Thomas Schierl received the Diplom-Ingenieur degree (passed with distinction) in Computer Engineering from the Berlin University of Technology (TUB), Germany in December 2003. He joined the Image Communication group of Thomas Wiegand in the Image Processing Department of Fraunhofer HHI in the same year. In 2003, Thomas integrated world’s first IP-based H.264/AVC transmission over DVB-T. This integration has been shown on-air at IFA exhibition in Berlin, Germany 2003.

In 2004, he conducted different works on adaptive real-time streaming of H.264/MPEG4-AVC. He developed an adaptive and TCP friendly Internet streaming system based on RTSP/RTP/RTCP including video adaptation techniques. Contributions as adaptive streaming work item have been given to ISMA in 2004.

Later in 2004, he worked in a co-industry project on adaptive media delivery of H.264/MPEG4-AVC in 3G wireless networks. Contributions have been given to 3GPP SA4 meetings in 2004. In 2005, he managed Fraunhofer HHI’s media application integration team for different vendors for the Berlin-Brandenburg DVB-H trial, launched during IFA exhibition in Berlin, Germany 2005.

Since 2005, he is project manager for various scientific and industry research projects.

Thomas is the co-author of the IETF RTP Payload Format for H.264 SVC (Scalable Video Coding), IETF RTP Payload for Multi View Coding (MVC) and the author of the IETF MMUSIC draft on Signaling Layered Codecs in the Session Description Protocol (SDP). He also co-authors the MPEG Standard on Transport of H.264 SVC over MPEG-2 Transport Stream. Typically, he is participating JVT/MPEG, IETF and DVB meetings.

In 2007, he visited the Image, Video, and Multimedia Systems group of Prof. Bernd Girod at Stanford University, CA, USA for different research activities.

Thomas' research interests include real-time media delivery over IP networks, which may be mobile or wired, with or without infrastructure (e.g., Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs)), or based on traditional as well as on overlay/Peer-to-Peer (P2P) IP-TV approaches.