Leonardo Chiariglione

Leonardo Chiariglione (IPA: [kjariʎˈʎoːne]) (born 30 January 1943 (age 78) in Almese, Turin province, Piedmont, Italy) is an Italian engineer. He has been at the forefront of a number of initiatives that have helped shape media technology and business as we know them today,[1] in particular he was the chairman of, and co-founded the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG)[2] together with Hiroshi Yasuda.

Leonardo Chiariglione in 2011

Biography

After receiving the classical High School degree at the Liceo Salesiano Valsalice in Turin, he earned a masters in Electronic Engineering at the Polytechnic of Turin (1967), then obtained his Ph.D. degree at the University of Tokyo in 1973, where he also learned to speak Japanese. Chiariglione speaks five languages including English and French.

From March 1971 until July 2003, he was with CSELT, the corporate research center of the Telecom Italia group. His final position there was Vice President, Multimedia, at Telecom Italia Lab, the new name given to CSELT in 2001.

He has led a number of European collaborative projects :

  • IVICO – a RACE project investigating cost-effective integrated video codecs,
  • COMIS – an ESPRIT project supporting the development of the MPEG-1 standard and
  • EU 625 – VADIS a EUREKA project aiming at developing a European hardware and software technology for the MPEG-2 standard.

He has initiated various efforts to define internationally agreed specifications, such as DAVIC (the Digital Audio-Visual Council) in 1994 and FIPA (the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents) in 1996.

The project for which he is probably best known started in 1988, when he originated the ISO standardization activity known as MPEG (or Moving Picture Experts Group) (officially ISO TC97/SC2/WG8/MPEG, now ISO IEC-JTC1/SC29/WG11), of which he has been the Convenor from the start until June 6, 2020.[3] This group, with a membership of over 300 experts, representing 20 countries and various industries having a stake in digital audio and video, produced the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards that have facilitated the digital audio-visual revolution.

In 1999, he was asked to be the Executive Director of Secure Digital Music Initiative, a forum comprising hundreds of companies to develop specifications for an open standard secure digital music delivery technology.[1] He stepped down from this post in 2001, having expressed frustration about conflicts between the members of the group, which had failed to produce effective anti-piracy specifications.[4]

He is currently CEO of cedeo.net.[5]

Awards and honors

Chiariglione has received the IBC 1999 John Tucker Award, IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award (1999), Kilby International Award (1998), and IET Faraday Medal (2012).

He was appointed as Distinguished Invited Professor at Information and Communication University, Daejeon, Korea in 2004.

Chiariglione was given Honorary Membership of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) in October 2014.[6]

Chiariglione was also awarded with Charles F. Jenkins lifetime achievement award (an Emmy Engineering Award)[7] in recognition of 30 years of work being founder and chairman of Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and leading the MPEG in setting the worldwide standards for digital video compression and transmission. In his blog post,[8] while thanking for this recognition award he also highlighted some big issues to be addressed in the future.

References
  1. "Time digital 50, 19, Leonardo Chiariglione". Time Magazine. September 27, 1999. Retrieved May 7, 2010.
  2. Scientific American: SDMI Needs to Secure New Chief, March 22, 2004
  3. "A future without MPEG – Leonardo Chiariglione | Blog". Retrieved 2020-07-01.
  4. Lisa Nadile: SDMI Needs to Secure New Chief Wired online, January 24, 2001
  5. "About". CEDEO.net. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
  6. "Motion-Imaging Industry Luminaries Recognized at SMPTE® Honors & Awards Ceremony". Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers. 10 November 2014. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
  7. "69th Engineering Emmy Awards Recipients". 27 September 2017. Retrieved 23 October 2017.
  8. Leonardo Chiariglione (27 September 2017). "On my Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award". Retrieved 23 October 2017.

Further reading
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