Tektronix, subsequently Thomson Broadcast), and held positions responsible for product planning, strategic planning, intellectual property management, and technological liaison.  He represented Grass Valley in many organizations including the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).  In July 2007 Symes  joined SMPTE staff as Director of Standards & Engineering, a position held until retirement in 2016.

Symes holds three patents and is the joint recipient of an Emmy award for the architecture of the digital picture processor.  He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Fellow of SMPTE, and a Certified Standards Professional (2013) by the Society for Standards Professionals (SES).

Peter has written and presented numerous papers at industry conferences, and is the author of three books on Video Compression, all published by McGraw Hill.  He has also contributed to other books, including two editions of the NAB Engineering Handbook.

Symes served on the Board of Governors of SMPTE from 1987 to 2007, and on the Board of Directors of ATSC from 2009 to 2015.

Glynn Walden is the retired Senior VP of Engineering for CBS Radio where he was responsible for new technology roll outs including CBS Radio’s conversion to HD radio. He currently consults for CBS Entercom Radio and other interesting projects. In 1991 he helped found USA Digital Radio, a consortium of broadcasters developing In Band On Channel (IBOC) technology.  USADR merged with Lucent Digital Radio to form iBiquity Digital Corporation.  Previously he was the VP of Engineering for Westinghouse Broadcasting’s Group W Radio where he focused on improvements to the AM and FM broadcasting including digital broadcasting. He has been an active industry voice advocating technical improvements, protections of the FCC allocations, rules and AM improvement. He holds 4 patents covering digital radio and in 1993 received the Westinghouse Signature of Excellence for that work.  At the April 2004 National Association of Broadcasters Convention. Mr. Walden was presented the industry’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the industry and its transition to digital radio. Mr. Walden began his radio career in Miami Florida at WEDR-FM as its first Chief Engineer.  He holds a BS in electrical engineering from Florida International University

S. Merrill Weiss is a consultant in electronic media technology and technology management. His career spans 53 years in electronic media and related fields, with 44 years in management and consulting. Prior to consulting, he served in most engineering capacities in radio and television stations and managed a large systems-engineering activity for a top-three U.S. television network.  Along the way, he made major conceptual and technical contributions to technologies such as the Serial Digital Interface (SDI), RS-422 machine control, High Definition Television (HDTV), and the Archive eXchange Format (AXF).  Weiss helped produce the tests that led to the first digital television standard, on which nearly all subsequent digital video standards are based, and he co-chaired the international task force that developed the foundation and roadmap on which both the exchange of program material as bitstreams and file-based workflows are based.

 

In his consulting practice, Weiss has served clients across North America as well as Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.  He has been involved in development of industry standards for 43 years, participating in work on nearly all of the digital technologies developed within SMPTE and ATSC. He has chaired numerous industry standards development committees for the last 38 years and has been for 32 years a member of the SMPTE Standards Committee, which manages the SMPTE standardization process. Weiss has written several books and book chapters and has presented and/or published over 200 papers, many of them at the IEEE Broadcast Technology Symposium. He developed the technology for synchronization of transmitters in the ATSC system, enabling use of Single-Frequency Networks (SFNs) with the ATSC Digital Television Standard. More recently, he has participated in development of the ATSC 3 suite of standards, chairing the work on analysis of the ATSC 3 ecosystem and on the Scheduler and STL, which tie the Transport and Physical Layers together, among others.

 

Merrill has been certified at the highest level by the Society of Broadcast Engineers since 1980 and currently is at the level of Certified Professional Broadcast Engineer (CPBE).  He is a member of the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers (AFCCE). He has been a SMPTE Fellow since 1987 and received the SMPTE David Sarnoff Gold Medal Award in 1995 and the SMPTE Progress Medal in 2005. He received the NAB Television Engineering Achievement Award in 2006 and the ATSC Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award in 2012. He won the IEEE BTS Matti S. Siukola Memorial Award in both 2012 and 2013. In 2018, he received both the IEEE BTS Jules Cohen Award for Outstanding Broadcast Engineering and the SMPTE Excellence in Standards Award. He was a recipient of the NAB Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference Proceedings Best Paper Award, together with colleagues from CRC and ETRI, in 2019.  Merrill holds four issued US patents and two international patents, all in the area of broadcast transmission technology. Weiss was first elected to the IEEE BTS Administrative Committee (AdCom) in 2009, serving continuously since. He currently also serves BTS as its Standards Committee Chair. He is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Robert Weller is Vice President for Spectrum Policy at the National Association of Broadcasters, where he is responsible for developing strategies to protect broadcast spectrum.  Prior to joining NAB, he was Chief of Technical Analysis at the Federal Communications Commission and was responsible for developing mathematical models relating to propagation, RF Safety, frequency allotments, and other areas.  Mr. Weller is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, (BS) and of The George Washington University (MS), where he majored in Electromagnetics.  He has split his 30-year career between the public and private sectors, holding a number of technical and management positions at the FCC and also working as consulting engineer to the telecommunications industry.  Mr. Weller is a Registered Professional Engineer, a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Member of Subcommittee 4 (RF) of the International Committee on Electromagnetic Safety, the IEEE Committee on Man and Radiation, the Bioelectromagnetics Society, and is a three-time president of the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers (AFCCE).  He has written extensively on signals analysis, interference mitigation, RF exposure mitigation, and a various regulatory matters.

Liang Zhang (M’11-SM’14) received the bachelor’s degree in the department of electronic engineering and information science from the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China, in 1996, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in the department of electrical and computer engineering from the University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada, in 1998 and 2002, respectively. Currently, he is a Senior Research Scientist with the Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC), Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Since joining CRC, he has conducted research on digital communications systems, communications theory development, signal processing algorithms, physical-layer transmission technologies, antenna technologies, cross-layer design, as well as MAC layer resource allocation and scheduling techniques.

Liang Zhang has been deeply involved in the ATSC 3.0 standardization activities on developing the layered-division-multiplexing technology, mixed fixed and mobile broadcast service delivery, mobile service detection, co-channel interference mitigation, integrated access and backhaul. He is currently working on technologies for the convergence of future TV broadcast and 5G broadband systems.

Previously, he was part of WorldDMB technical committee for the standardization of the Enhanced Stream/Packet Mode in DAB system, and the DAB+ system. He has also conducted research activities on detection technologies for 3GPP LTE and IEEE 802.11 systems.

 

Dr. Zhang is a Senior Member of IEEE, an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting, IEEE BTS Distinguished Lecturer, and elected member of the IEEE BTS Administrative Committee (AdCom). Dr. Zhang has more than 70 peer-reviewed Journal and conference publications and received multiple Best Paper Awards for his work on the next generation ATSC 3.0 and the 5G broadcasting systems.

Geographies that you would be willing to travel to North America, Europe, Asia

Pablo Angueira (M’04, SM’11), received the M.S. and PhD in Telecommunication Engineering from the University of the Basque Country (Spain) in 1997 and 2002 respectively. He joined the Communications Engineering Department of the University of the Basque Country in 1998, where he is currently a Full Professor. He is part of the staff of the Signal Processing and Radiocommunication Lab (http://www.ehu.es/tsr) where he has been involved in research on digital broadcasting (DVB-T, DRM, T-DAB, DVB-T2, DVB-NGH and ATSC 3.0) for more than 20 years. Pablo Angueira is coauthor of an extensive list of papers in international peer-reviewed journals, and a large number of conference presentations in digital broadcasting. He has also coauthored several contributions to the ITU-R working groups WP6 and WP3.

His main research interests are network planning and spectrum management applied to digital terrestrial broadcast technologies. He is currently involved in research activities related to broadcasting in a 5G environment.

Dr. Angueira is the Chair of the IEEE BTS Publications Committee, an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting and part of the IEEE BMSB International Steering Committee. He is a member of the Administrative Committee of the IEEE BTS.

Dr. Chernock has retired as Chief Science Officer at Triveni Digital. Future plans include pursuing music (playing & creating musical instruments), electronics, woodworking & spending time with family – as well as remaining in touch with the broadcast industry. Dr. Chernock was previously chairman of the ATSC Technology Group on ATSC 3.0 (TG3), Technology and Standards Group (TG1) and the AHG on service delivery and synchronization for ATSC 3.0 – as well as many other leadership roles in ATSC. He is also the Distinguished Lecturer Chair for IEEE BTS and the Vice-Chair of the Management Committee of FOBTV. Dr. Chernock is a recipient of the ATSC Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award, the NAB Engineering Achievement Award (Television) and is an IEEE Fellow. In another life, he used transmission electron microscopy to study materials characteristics for advanced ceramics packaging and semiconductor technology at IBM. His ScD was from MIT in the field of nuclear materials engineering.

I received a Bachelor's Degree in Communications in 1977. I have worked in broadcasting since 1973 in both radio and television. I have planned and constructed two start-up full power television stations. I have extensive experience in planning, design and the construction of all facets of a television station. I am currently responsible for the planning and development of all technology projects at Iowa Public Television including RF transmission facilities, and studio origination facilities throughout the State of Iowa. I am active in future broadcast planning on the national level and serve on a number of committees developing standards for emerging technologies such as hybrid television, mobile digital television and 3D television. I am a member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Society of Broadcast Engineers and the Society of Cable Television Engineers ACTIVITIES: SBE: I am the current treasurer for SBE Chapter 109. I have been the chair and vice chair of the chapter. IEEE: I am the current vice president of the Broadcast Technology Society. I served two terms as the BTS president. I chair the IEEE-USA Communications Committee. I am a member of the IEEE.tv advisory committee, the IEEE Future Directions Committee, and IEEE Technical Activities Products and Services Committee SMPTE: I am the Central Region Governor for the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. ATSC: I am an active member of the ATSC 3.0 working group creating the standards for the next generation of television broadcasting. MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS: From 1999 - 2009, working at Iowa Public Television I lead the team that puts together the Iowa DTV Symposium, an education event attended annually by more than 400 people which provided industry engineers a forum to learn and understand the challenges, opportunities and technologies applied in the conversion of the television system in the United States from analog to digital. In 2008 I was honored as the Educator of the Year by the Society of Broadcast Engineers for the work I have done with educating the public and professionals regarding digital television. I presented keynote addresses to the China Content Broadcasting Network (CCBN) in March of 2010-12 at their conferences in Beijing, China. In 2011, I was a member of the committee that started the Future of Broadcast Television (FoBTV) initiative in Shanghai, China. The purpose of the initiative is to work on harmonized global standards for digital television broadcasting. I planned, engineered and managed the $47M project for converting Iowa Public Television from analog to digital which included 17 transmission facilities and the studio origination facility. I began writing for TV Technology magazine in 1987 and I have authored a monthly column called The Digital Journal for TV Technology since 1999.

Samina Husain received her Bachelor of Electrical Engineering in 1987 from Concordia University, Montreal and her executive M.B.A in “Management of Technology” in 2008 from University of Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. 

In her role at Reycom AG, in Switzerland, her areas of responsibilities were within IPTV/OTT solutions business development.  In her role previous she focused on IPTV and Hybrid STB business development and headed corporate marketing, at Albis Technologies Ltd. (a spin-off from Siemens Switzerland Ltd.).  Prior to this her responsibilities were within solution management for the Nokia Siemens Networks end-to-end IPTV solution.  From 2005 to 2006 she was responsible for business development in the China market for the Siemens Home Entertainment IPTV solution.  She has over 25 years experience in the satellite and telecommunications industry and has held various roles from customer operations, product management to project management in North and South America, and Europe.  

She joined IEEE as a university student, and later became a professional member active both in WIE and BTS.  At the 2009 BTS symposium she presented a joint paper on the “Business Case and Technical Requirements for IPTV STB”.

Stephen Lockwood is President and Senior Engineer with Hatfield & Dawson Consulting Engineers, with more than 35 years experience in the field of broadcasting and telecommunications engineering.   He is a Registered Professional Electrical Engineer (PE) in Washington, Alaska, and Wyoming and holds a BS Electrical Engineering and BS Engineering Physics from Oklahoma Christian University. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, Member and past president of the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers (AFCCE) and is a Member of Project Management Institute where is certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP). He is Member Society of Broadcast Engineers where he holds the certification of Certified Professional Broadcast Engineer (CPBE) and AM Directional Specialist (AMD) and holds Amateur Radio Operator License K7SSL.

Recognized worldwide as long‐time digital television industry leader, Luplow was Zenith's representative for the "Digital HDTV Grand Alliance" and the FCC’s ACATS, which selected Zenith’s technology as the ATSC DTV transmission system.   Luplow, recently retired, is now a consultant for his former employer, Zenith Electronics.  Luplow and LG/Zenith, are extremely involved with the Standardization and Deployment of Next Gen Television (aka as ATSC 3.0). An IEEE Life-Fellow, Luplow served as editor of the IEEE's Transactions on Consumer Electronics for 35 years.  He has contributed articles to numerous IEEE and other industry publications. Luplow is a 2006 recipient of the prestigious IEEE Masaru Ibuka Award, for “contributions to the development of the vestigial sideband (VSB) digital transmission system for digital television broadcasting.”  Wayne is a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society’s Administrative Committee (AdCom) and is a decades-long member of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society’s Board of Governors. Luplow has been a member of the ATSC Board of Directors since 1988, serving as Board-Chair in 2010, and chaired CTA’s Video Systems Standards Development Organization (R4) from 1998 thru 2017. With degrees from the Universities of Wisconsin (1962) and Pennsylvania (1964), Luplow resides with his wife Judy in Libertyville, IL.  They have 4 adult children and nine grandchildren.

Jon Montalban Sanchez received the M.S. Degree and PhD in Telecommunications Engineering from the University of the Basque Country (Spain), in 2009 and 2014, respectively. Since 2009 he is part of the TSR (Radiocommunications and Signal Processing) research group at the University of the Basque Country, where he is an assistant professor involved in several projects in the Digital Terrestrial Television broadcasting area. In 2012 he was visiting researcher at Communication Research Centre (CRC) Canada and in 2013 he was invited speaker at the 2nd IEEE BTS- GOLD Workshop in Cagliari. His current research interests include digital communications and digital signal processing for mobile reception of broadband and broadcast wireless communications systems in 5G. He has been awarded with the best conference paper in the IEEE International Symposium on Broadband Multimedia Systems and Broadcasting, and with the Extraordinary Doctoral mention from the University of the Basque Country. He is the chairman of the IEEE BTS Spanish Chapter Chair since 2019. He has served as session chair for various international conferences and workshops, and as a reviewer for several recognized international magazines.

James E. O’Neal has been involved in broadcast technology for more than half a century, beginning with employment during his early teen years at a commercial radio station (KXAR) in his hometown of Hope, Arkansas. He continued to work in both radio and television operations on a part-time basis throughout his high school and college years, beginning a fulltime broadcast engineering career after receiving his college degree. James worked in broadcast engineering for nearly 37 years before retiring in 2005 and launching a second career as technology editor at TV Technology magazine. He held this position for nearly a decade, and now serves as technology consultant for that publication. More than 30 years of Mr. O’Neal’s broadcast engineering career was spent with U.S. Government television operations, including the United States Information Agency’s Television and Film Service, WORLDNET Television, and VOA-TV. During his association with these organizations, James assisted in launching the USIA’s first global satellite-delivered television network, and was heavily involved in both television facility design and satellite transmission engineering operations. He enjoys researching and writing about broadcasting history and persons who have made important contributions in this field. He is a frequent contributor to TV Technology and its sister publications, Radio World. He enjoys collecting and restoring both consumer radio and television items and commercial broadcasting equipment, including an operating replica of the 1947-vintage small town radio station where he began his broadcasting career. Mr. O’Neal is a 1969 graduate of the University of Arkansas and holds both commercial and amateur radio licenses. He is holds Professional Broadcast Engineer and Broadcast Networking Engineer certification from the Society of Broadcast Engineers. He is a Life Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, and a Life Member of the Society of Broadcast Engineers, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. In addition, he serves as a member of the IEEE’s Editorial Advisory Board and is a member of the IEEE’s BTS administrative committee. James serves as editor-in-chief of the BTS’s Broadcast Technology publication and is also the organization’s historian. He also serves on the SMPTE Board of Editors, and is an associate editor of that organization’s Motion Imaging Journal.

Today Paul Shulins is President of Shulins’ Solutions, a radio and tv broadcast consulting firm based in Andover Massachusetts, specializing in remote control solutions, studio design and construction, antenna protection systems and ratings metrics. Previously, Paul joined Burk Technology as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer in September of 2017. Prior to joining Burk Technology, Paul had been the Director of Technical Operations for Greater Media’s Boston, Massachusetts five FM Radio Stations for twenty-nine years. He has been working as a Radio Chief Engineer for forty years. Paul has been responsible for the planning and day-to-day management of one of the first major market studio consolidations in 1998 for Greater Media’s Boston radio stations. He has designed and constructed many custom, on-air program playback systems, technical facility monitoring and control systems. He is a member of the Society of Broadcast Engineers and has held an SBE Radio Engineer Certification since 1982. Paul is also a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society and has co-chaired the BTS Broadcast Symposium for several years. And was recently elected by the BTS AdCom as a distinguished lecturer. Paul has presented numerous papers at the IEEE Broadcast Symposium, the NAB Broadcast Convention, and the NAB Radio Show. He has also been a frequent contributor to Radio World Magazine and authored several chapters in the 11th edition of the NAB engineering handbook. Paul has also served as an elected member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society's administrative committee for three years. Today he is the Vice President for IEEE’s Broadcast Technology Society. Paul earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of New Hampshire System in 1979 with majors in physics, chemistry and natural sciences. He is a private pilot, and enjoys astronomy, skiing, and photography, and operates his Arizona observatory remotely collecting deep sky images.

Dr Peter Siebert  career spans 35 years.  He has held various positions within the Broadcast industry, most recently he was the Executive Director at the DVB Project Office in Geneva, where he was responsible for all organizational and technology related aspects of the DVB.  Prior to this with Siemens AG, he was influential in the design of the end-to-end IPTV and set-top box solution; at SES-ASTRA he was instrumental in the introduction of digital television via satellite for Europe, based on the DVB/MPEG-2 standards; and at Philips Kommunikations AG, he managed digital audio and video transmission.

His involvement has been on all aspects of audio-video transmission such as video transmission over telecommunication networks (PDH/SDH), satellite and IPTV networks. He was responsible for a number of ETSI specifications in the area of satellite transmission as well as for DVB standards.  He holds several patents for various aspects of audio-visual data transmission. 

Dr. Peter Siebert received his M.Sc. degree in 1984 and his Ph.D. degree in 1989 in physics from the University in Frankfurt, Germany.  In addition, he holds a degree in economics from the University in Hagen, Germany and an MBA from the Open University Milton Keynes, UK. He is a Senior IEEE Member and an elected Adcom member of IEEE Broadcast Technology Society (BTS).

Education: PhD in Telemmatics Engineering, Universidad de Vigo. Vigo, Spain.2010 MBA, Universidad de Montevideo. Montevideo, Uruguay. 1999 Electrical Engineer, Universidad de la República. Montevideo, Uruguay. 1994 Professional Positions:  Advisor of the Ministry of Industry-National Telecommunications Agency (Dirección Nacional de Telecomunicaciones, Ministerio de Indutria, Energía y Minería, Uruguay). 2011 to the present  20+ years of experience on Engineering and Technical Management of TV station and cable and satellite head-ends in Uruguay. 1991-2010 at SAETA TV Canal 10 and TCC media group. Consultant Engineer at GEOCOM Uruguay. 2000-2005. VoIP, Multimedia POS.  Responsible or co-responsible for scientific and professional projects.  Academic Positions: Director of the ICT Department at the School of Engineering of Universidad de Montevideo. 2002 to the present. Professor at Universidad de la República. 1995 to the present. Prizes and Recognitions:  Member of the National Research System (SNI-ANII) at Uruguay.  Member of National Engineering Academy, Uruguay (Academia Nacional de Ingeniería). PhD Thesis: "Audiovisual contents recommender systems for groups". Sobresaliente Cum-Laude. Universidad de Vigo, 2010.  Award for the best thesis from the National Engineering Academy, Uruguay, 2010.  Publications: See: http://scholar.google.com.uy/citations?hl=en&user=F8eRrgIAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate Author of the book “TV-Anytime. Paving the Way for Personalized TV” Authors: Gil Solla, Alberto, Sotelo Bovino, Rafael G., Springer 2013 http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783642367656 Present Positions at IEEE: Chair of IEEE Cono Sur Council (2017). Cono Sur Council groups IEEE Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay Sections. Member of Administrative Committee of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society (2016-2018) Associate Editor of IEEE Broadcast Technology Magazine IEEE Senior Member Chair of IEEE Uruguay Section (2015-2016) Chair of the Uruguay Chapter of IEEE Broadcast Technology Society (Founder) Vice-Chair of the Uruguay Chapter of IEEE Communications Society

Peter Symes worked in the television and related industries from 1967 until his retirement in 2016.

His early career included BS (honors) 1967 from University of Wales, and positions in the BBC Studio Planning & Installation Department, Philips Broadcast, and Central Dynamics Ltd.

In 1983 he joined Grass Valley Group (subsequently Tektronix, subsequently Thomson Broadcast), and held positions responsible for product planning, strategic planning, intellectual property management, and technological liaison.  He represented Grass Valley in many organizations including the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).  In July 2007 Symes  joined SMPTE staff as Director of Standards & Engineering, a position held until retirement in 2016.

Symes holds three patents and is the joint recipient of an Emmy award for the architecture of the digital picture processor.  He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Fellow of SMPTE, and a Certified Standards Professional (2013) by the Society for Standards Professionals (SES).

Peter has written and presented numerous papers at industry conferences, and is the author of three books on Video Compression, all published by McGraw Hill.  He has also contributed to other books, including two editions of the NAB Engineering Handbook.

Symes served on the Board of Governors of SMPTE from 1987 to 2007, and on the Board of Directors of ATSC from 2009 to 2015.

Glynn Walden is the retired Senior VP of Engineering for CBS Radio where he was responsible for new technology roll outs including CBS Radio’s conversion to HD radio. He currently consults for CBS Entercom Radio and other interesting projects. In 1991 he helped found USA Digital Radio, a consortium of broadcasters developing In Band On Channel (IBOC) technology.  USADR merged with Lucent Digital Radio to form iBiquity Digital Corporation.  Previously he was the VP of Engineering for Westinghouse Broadcasting’s Group W Radio where he focused on improvements to the AM and FM broadcasting including digital broadcasting. He has been an active industry voice advocating technical improvements, protections of the FCC allocations, rules and AM improvement. He holds 4 patents covering digital radio and in 1993 received the Westinghouse Signature of Excellence for that work.  At the April 2004 National Association of Broadcasters Convention. Mr. Walden was presented the industry’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the industry and its transition to digital radio. Mr. Walden began his radio career in Miami Florida at WEDR-FM as its first Chief Engineer.  He holds a BS in electrical engineering from Florida International University

S. Merrill Weiss is a consultant in electronic media technology and technology management. His career spans 53 years in electronic media and related fields, with 44 years in management and consulting. Prior to consulting, he served in most engineering capacities in radio and television stations and managed a large systems-engineering activity for a top-three U.S. television network.  Along the way, he made major conceptual and technical contributions to technologies such as the Serial Digital Interface (SDI), RS-422 machine control, High Definition Television (HDTV), and the Archive eXchange Format (AXF).  Weiss helped produce the tests that led to the first digital television standard, on which nearly all subsequent digital video standards are based, and he co-chaired the international task force that developed the foundation and roadmap on which both the exchange of program material as bitstreams and file-based workflows are based.

 

In his consulting practice, Weiss has served clients across North America as well as Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.  He has been involved in development of industry standards for 43 years, participating in work on nearly all of the digital technologies developed within SMPTE and ATSC. He has chaired numerous industry standards development committees for the last 38 years and has been for 32 years a member of the SMPTE Standards Committee, which manages the SMPTE standardization process. Weiss has written several books and book chapters and has presented and/or published over 200 papers, many of them at the IEEE Broadcast Technology Symposium. He developed the technology for synchronization of transmitters in the ATSC system, enabling use of Single-Frequency Networks (SFNs) with the ATSC Digital Television Standard. More recently, he has participated in development of the ATSC 3 suite of standards, chairing the work on analysis of the ATSC 3 ecosystem and on the Scheduler and STL, which tie the Transport and Physical Layers together, among others.

 

Merrill has been certified at the highest level by the Society of Broadcast Engineers since 1980 and currently is at the level of Certified Professional Broadcast Engineer (CPBE).  He is a member of the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers (AFCCE). He has been a SMPTE Fellow since 1987 and received the SMPTE David Sarnoff Gold Medal Award in 1995 and the SMPTE Progress Medal in 2005. He received the NAB Television Engineering Achievement Award in 2006 and the ATSC Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award in 2012. He won the IEEE BTS Matti S. Siukola Memorial Award in both 2012 and 2013. In 2018, he received both the IEEE BTS Jules Cohen Award for Outstanding Broadcast Engineering and the SMPTE Excellence in Standards Award. He was a recipient of the NAB Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology Conference Proceedings Best Paper Award, together with colleagues from CRC and ETRI, in 2019.  Merrill holds four issued US patents and two international patents, all in the area of broadcast transmission technology. Weiss was first elected to the IEEE BTS Administrative Committee (AdCom) in 2009, serving continuously since. He currently also serves BTS as its Standards Committee Chair. He is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Robert Weller is Vice President for Spectrum Policy at the National Association of Broadcasters, where he is responsible for developing strategies to protect broadcast spectrum.  Prior to joining NAB, he was Chief of Technical Analysis at the Federal Communications Commission and was responsible for developing mathematical models relating to propagation, RF Safety, frequency allotments, and other areas.  Mr. Weller is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, (BS) and of The George Washington University (MS), where he majored in Electromagnetics.  He has split his 30-year career between the public and private sectors, holding a number of technical and management positions at the FCC and also working as consulting engineer to the telecommunications industry.  Mr. Weller is a Registered Professional Engineer, a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Member of Subcommittee 4 (RF) of the International Committee on Electromagnetic Safety, the IEEE Committee on Man and Radiation, the Bioelectromagnetics Society, and is a three-time president of the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers (AFCCE).  He has written extensively on signals analysis, interference mitigation, RF exposure mitigation, and a various regulatory matters.

As a Distinguished Lecturer, Yiyan is willing to travel to any BTS Chapters.  Yiyan Wu</strong> (F’2001)received the M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada, in 1986 and 1990, respectively, all in electrical engineering. In 1990, he worked at Telesat Canada as a Senior Satellite Communication Systems Engineer. In 1992, he joined the Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC), Ottawa, where he is currently a Principle Research Scientist. His research interests include broadband multimedia communications, digital broadcasting, and communication systems engineering. He is an IEEE Fellow and an Adjunct Professor of Carleton University, Ottawa. He has the authored or coauthored more than 250 publications. Dr. Wu is a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society Administrative Committee and a member of Board of Directors of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) representing IEEE. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING. He has received many technical awards and patents for his contribution to the research and development of digital broadcasting and broadband multimedia communications. Communication Research Centre, Ottawa, ON K2H 8S2 Canada Phone: +1 613 998 2870  yiyan.wu@crc.ca