He lives in Newbury, United Kingdom.

Back to top

Sharad Sadhu
Director, Technical Department
Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU)

Sharad Sadhu is the Director of the ABU Technical Department. He took up the position in mid September 2007.
Sharad is no new comer to the ABU, having joined in 1993 as a Senior Engineer in the Technical Department. He has handled transmission and spectrum activities since then.
Sharad has been instrumental in developing a strong base for the spectrum management and regulation activities in the ABU, as also in introducing mobile and ICT technologies. He has considerable interest in the new delivery technologies addressing handheld devices and in broadband delivery. He has received extensive exposure to international developments in broadcasting technologies and spectrum regulation.
He has represented the Union at many international and regional conferences. He has made contributions in frequency planning and standards setting at international forums such as the ITU.
Sharad’s position has given him opportunities for developing close contacts with a large number of ABU members, something he cherishes and nurtures. He maintains close interaction with senior executives across the broadcasting industry and with the national spectrum regulators.
He has 39 years’ experience covering all areas of TV broadcast engineering. Sharad has previously worked as Director Engineering in Doordarshan, India and as General Manager in Telecommunication Consultants India Ltd.

Back to top

Lolita Bam is a media professional since 1984 and has been working in senior managerial positions in India, Malaysia and Singapore. She has been involved in different aspects of content creation for television, creating content for various genres.

Lolita holds an MA in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics and an MBA degree from the Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi.

She was the Production Controller for New Delhi Television and was part of the pioneering team in 1984 to create the first world news programme and the first live election and budget analysis programmes for Indian Television.

She was the Director of Inflight Television for UTV in Mumbai, the Chief of Bureau for UTV in Delhi and was responsible for setting up their office and studio in Kuala Lumpur. The studio were the first privately held sound proof studios to be set up by a private company in Kuala Lumpur, in 1995.

Lolita was the Chief Operating Officer of UTV in Singapore and the Director of Operations of sharkstream.com, the company that handled the media/convergence activities of the UTV Group. Sharkstream.com was a broadband streaming video portal, which specialised in interactive multimedia entertainment for the Asia-Pacific market.

In 2005 Lolita moved to Astro as the General Manager, Programming and was based in Kuala Lumpur. Since early this year she is based with Astro in India.

Back to top

John Bigeni graduated from the University of New South Wales with an honors degree in Electronics Engineering in 1963.Since graduation Mr. Bigeni has been involved in the Broadcasting industry in both Radio and Television where he has held a variety of positions ranging from design engineering roles in his earlier career through to project management and later in a number of executive engineering management positions. These included the position of Director of Engineering to the Special Broadcasting Service and the position of Head of Engineering TV for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

On an International level Mr. Bigeni has had a long close association with the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union and was the Chairman of its Engineering Committee until 1996 a position he held for a number of years. Mr. Bigeni is now involved in the Broadcasting Industry as a private consultant and is also associated with DVB in this capacity.

Back to top

Kim Pow joined the Engineering Division of the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (now known as Media Corporation of Singapore or MCS) after graduating from the University of Singapore in 1979 with a first class honours bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering.

He spent the first 15 years of his broadcasting career in several technical positions: firstly, as a station engineer for MW/SW transmission followed by stints as an engineering manager of broadcast operations, a senior project engineer responsible for the planning and implementation of new broadcast facilities/services and lastly as a project manager of major projects including the upgrading of newsroom and the development of a new broadcast centre.

In 1995, he joined the Mandarin Satellite Channel business unit as its Assistant VP of Operations & Technology. During this period, he set up the requisite broadcasting infrastructure and through his astute technical planning of the satellite transmission circuit contributed substantially in helping the channel achieve a penetration of 95% among cable systems in Taiwan.

In early 1999, he was seconded to the MCS subsidiary company, chinese88.com, to be its Chief Technology Officer. During this period, he oversaw the completion of a robust e-commerce platform for the implementation of internet commerce. He was also instrumental in launching various e-services to improve site stickiness and increase site visits.

In Sep 2000, he returned to the parent company to take up the position of VP (Group Engineering) and with that, the technical management of MCS’s broadcast engineering assets. With the merger of the Group Engineering Division with MediaCorp T & T on 1 Oct 2001, he assumed his present position of Senior Vice-President, Broadcast Engineering in the merged entity, MediaCorp Technologies.

Kim Pow also holds a Master of Engineering Science Degree in Computer Engineering and Intelligent Robotics from Monash University.

Back to top

Mr Lim oversees the IT deployment, application development and databases of the MDA. On the technology front, he spots opportunities, provides input and advice on all aspects of transmission technologies, mainly radio, terrestrial, cable, satellite and the Internet.

Mr Lim started his career in 1979 as a QC engineer, and has a total of 7 years experience in RF and embedded design. Another 12 years was spent as a Technical/Marketing Director running a fully-equipped broadcast-grade production and recording centre with its own studio, outdoor production equipment, editing suites and sound booth. He joint the Singapore Broadcasting Authority (now known as the MDA) in 1998.

Mr Lim has a B. Sc.(First Class Honours) in Physics, an MBA and an MSc with majors in communications and computer science.

Back to top

Dr. Osamu Yamada
Guest Professor
Waseda University and CEO, ITCC

Dr. Osamu Yamada was born in Tokyo in 1944. He graduated from Waseda University in 1967, and joined NHK. Since 1971, he had been working for NHK Science and Technical Research Laboratories. He was Director-General during 1999 to 2002. He was a Vice-Chairman of ITU-R TG11/3(Terrestrial Digital Broadcasting) during 1992 to 1997.

He had been engaged in the development of new digital broadcasting systems, Teletext, FM multiplex broadcasting, satellite and terrestrial digital broadcasting systems. Especially, in 1990s, he had been playing the important role to lead digital broadcasting technologies not only in Japan but also in the world.
His major fields are digital broadcasting systems, error correcting codes,digital modulation, and mobile reception technology.

He joined Pioneer in 2002. He was responsible for R&D in Pioneer as Senior Managing Director. His current position is Executive Corporate Adviser R&D in Pioneer.

He has presented a lot of papers at international conferences, IEEE, IBC, NAB, BroadcastAsia, etc. He won a lot of Awards, Science and Technology Agent Award, ABU Engineering Industry Excellence Award, etc. He is a fellow member for both IEEE and IEICE.

Back to top