The Consumer Technology Association (CTA)® Technology & Standards Awards recognize individuals for their commitment to excellence as shown by their participation in CTA’s Technology & Standards program.
Congratulations to this year’s recipients of the:
Recipients have demonstrated leadership and have significantly contributed to CTA’s Technology & Standards program to advance the state-of-the-art in consumer technology over a long term, generally more than five years.
Charlotte Chen was nominated for her leadership as the co-chair of the Sleep Monitoring working group under the Health, Fitness and Wellness Committee. Since joining the committee as co-chair in October 2019, the WG has published two standards including ANSI/CTA/NSF-2092, Performance Requirements for Sleep Monitoring Solution Detecting Snoring and an update to ANSI/CTA/NSF-2052.1-A, Definitions and Characteristics for Wearable Sleep Monitors. Through her leadership, the WG has launched new work on Recommendations and Best Practices of Sleep Quality Determination in Consumer Sleep Monitoring Solutions targeted to be published in early 2023.
Charlotte Chen is a senior staff engineer of Sleep & Respiratory Care Business in Philips. Her contributions include leading software development teams to bring innovative concepts to MVPs, building & coaching the cross-functional teams to de-risk the innovative ideas for improving the innovation efficiency, and leading teams in various other efforts (e.g., advanced development, IP generation, data strategy).
As one of the recognitions, she and her team received Dutch Hendrik Lorentz Award for “Pioneering Use of Data Science and AI in Healthcare” in 2019. Charlotte believes the convergence of clinical care and consumer care could dramatically improve population health and the relevant emerging standards would be the enablers. Charlotte joined the IEEE P1752 (Open Mobile Health) workgroup and chaired the sleep subgroup (that work was published as P1752.1 in 2021). Shortly after she joined the CTA technology and standards workgroups (R11, R13) and has contributed to a few published standards so far.
Prior to joining Philips, she worked in R&D for Bayer Healthcare (medical device) and Compunetix (enterprise telecommunication). Charlotte is a senior IEEE member. Charlotte holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from University of Pittsburgh, a B.S. in biomedical engineering and a Master of Medicine from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Tobias Kirchhoff was nominated for his leadership as the co-chair of the Sleep Monitoring working group under the Health, Fitness and Wellness Committee. Since joining the committee as co-chair in October 2019, the WG has published two standards including ANSI/CTA/NSF-2092, Performance Requirements for Sleep Monitoring Solutions Detecting Snoring and an update to ANSI/CTA/NSF-2052.1-A, Definitions and Characteristics for Wearable Sleep Monitors. Through his leadership, the WG has launched new work on Recommendations and Best Practices of Sleep Quality Determination in Consumer Sleep Monitoring Solutions targeted to be published in early 2023.
Tobias is Founder & CEO of Variowell Development GmbH. Variowell is based in Germany and has offices in the USA and Singapore. Variowell is performing science-based research as well as product development and manufacturing of components for the mattress and furniture industry. Variowell is owner of the KIKOO technology (removing excess body heat in a mattress) and the Swayy technology (creating perfect thermal comfort during sleep, powered by Apple Watch). Customers are large mattress manufacturers around the world, like Casper Sleep in the US. Variowell is a regular exhibitor at CES, Las Vegas and long-standing CTA member.
Before founding Variowell, Tobias worked in a family-owned company manufacturing high-class duvets and comforters filled with natural materials like Cashmere or Silk sold globally. Before that, Tobias studied business administration at the University of Bayreuth in Germany with internships in USA and Canada.
Tobias is member of the NSF Sleeptech council, and since 2015 member of the R11 WG1 group “Sleep Monitoring Solutions”, co-chairing it with Charlotte Chen, Philips since 2019. Tobias enjoys travelling and is a seasoned Volleyball player. He has three children.
Christian Wolff was nominated for his outstanding leadership as the chair of the Video Systems DTV Interfaces working group since 2021 and editor of CTA-861 documents since 2017. The DTV Interfaces working group develops and maintains interface, interoperability, measurement and functionality standards, bulletins and other documents related to uncompressed A/V digital interfaces.
Christian Wolff became interested at a young age in electronics, computers, and home video, and was involved in early community telecom systems. During the 1990s, he developed a number of communication and audio/video systems for various interactive media art projects with the Ponton European Media Art Lab, exploring several features now prevalent in social media.
After moving from Germany to the U.S. in 2000, he worked on Linux-based set top boxes (Convergence Integrated Media), interactive museum exhibits (Zeum, Exploratorium), DJ audio systems (Final Scratch), and Media Processor SoCs (Sigma Designs). He joined Dolby in 2014, where he worked on Atmos for AVRs, advanced headphones, and wireless speaker systems. He has been involved with CTA PlugFests and HDMI® / CTA-861 standards development since 2008. He currently resides with his wife Melissa and their two cats and two dogs in the SF Bay Area.
Recipients have demonstrated leadership and have significantly contributed to a recent project or other engagement, generally less than two years in CTA’s Technology & Standards program to advance the state-of-the-art in consumer technology.
John R. Luna was nominated for his outstanding leadership of the over-the-counter (OTC) Hearing Aid working group under the Health, Fitness and Wellness Committee and his contributions towards publishing ANSI/CTA-2051-A, Wearable Sound Amplifier Performance Criteria. This work was completed in less than six months to align with the FDA’s schedule in releasing new rules for OTC hearing aids.
John R. Luna is a seasoned executive who has held leadership roles at all levels for both public and private consumer electronic, self-care devices and medical device companies during his 30-year career. John serves on committees and boards for both the Consumer Technology Association and the Consumer Health Products Association where he serves as Chair of the Medical Devices Committee.
As CEO of Nuheara Limited, an Australian publicly traded company, John chaired the CTA Technology and Standards Working Group 12 focused on the 5-year review and revision of the ANSI/CTA-2051 Personal Sound Amplifier Performance Criteria guidelines.
John’s focus on representing both the consumer and industry stakeholders, as the Chair of WG12, both facilitated and moderated the conversations knowing the intent was acceptance of the standards revision with the FDA’s inclusion of the reference in its ongoing Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid final rule referencing CTA’s standard work providing safety and efficacy baseline specifications for wearable sound amplifying devices whether FDA regulated or unregulated.
Nuheara’s latest generation of earbuds introduced new technology so innovative that they were named one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2020. And of course, CTA has recognized Nuheara with several innovation awards at CES including the CTA Innovation Entrepreneur Awards 2021 Small Business of the Year recipient.
Alex Porter was nominated for her outstanding leadership of the Diversity in XR Working Group and her significant contributions to the development of Best Practices for Diversity in XR (CTA-2103).
Alex Porter is the CEO and Co-Founder of Mod Tech Labs. Her background in physical and digital design began while earning a Bachelor of Science in Interior Design and Construction Technology at Texas State University. Since 2016, she has worked in emerging technologies focused on powering visual experiences—pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence, extended reality, blockchain, 5G, and more to bring automated technical solutions to market. Clients include NBC Universal, Intel, KPMG, Novartis, Quantum Rehab and future forward enterprise companies.
Alex is a Forbes NEXT 1000 Honoree, Intel as a Top Innovator since 2017, a member of the NVIDIA Inception Program and a SXSW 2022 PITCH Finalist. She has received accolades including an Innovation Award by the Austin Chamber, Rising Star by AW Magazine, and an Honoree for Profiles in Power. As an avid technologist she has been a member of the Consumer Technology Association helping shape standards and educate on the benefits of technology. On the human side, Alex volunteers with organizations including Girls in Tech, Seedling Foundation, Black Technology Mentorship Program, and others that further the access, education, and opportunities in tech for underserved communities. Her free time is often spent with her family on walks, cruising the farmer’s market, and movie nights.
The Google ATAP Team was nominated for its outstanding leadership of the Ripple Technical Project Group and the team’s contributions towards the development of the Ripple V1.0 Specification. This work was completed in less than a year and culminated in a demo at CES.
Brandon Barbello is a group product manager working on new technologies at Google, including radar projects like Ripple. He has 10+ years of experience as a senior HW+SW+AI+Cloud product leader at startups and Google.
Dr. Ivan Poupyrev is an award-winning inventor, scientist and designer. Working at the forefront of interaction design and technologies, he blends digital and physical realities in everyday objects, devices and the living environment.
Ivan currently leads a team in Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) division where he is focused on designing technologies and experiences for our future digital lifestyle. Previously at Walt Disney Imagineering and Sony in Tokyo, his work has been published in leading scientific and design conferences, received critical acclaim in the press internationally and has been recognized with numerous awards, including Cannes Lion Grand Prix, D&AD Pencils, SXSW Innovation Award and was elected into Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum permanent collection. A published author and TED speaker, Ivan was recognized as one of the World’s 100 Most Creative People by Fast Company magazine which described him as “one of the best interaction designers in the world”. In 2019 he was honored with the National Design Award for Interaction Design.
