Thomas Wiegand
Thomas Wiegand is a German electrical engineer who edits the H.264/AVC video coding standard, and his work then moves into AI for health and medical AI safety. In 2008 he receives a Primetime Emmy Engineering Award for the H.264/AVC projects he co-chairs. From 2018 to 2023 he chairs the ITU/WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health, which evaluates AI algorithms in the health sector. Since 2014 he is executive director of the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute in Berlin, and in 2025 he co-authors a paper on medical AI safety with Sebastian Lapuschkin and Wojciech Samek.
- Works
- 486
- Citations
- 46,854
- h-index
- 65
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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1970–2000
From Wismar to Hamburg and Erlangen
He is born in Wismar in 1970. He earns a Dipl.-Ing. in electrical engineering at Hamburg-Harburg in 1995 and a Dr.-Ing. at Erlangen-Nuremberg in 2000.
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Since 2002
Editing the H.264 video standard
He edits the H.264/AVC video standard from 2002 and co-chairs the standardization group behind it.
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2008
A Primetime Emmy for video coding
In 2008 he receives a Primetime Emmy Engineering Award for the H.264/AVC projects he co-chairs.
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2018
Membership in the Leopoldina
He joins the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2018.
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2018–2023
Chairing AI for Health
From 2018 to 2023 he chairs the ITU/WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health, which evaluates AI algorithms in the health sector.
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Since 2020
Principal scientist at BIFOLD
Since 2020 he is a principal scientist at the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data.
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2025
Work on medical AI safety
In 2025 he co-authors a paper on medical AI safety with Sebastian Lapuschkin and Wojciech Samek.
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Since 2014
Executive director at Fraunhofer HHI
He is executive director of the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute in Berlin, a post he holds since 2014, and he is also a professor at TU Berlin.
Sources and credits
Photo: ITU Pictures from Geneva, Switzerland, via Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY 2.0. Source: commons.wikimedia.org. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.
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