DWIH Science Circle Lecture and New Year Dinner Reception

Celebrating the essence of Indo-German partnership, the audience was addressed by Deputy Head of Mission, German Embassy – Dr Jasper Wieck who vehemently stated that “Germany’s funding towards research and innovation has increased by almost 50% in the last 10 years and one of the reasons behind this is the internalisation of the science landscape; wherein India plays a pivotal role.” Thus, in synergy with the objective of promoting science and innovation, the event began with a public lecture by Prof Dr Karlheinz Brandenburg – the innovator of MP3 and MPEG audio formats and currently the Director of Fraunhofer Institute of Digital Media Technology. Tracing the legacy of how human ears have listened to music from time immemorial, Dr Brandenburg shared his story of innovation and also talked about how more than 50% of the music is sold through non-physical distribution in today’s day and time. With practically all gadgets like phones, CD players, TVs, PCs etc. being equipped with mp3 decoders, music has become handy for one and all. However, moving beyond the usual aspect of mp3 being used for playing music, Dr Brandenburg also stressed upon the application of this audio format for other purposes such as 3D audio entertainment through cars, sound-enabled video recognition, micro-sleep alerters and the use of audio for industrial applications for preventive maintenance and end-of-line testing. Thus this lecture not only highlighted the glorious past of mp3 audio but rather focussed much more on the interesting plausible future applications of the same.

Additionally, in order to welcome the new year, DWIH also hosted a dinner reception following the very interesting and insightful science circle lecture. Attended by people from various German organisations, embassies, well-known Indian universities and institutes etc. the dinner reception kicked off with the much anticipated welcome speech by DWIH Director Heike Mock. She, with her inspirational words for the DWIH team, promised an year full of actions and events, while also thanking the partners for their contribution and seeking increased cooperation from them in the year 2018.