Wim Sweldens is a

Belgian American Belgian Americans are Americans who can trace their ancestry to people from Belgium who immigrated to the United States. While the first natives of the then-Southern Netherlands arrived in America in the 17th century, the majority of Belgian immi ...

business leader Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit." Having a business name does not separat ...

, scientist, and inventor notable for innovations in communications and

signal processing Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing ''signals'', such as audio signal processing, sound, image processing, images, and scientific measurements. Signal processing techniq ...

technology. Sweldens is the inventor of the wavelet

lifting scheme The lifting scheme is a technique for both designing wavelets and performing the discrete wavelet transform (DWT). In an implementation, it is often worthwhile to merge these steps and design the wavelet filters ''while'' performing the wavelet tr ...

, an algorithm used both in the

JPEG 2000 JPEG 2000 (JP2) is an image compression standard and coding system. It was developed from 1997 to 2000 by a Joint Photographic Experts Group committee chaired by Touradj Ebrahimi (later the JPEG president), with the intention of superseding the ...

image compression standard, as well as for compressing 3D images into billions of tiny

triangular A triangle is a polygon with three edges and three vertices. It is one of the basic shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices ''A'', ''B'', and ''C'' is denoted \triangle ABC. In Euclidean geometry, any three points, when non- collinea ...

modules. At telecommunications firm

Alcatel-Lucent Alcatel–Lucent S.A. () was a French–American global telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. It was formed in 2006 by the merger of France-based Alcatel and U.S.-based Lucent, the latter being a su ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, he led development of new

cell tower A cell site, cell tower, or cellular base station is a cellular-enabled mobile device site where antennas and electronic communications equipment are placed (typically on a radio mast, tower, or other raised structure) to create a cell, or adjac ...

technology called ''lightRadio'' which reduces the size of transmission equipment dramatically. The equipment uses only basic electrical power and can be placed indoors and linked to

optical fiber An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to ...

cables; it enables mobile networks to operate with much less electricity, halving CO₂ emissions and reducing the

carbon footprint A carbon footprint is the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by an individual, event, organization, service, place or product, expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Greenhouse gases, including the carbon-containing gases carbo ...

, and permitting cell phone service to reach more people over expanded geographic areas. In 2013 Sweldens co-founded

Kiswe Mobile Kiswe is a startup company that makes live streaming technology for live sports, entertainment and video. Kiswe is headquartered in the U.S. and has offices in Europe and Asia. Background The company was started in autumn 2013. Its three founders ...

with

Jeong Kim Jeong Hun Kim ( ko, 김종훈; born August 13, 1960) is a South Korean-born American academic, businessman, and entrepreneur in the technology industry. In 2004, Kim was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions t ...

and Jimmy Lynn. The Kiswe interactive streaming (also called reverse streaming) technology has powered some of the biggest music and sports events in the world, notably with the

K-pop K-pop (), short for Korean popular music, is a form of popular music originating in South Korea as part of South Korean culture. It includes styles and genres from around the world, such as pop, hip hop, R&B, experimental, rock, jazz, gos ...

band

BTS BTS (), also known as the Bangtan Boys, is a South Korean boy band formed in 2010 and debuting in 2013 under Big Hit Entertainment. The septet—consisting of members Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jungkook—co-writes and co-produ ...

with over one million live viewers. Kiswe's multi view technology allows end users to live choose their favorite camera angle of an event. Users can also remote participate in an event through chat, cheering, and uploading selfie videos. Sweldens was one of the key people behind Kiswe's virtual

Tour of Flanders The Tour of Flanders ( nl, Ronde van Vlaanderen), also known as ''De Ronde'' (''"The Tour"''), is an annual road cycling race held in Belgium every spring. The most important cycling race in Flanders, it is part of the UCI World Tour and organi ...

during the 2020

Covid-19 lockdown Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of non-pharmaceutical interventions colloquially known as lockdowns (encompassing stay-at-home orders, curfews, quarantines, and similar societal restrictions) have been implemented in numerous countrie ...

. Sweldens holds 28 US patents and has received prestigious awards, including the MIT TR35 in 1999 and the

Leslie Fox Prize for Numerical Analysis The Leslie Fox Prize for Numerical Analysis of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) is a biennial prize established in 1985 by the IMA in honour of mathematician Leslie Fox (1918-1992). The prize honours "young numerical analyst ...

. He is an Honorary Professor at the University of Leuven.

References

External links

Wim Sweldens at lightRadio press conference
(see 3:00+ minutes)
Research website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sweldens, Wim Living people Computer scientists American telecommunications industry businesspeople Fellow Members of the IEEE Year of birth missing (living people)