President Gary W. Elko started his professional career at Bell Labs after completing his Ph.D. at the Pennsylvania State University in Acoustics. Dr. Elko was a Research Supervisor of the Electroacoustics and Signal Processing Group in the Acoustics Research Department at Bell Labs. He was also a Research Scientist, and Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Lucent, and Agere Systems and Avaya Labs. Dr. Elko is a fellow of both the Acoustical Society of America and the IEEE. He received the Acoustical Society of America's Silver Medal in Engineering Acoustics in 2012 and the IEEE Signal Processing Society Industrial Innovation Award in 2015. He has more than 60 publications and over 30 patents in the area of acoustic transducers and acoustic signal processing.
Chief Technical Officer Jens M. Meyer started his professional career with a vocational training at German Telecom and later received his M.S. (Dipl.-Ing.) in Electrical Engineering from the Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany. In 1997/98 Dr. Meyer was a member of the Acoustics Group at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies. He returned to Darmstadt University to receive his Ph.D. (Dr.-Ing.) in Acoustics before joining Agere Systems. Dr. Meyer's professional interests focus on acoustic signal processing and real time audio implementations. He has authored several conference and journal papers, book chapters, and holds several patents.
Chief Scientist Tomas Gaensler received his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in signal processing from Lund University, Lund, Sweden. He also held a position as an Assistant Professor at Lund University and served as a lecturer and teacher in signal processing. After a postdoc position at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, he joined Bell Labs as a full time member of technical staff and later worked at Agere Systems, a spin-off from Lucent Technologies' Microelectronics group. He has more than 40 published papers, conference, and workshop contributions. Dr. Gaensler also co-authored the books ``Advances in Network and Acoustic Echo Cancellation,” and ``Acoustic Signal Processing for Telecommunication.
Chief Engineering Officer Eric J. Diethorn received his B.S. degree from The Pennsylvania State University, and received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois’ Champaign-Urbana campus, all in electrical engineering. He began his professional career with AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1987, followed by positions in Lucent Technologies, Agere Systems and Avaya. When he left Avaya in 2009, he held the position of Consulting Member of Technical Staff for enterprise-wide speech and audio. Dr. Diethorn’s professional interests are in speech and audio signal processing for communications, with a primary focus on echo control and real-time implementation. He has authored numerous conference and journal papers, book chapters, and holds several patents.
Senior Engineer Steven L. Backer received his B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University, and his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, where he focused on signal processing for digital audio and music at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Mr. Backer has accrued over a decade of experience in the semiconductor and professional audio industry, is a member of the Audio Engineering Society and Acoustical Society of America, and currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Senior Engineer Heinz Teutsch received his M.S. (Dipl.-Ing.) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, after having spent a year in the Acoustics Research Department at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies in 2000. He went back to the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg to complete his Ph.D. (Dr.-Ing.) degree in Electrical Engineering in early 2006. Dr. Teutsch started his professional career at Avaya Labs in 2006 where he had been working on virtually all aspects related to speech communications, including terminal hardware, software, and algorithms. He has authored a number of conference and journal papers, and holds several patents.