KKHadi Amirpour, Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Technology at the University of Klagenfurt, received the Multimedia Rising Star Award at IEEE MMSP 2026 in Istanbul. In his talk, he demonstrated how video streaming can provide higher perceived quality by making the player more intelligent using self-training.

Anyone streaming a video today expects crystal-clear images, smooth playback, and the shortest possible waiting times, whether on a smartphone or a 4K television. A great deal of research goes into making this possible, including work by the Multimedia System research group, of which Hadi Amirpour is a member. Hadi Amirpour, who has been working at the University of Klagenfurt since 2019, including at the Christian Doppler Laboratory ATHENA, received the Multimedia Rising Star Award for his work at the 2026 IEEE International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP) in Istanbul.
In his talk, “Your Player is smarter than you think”, Hadi Amirpour provided insights into several areas of research in his field. A codec standardised in 2003 is still the most widely used today. More recent standards require lower bitrates but demand greater computing power. This can affect both battery life and the temperature of end devices. Amirpour sees content-adaptive encoding as a solution: not every video requires the same bitrate or resolution. The concept of the “Just Noticeable Difference” means that bitrate is only invested where the human eye can actually perceive a difference. The extent of this difference depends heavily on the content, making it essential to make the player even more intelligent. “The player is not merely a passive receiver but can actively help optimise quality, energy consumption, and computing power,” says Hadi Amirpour. He also explains that the player can learn independently: “The player trains models to improve quality during playback itself.”
Hadi Amirpour completed his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering in Tehran and then spent one and a half years conducting research on telecommunications technologies in Portugal. In autumn 2019, he joined the ATHENA laboratory in Klagenfurt, where he completed his doctorate. He has worked as a postdoctoral assistant since 2022 and as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Technology since 2026. Hadi Amirpour has published more than 200 works, including 15 patents. His research has received several awards, most recently Best Paper Awards at the 2026 IEEE MMSP,  2025 NAB Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology (BEIT) Conference in Las Vegas, USA, and at the 2024 Picture Coding Symposium in Taichung, Taiwan.
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