René de la Barré is head of the "Advanced Displays" group of the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI). He studied electronics technology at the University of Mittweida, Germany, where he received his diploma in 1978. From 1978 to 2000 he worked in several positions in R&D for the computer and visualisation industries. In 1993 he received his PhD degree. From 1994 to 1998 he worked in the field of autostereoscopic multiview visualization for VisuReal Displaysysteme GmbH. Then he moved to the Innovation Centre of Plauen and led the region funded virtual prototyping project HOLOTRON. Dr. de la Barré joined the Fraunhofer HHI in 2001, where he leads research and development of free-viewing 3D displays technologies with user tracking. His research activities include flat panel 3D technologies as well as projection-type mixed reality displays. In 2006 he received the Joseph von Fraunhofer Innovation Award for his work in interactive 3D technologies. His current research interests include 3D displays and video based interaction.

Heinrich-Hertz-Institute
The Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institute (HHI) is a German research institute located in Berlin. Since 2002 the institute is owned by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V (Munich). With 230 employees and an annual budget of about 22 million euros, the institute undertakes applied research in the areas of photonic networks, mobile broadband systems and electronic imaging technologies for multimedia. Currently, more than halve of the budget is generated through contract research on behalf of industry and publicly funded research projects. The Interactive Media Department pursues research and development of innovative concepts for multimedia communications of the future. Here, the main challenge is the design of next generation terminal interfaces, systems and applications that will allow users an attractive and user-friendly access to multimedia data and interactive services. The activities of the department include the development of high-end autostereoscopic 3D displays (no stereo glasses needed) and Mixed Reality technologies, technologies for sensing people and people's intentions, multimodal computer interfaces and interaction technologies as well as content-based video analysis and retrieval techniques. The department has profound experience and knowledge in usability engineering and human factors research. Our work on interactive 3D displays received the Joseph von Fraunhofer Innovation Award 2006, and "Partners for Innovation" recently featured this technology as a "German Star" (one of the 50 innovations "made in Germany" everyone should know).