Michael J. Horowitz is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 electrical engineer

Engineer

An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...

 who actively participated in the creation of the H.264/AVC video coding standard. He is co-inventor of flexible macroblock ordering

Flexible Macroblock Ordering

H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is a new standard for digital video compression jointly developed by ITU-T’s Video Coding Experts Group and ISO/IEC’s Moving Picture Experts Group ....

 (FMO), one of the standard’s essential features.

Horowitz also has contributed to the early productization of several video coding standards facilitating commercial adoption of those standards including:

• 2000 – At Polycom
  Polycom
  Polycom is a multinational corporation with approximately 3,200 employees worldwide and an annual revenue of approximately $1.2 billion in 2010. The company manufactures and sells telepresence and voice communications solutions.-Company History 1990:...
  
  , architect and developer of the first commercially available in-product implementation of macroblock-adaptive multiple reference frames (H.263
  H.263
  H.263 is a video compression standard originally designed as a low-bitrate compressed format for videoconferencing. It was developed by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group in a project ending in 1995/1996 as one member of the H.26x family of video coding standards in the domain of the ITU-T.H.263...
  
   Annex U). Macroblock-adaptive multiple reference frames has become a mainstay in subsequent video coding standards.
• 2003 – At Polycom, architect and lead engineer of the team that produced the first commercially available in-product implementation of H.264/AVC.
• 2008 – At Vidyo
  Vidyo
  Vidyo, Inc. is a privately held, venture funded company that provides both software-based technology and product-based visual communication solutions...
  
  , architect and lead engineer of the team that developed the first commercially available in-product implementation of H.264 SVC
  SVC
  SVC or .svc may refer to:* A computer file extension used by Microsoft's Windows Communication Foundation to represent a service hosted by Internet Information Services* IBM SAN Volume Controller, a hardware and software storage virtualization solution...
  
  

Horowitz is Managing Partner of Applied Video Compression and leads the Algorithms Team at Vidyo

Vidyo

Vidyo, Inc. is a privately held, venture funded company that provides both software-based technology and product-based visual communication solutions...

 Inc. He has served on the Technical Advisory Boards of Vidyo, Inc., Hackensack, New Jersey, USA since 2006 and RipCode, Dallas, Texas, USA since 2009.

Education

• A.B.
  Bachelor of Arts
  A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
  
   degree with distinction in physics
  Physics
  Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
  
   from Cornell University
  Cornell University
  Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
  
  , Ithaca
  Ithaca
  Ithaca or Ithaka is an island located in the Ionian Sea, in Greece, with an area of and a little more than three thousand inhabitants. It is also a separate regional unit of the Ionian Islands region, and the only municipality of the regional unit. It lies off the northeast coast of Kefalonia and...
  
  , New York, in 1986.
• M.S.
  Master of Science
  A Master of Science is a postgraduate academic master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is typically studied for in the sciences including the social sciences.-Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay:...
  
   degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University
  Columbia University
  Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
  
  , New York
  New York
  New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
  
  , New York, 1988.
• Ph.D.
  Ph.D.
  A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
  
   in electrical engineering from The University of Michigan
  University of Michigan
  The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
  
  , Ann Arbor, in 1998.

Standardization

• 2001-2002 – VCEG
  VCEG
  The Video Coding Experts Group or Visual Coding Experts Group is the informal name of Question 6 of Working Party 3 of Study Group 16 of the ITU-T. Its abbreviated title is ITU-T Q.6/SG 16...
  
   Chair, Ad hoc Group on H.26L Complexity Reduction
• 2002-2003 – JVT Chair, Ad hoc Group on H.26L Complexity Reduction
• 2002-2003 – JVT Chair, Ad hoc Group on Robustness
  Robustness (computer science)
  In computer science, robustness is the ability of a computer system to cope with errors during execution or the ability of an algorithm to continue to operate despite abnormalities in input, calculations, etc. Formal techniques, such as fuzz testing, are essential to showing robustness since this...
  
  
• Since 2008 – VCEG Chair, Ad hoc Group on Computational Efficiency