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.

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 and of the International Electrotechnical Commission. He received an honorary Ph.D. degree from the universities Koblenz-Landau and Lüneburg in Germany. As his most recent distinction he was inducted into the "German Research Hall of Fame" by the German business journal "manager magazin" for his outstanding contributions to the development of Germany as a research location.

Karlheinz Brandenburg holds about 100 patents. He is professor at the Institute for Media Technology at Ilmenau Technical University and director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology in Ilmenau, Germany.