Fraunhofer USA Digital Media Technologies, Audio and Multimedia Division, expanded its reach into North America with an R&D beachhead in Silicon Valley.

The new office will house a San Jose-based team focusing on state-of-the-art coding and multimedia real-time system technologies and also allow the organization a closer proximity to existing and potential North American customers.

Fraunhofer is the largest applied research organization in Europe with a permanent global staff of 13,000 scientists and engineers. Fraunhofer USA Audio and Multimedia Division focuses on technologies that compress audio or video. This includes the MP3 format, originated by Fraunhofer, which made music downloads possible and created the portable music player industry. This was followed by their co-invention of the AAC format popularized by the iPod. Fraunhofer then expanded its work to include video with H.264, particularly for mobile TV applications. Fraunhofer also has developed new technologies to offer high-quality audio codecs for surround sound and VoIP applications.

Fraunhofer USA will work in close collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits in Erlangen, located in Bavaria, Germany.

Fraunhofer USA will be led by Robert Bleidt, Division GM, who has over two decades of industry experience in developing new media technologies and businesses. The office is located at 100 Centure Court, San Jose, Calif.

Contac:
Robert Bleidt, Audio and Multimedia Division GM
www.fraunhofer.org.
www.iis.fraunhofer.de