Appointed Committee Members

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.

Greg Best. Greg attended Missouri Institute of Science & Technology graduating in 1976 with a Bachelors of Electrical Engineering, and received his Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology in 1980. Greg joined Motorola to work on the first 900 MHz cellphone and later worked at Harris Broadcast (now Gates Radio) with various roles from design engineer to TV Product Manager. Greg moved to the consulting field and currently serves the broadcast and communications industry as the President of Greg Best Consulting Inc. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the field of Electrical Engineering, registered in four states. Greg is a member of the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers (AFCCE), Society of Broadcast Engineers, and served as a past IEEE Broadcast Standards Committee chair. Greg was the recipient of the 2012 IEEE BTS Matti Siukola Memorial Award at the Broadcast Technology Symposium for the best symposium paper.

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)

Christine M. Di Lapi received a B.S.E.E. from Clemson University in 1987 and a M.S.E. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1990. From 1990 until 2009 Christine worked for Motorola Inc., specializing in all kinds of international spectrum management issues, including those for mobile multimedia broadcasting. Since 2011 she has been employed by Exelis Inc. as a spectral assurance engineer and from 2009 through 2011 she worked at MITRE Corporation. From 2007 until 2012 Christine was a Vice Chairperson of ITU-R Study Group 6, which represents the broadcasting service. She has also been elected twice to BTS’s Advisory Committee, and since 2010 has been BTS’s IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) liaison.

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.

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

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”.

Jon Montalban works as a Senior Researcher and Assistant Professor at the University of the Basque Country since 2016. He has been part of the TSR (Radiocommunications and Signal Processing) research group for more than ten years. He has held visiting research appointments at Communication Research Centre (CRC), Canada, and Dublin City University (DCU), Ireland. He was part of one of the international groups that developed the Layered Division Multiplexing technique, currently part of the ATSC 3.0 standard. His current research interests are in the area of wireless communications architectures and networking for 5G and beyond. He is the co-recipient of the Scott Helt Memorial Award to recognize the best paper published in the IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting in 2019. He has served as a reviewer for several renowned international journals and conferences in the area of wireless communications and currently serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Access and the IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting. 

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 21 years, 10 of them in Warner Media, as Senior Manager of Systems Assurance and Operations. Now she works in Google as Delivery Center Manager. She is IEEE Argentina Secretary since 2013 for 5 years, was President of Women in Engineering for  8 years, and also Secretary/Chair/ViceChair of BTS Argentina and BTS AdCom member since 2012

An independent Broadcast Industry advisor and a guest speaker at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 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 he was with Siemens AG, where 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 visual transmission.

His involvement has been in all aspects of audio-video transmission such as video transmission over telecommunication networks (PDH/SDH), satellite and IPTV networks. He was responsible for several ETSI specifications in the area of satellite transmission, as well as for DVB standards.  He holds several patents for various aspects of audio and 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 2022-2024 Adcom member of IEEE Broadcast Technology Society (BTS). 

Thomas B. Silliman Tom attended Cornell University graduating in 1969 with a Bachelors of Electrical Engineering, and Tom received his Master of Engineering (Electrical) from Cornell in 1970. After graduating, Tom went to work at Electronics Research as Director of Engineering. Tom is currently the President of Electronics Research. Tom is a registered Professional Engineer in the field of Electrical Engineering, and Tom is currently registered in three states. Tom is a two term past president of the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers (AFCCE). Currently, Tom is the secretary of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society as well as a board member for Tri-State Public Radio and TV in Evansville, Indiana. Tom is a Fellow of the IEEE. In 2008 he was the recipient of the NAB Engineering Achievement Award for Radio and in 2015 was awarded the IEEE Broadcast Techonology Society Jules Cohen Award for Outstanding Broadcast Engineering.

Jim Stenberg is the EVP of RF infrastructure at Signal Infrastructure Group PBC.   In his position he oversees the design, specification, procurement, installation and operation of nextgen TV Single Frequency Networks (SFN) and other RF equipment.   Prior to joining SIG, he was with American Tower Corporation for 8 years as a principal broadcast RF engineer where he was a subject matter expert for the company regarding broadcast antennas and rf systems particularly their multi-tenant broadband systems.  Earlier he ran his own broadcast consulting and field service business, worked for several filter/antenna manufacturers and designed and built numerous TV and FM RF systems.  In 2020 he was awarded the NAB Television Engineering Achievement Awarded.  He lives in Portland, Maine and has a BSEE from the University of Massachusetts - Lowell.

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.

S. Merrill Weiss is a consultant in electronic media technology and technology management. His career spans 55 years in electronic media and related fields, with 46 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 46 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 40 years and has been for 34 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.

Yiyan Wu (Fellow 2001) received the M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, in 1986 and 1990, respectively. 

He is a Principal Research Scientist of the Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC).  Dr. Wu’s research interests include broadband multimedia communications, digital broadcasting, and communication systems engineering.  He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, an adjunct professor of Carleton University, and Western University in Canada.  Dr. Wu is a member of the ATSC Board of Directors, representing IEEE.  He is the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting. He has been named a Member of the Order of Canada, since 2018.

Liang Zhang [M’11, SM’14, F’22] received 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. Dr. Zhang is a Senior Research Scientist with the Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC), Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and is currently responsible for research program coordination and oversight. His main research areas include convergence of next generation broadband and broadcast systems, spectrum monitoring and data analysis, and spectrum policies. He has been deeply involved in the ATSC 3.0 standardization activities on developing the layered-division-multiplexing (LDM) technology, in-band distribution link (IDL), integrated access and backhaul (IAB), and inter-tower communications network (ITCN).

Dr. Zhang is an IEEE Fellow, Chair of IEEE Broadcast Technology Society (BTS) Fellows Evaluation Committee, previous Chair of IEEE BTS Distinguished Lecturer Committee, elected member of the IEEE BTS Administrative Committee (AdCom), IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting and IET Communications Journal. Dr. Zhang has more than 100 peer-reviewed Journal and conference publications, many technical contributions on Digital Radio Broadcast (DAB) and ATSC 3.0 standards, and received over ten Best Paper Awards from IEEE, IBC and NAB for his work on the next generation ATSC 3.0 and the 5G broadcasting systems.