Jury 2022

Audrey Arbeeny - Audiobrain

Audrey Arbeeny is CEO/ Executive Producer of Audiobrain, founded in 2003. Audiobrain’s sonic branding includes Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Google, Holland America Line, IBM, KIA Motors Corp, Microsoft, Merck, Logitech, Whirlpool, Toshiba, and more. She also has significant background in psychology, biomusicology, and psychoacoustics, and conducts research in these areas. Projects range from Heart/Health wearables to surgical robotics. She has been Music Supervisor for the past 11 Olympic Broadcasts with NBC, for which she received 2 Emmy Awards. With over 25 years specializing in sonic branding, Audiobrain is at the forefront of emerging technologies, and their sonic imprints are heard millions of times a day worldwide, and has appeared in many publications, podcasts on the use of intentional music sound and voice.

Matthew Bennett - Acoustic Ecology

Matthew Bennett is a composer, sound artist, sensory designer, and founder of the design firm Acoustic Ecology. His mission is to make the global soundscape of products and technology more beautiful, functional, inclusive, and sustainable. Previously, he was Director of the Sound + Sensory Design Program at Microsoft, responsible for the sound of the company’s major platforms. His work is recognized around the world and heard on more than a billion devices every day.

Karlheinz Brandenburg - Brandenburg Labs GmbH

Karlheinz Brandenburg has been a driving force behind some of today’s most innovative digital audio technology, notably the mp3 and MPEG audio standards. He is acclaimed for pioneering work in digital audio coding and psychoacoustics. His honors include the AES Silver Medal, the IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronic Award, the German Future Award, which he shared with his colleagues and the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Furthermore he is member in the Hall of Fame of the Consumer Electronics Association. In April 2014, Brandenburg was inducted as an innovator into the Internet Hall of Fame. He holds three honorary Ph.D. degrees. Dr. Brandenburg holds about 100 patents. He is CEO of the Brandenburg Labs GmbH, a senior professor at the Institute for Media Technology at Technische Universität Ilmenau and former director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT in Ilmenau, Germany.

Antonio Camurri - Casa Paganini

PhD in Computer Engineering, full professor at DIBRIS (Polytechnic School, University of Genoa), where he teaches Human Computer Interaction (MS in Computer Engineering; MS in Digital Humanities). As art influences science and technology, science and technology can in turn inspire art: recognizing this mutually beneficial relationship, his research interests combine scientific research in human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence with artistic and humanistic research, and includes non-verbal multimodal interactive systems; computational models of non-verbal full-body expressive gesture, emotion, and social signals; interactive multimodal systems for performing arts, for active experience of cultural content, for health, therapy and rehabilitation. Scientific director of Casa Paganini Research Centre at University of Genoa, member of the editorial boards of the Journal of New Music Research and of Plos One journal, of the ESF College of Expert Reviewers, of the board of directors of Museo Palazzo Reale of Genoa. Scientific collaborations in artistic projects include music theatre projects of Luciano Berio (Scala di Milano 1996; Salzburg Festival 1999) and dance projects of Virgilio Sieni.

Fabian Frese - Kolle Rebbe / Accenture Interactive

Fabian Frese began his advertising career as a copywriter at BBDO in Düsseldorf in 2001. Three years later he joined Jung von Matt where he became ECD in 2010, working for clients such as Mercedes-Benz, Nintendo, eBay and Vodafone. During his time at Jung von Matt, it was recognized as Germany’s “Agency of the year” and “Independent agency of the year” at the Cannes Festival. In 2013, Fabian took a “Digital Sabbatical”, where he founded start-ups and toured as an intern through various digital companies, which made him much poorer but a lot smarter. In 2014, he joined Kolle Rebbe in Hamburg as Managing Director and Partner, being responsible for clients like Netflix and the global Lufthansa account. Fabian has won an impressive number of national and international awards. Although, this may be due to the fact that he usually sat in the jury himself, for example several times at the Cannes Lions.

Klaus Frieler - Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics

Klaus Frieler is a Systematic Musicologist with a background in Physics. He is currently a statistical and methodological consultant of Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt a.M. Germany, after years of working on research projects in computational musicology and music psychology as well as teaching systematic musicology at the University of Hamburg and elsewhere. Since many years, he is involved with the Audio Branding industry as a scientific advisor. He is also working as music expert witness, with a speciality in pre-emptive copyright checks for audio branding using state-of-the-art computational tools he created and helped developing.

Elisa Harris - Sonicbrand

Elisa Harris is a founding partner of the global sonic branding agency Sonicbrand. Sonicbrand was first established in 1999 and at the time was one of the first specialist agencies in the world for strategic music and sound. In 2009 Elisa (along with two other partners) launched a second agency, CORD Worldwide, which was sold in 2018, allowing the re-establishment of Sonicbrand as the home for their clients. Sonicbrand’s clients include Shell International AG, JLR, Pepsi-Co, Marantz, DHL, RBI, Visa and Lego. Elisa has developed and produced some of Sonicbrand’s most celebrated and successful sonic brands, including ‘The Sound of Shell’, ‘The Sound of Santander’ and ‘La Figura NESCAFÉ’. Working closely with the very best in composition, sound design and voice, recording with world-class musicians in some of the most celebrated studios in the world, Elisa’s clear and methodical approach has led to some of the most wide-reaching, multi-market roll-outs of sonic branding in the world.

Chris Hegstrom -

Chris has been creating audio for interactive media for over 25 years. After studying Music Synthesis at Berklee College of Music, he began his career in live sound for Blue Man Group. He then moved into web audio which led to over a decade of designing sound for video games, including franchises such as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Burnout Paradise, God of War III and Kinect Adventures. In 2012, he made the transition into product sound with Microsoft HoloLens. At HoloLens, he designed UX sound, sonic branding, and 3D audio. After Microsoft, Chris formed Symmetry Audio where he designed VR audio for Unity, HBO, and Technicolor, as well as UX sound for Google. In 2017, he joined Amazon as Senior UX Sound Designer, where he worked on the audio identity of Alexa, Fire TV, and the standalone gaming system Amazon Glow. Returning to the game audio in 2022, Chris was Audio Manager at Insomniac Games and is now Audio Director at an unannounced developer.

Rainer Hirt - audity

Studies in communication design at the University of Applied Sciences, Konstanz (Master of Arts). Co-Founder of audity, a company specialised in functional sounds for brands and products. Author and co-producer of the compendium »Audio Branding«. Rainer is supervising various research projects with several universities and has been, since 2008, juror of the international Red Dot Design Award. Lecturer for Audible Design at the HTWG Konstanz.

Daniel Hug - Zurich University of the Arts

Dr. Daniel Hug, sound and interaction designer, explores the world of sound through art, design, theoretical investigation and applied research. He is the co-founder and co-director of the Sound Design master’s program at Zurich University of the Arts, and an international lecturer in Sound Studies and Sound Design. With his practice-based and interdisciplinary research, Hug has had a significant impact on the field of sonic interaction design. As member of the steering committee of the Audio Mostly conference and founder of the sound design and consultancy company “Hear Me Interact!”, he connects the worlds of academia and business. His current interests include sound design for health technology and exercise, sound design methodology, and participatory sound design processes.

Connor Moore - CMoore Sound

Connor Moore is a seasoned design leader focused in the audio ux and audio branding space. For the last 15 years, Connor has been able to work with some of the most forward thinking brands creating innovative sound solutions that drive functionality and build brand affinity. These clients span a range of industry and include the likes of Google, Lucid Motors, Peloton, Uber, Airbnb and State Farm to name a few. Connor founded CMoore Sound at a time when brands first began considering sound and music as a core part of their identity systems and quickly became one of the most trusted experts in developing branded audio ecosystems in the technology sector. He has been featured in the New Yorker, The Guardian, NPR’s Marketplace and Google’s Design Series for topics covering the role of sound for brands in advertising, product and experiential activations.

Daniel Müllensiefen - Goldsmiths, University of London

Daniel Müllensiefen studied Systematic Musicology, Historic Musicology and Journalism at the universities of Hamburg (Germany) and Salamanca (Spain). He did his doctoral dissertation in Systematic Musicology on memory for melodies at the University of Hamburg. Since 2006 he has been working at Goldsmiths, University of London, now a Professor in Psychology and co-director of the Master’s course in Music Mind and Brain. In 2010 he was appointed as Scientist in Residence with the London-based advertising agency adam&eveDDB where he acted as a consultant and researcher, mainly on questions regarding the role of music in advertising and other commercial settings. In 2016 he received the prestigious Anneliese-Maier research prize from the Humboldt foundation and since then he is also affiliated with the Hochschule für Musik in Hannover.

Hugo Verweij - Apple

Hugo Verweij leads sound design efforts on Apple’s Design Team. His work can be heard across a number of Apple platforms. Hugo has a deep appreciation for functional sound design that helps, guides, and delights the user – whether it’s through a notification sound or a subtle button click. Prior to joining Apple, Hugo taught sound design and music production at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht in the Netherlands. Underwhelmed by ringtones available at the time, Hugo launched Cleartones – a marketplace for unobtrusive, minimalist ringtones. Apple caught wind of Hugo’s project and hired him to work on sounds for iOS 7. Hugo’s talk Designing Sound at the World Wide Developers Conference gives a peek behind the curtain of the design process of Apple’s iconic sounds that can be heard all around the world.