NETCOM Research Group

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ralf Steinmetz has been appointed to the eminent role of Cátedra de Excelencia (Chair of Excellence) by University Carlos III of Madrid, sponsored by Banco Santander. He will join IMDEA Networks Institute as a Visiting Professor during his stay.

The University Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M) has announced that Dr. Ralf Steinmetz, Full Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology and Adjunct Professor at the Department of Computer Science at Technische Universität Darmstadt (TUD), as well as Director of the Multimedia Communications Lab (KOM) at the said university, is the recipient of a Cátedra de Excelencia Universidad Carlos III de Madrid-Banco Santander for the academic year 2014/15. The Chairs of Excellence program aims to boost the UC3M’s research profile worldwide through the incorporation of internationally distinguished professors in all disciplines.

Dr. Steinmetz is also to join IMDEA Networks Institute as a Visiting Professor. The Madrid research centre is a long-standing scientific collaborator of the Telematics Department at UC3M. Dr. Steinmetz is a key figure for the Institute since its inception: he presides its Board of Trustees and became a member of its Scientific Council in 2007. Together with IMDEA Networks, he is also a member of the European Technology Platform Net!Works+ISI. This community of over 500 Information and Communications Technology (ICT) carriers, system makers and research groups from the EU and associated countries aims to develop 5G technologies, providing a blueprint for the deployment of 5G networks with the 2020 horizon in sight.

A renowned networking scientist, Dr. Steinmetz has outlined an ambitious research plan for his six-month stay, focused on the fundamental aspects associated to a foreseen transition towards a new technology paradigm for the Future Internet. His work will aim to solve the grand challenge to future communication systems posed by the increasing dynamics of the conditions in which they operate, diverging use cases and growing quality requirements. Indeed, we are witnessing a constant development of mechanisms to cope with the need to create adaptive communication systems, which are able to accommodate the current plethora of heterogeneous communication devices, of network access techniques and of rendered services. Dr. Steinmetz will work in collaboration with experts in the field from UC3M and IMDEA Networks to identify viable alternatives to current communication systems. Detailed analyses are expected to yield valuable decision-making data on the transition costs, in terms of technical complexity, actual improvements to functionality and performance, consumption of resources and stability of the new systems.

A career in the frontline of multimedia communications research

Prof. Steinmetz is recognized for his outstanding record of publication, his influential research and his dedication to scientific service activities. He has been the Director of the School of Engineering at TU Darmstadt, Director of the Fraunhofer-IPSI Institute, and is currently Chairman of the Board of the Hessian Telemedia Technology Competence Center (httc), all in Germany. A Fellow of the ACM and a Fellow of the IEEE, always in the frontline of change, he has been cited for his excellence as a teacher and mentor by his peer faculty and his current and past students.

Steinmetz is a highly sought after author. In recent years, he has published as author or co-author over 550 scholarly articles covering such diverse topics as distributed and communication systems, multimedia, peer-to-peer communications or parallel programming. His works include the authoritative technical resource textbook on multimedia technology ‘Multimedia Technology: Principles, Components and Systems’, for which he received the prestigious ‘ACM SIGMM Multimedia Award for Outstanding Technical Contributions to Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications’ in 2008. This award highlighted his pioneering work in multimedia communications and the fundamentals of multimedia synchronization.

The “Chair of Excellence” honors Ralf Steinmetz for his success in promoting networking science research and his dedication to developing the next generation of multimedia communications. Dr. Steinmetz follows in the footsteps of over 100 prominent academics to have benefited from the UC3M program, 7 of which have also joined IMDEA Networks as Visiting Professors. These collaborations have greatly contributed to strengthening the Institute’s international ties, developing stable partnerships, sharing research experiences and mutually improving scientific and technical knowledge and capabilities.