Harman Taps New Head of R&D Team
Harman Professional named Graham Hammell as director of its core research and development team, the System Development and Integration Group (SDIG).
Harman Professional named Graham Hammell as director of its core research and development team, the System Development and Integration Group (SDIG). The announcement comes as SDIG’s mandate has broadened to address more Harman Professional product families and a greater number of application markets.
“SDIG has developed HiQnet, System Architect and our internal AVB program to such a point that we now have extremely strong, scalable core technologies that we are beginning to deploy in a whole host of markets and applications,” said Rob Urry, vice president and general manager of Harman’s Professional Signal Processing Group, in a statement. “Market experience, product design, and integration experience at the leadership level will be critical to minimize the ramp up time and optimize efficiency. Graham has this experience and I am confident it will manifest itself in an exciting array of innovations that will be seen throughout Harman Professional and soon after in the market.”
Hammell joined Harman in 2000 as a software engineer at BSS Audio in Potters Bar, U.K. He became fundamental to the development of the BSS Soundweb London product family, acting first as project manager and later as engineering manager for HiQnet London Architect configuration and control software.
In 2008, he was appointed to the role of director of applications development overseeing software interface development for Harman brands BSS, dbx, Lexicon and Digitech. In 2009, Hammell moved with his wife and family from the U.K .to Salt Lake City.
As director of SDIG, Hammell will lead the global Harman HiQnet development teams in the U.S. and India. He will be responsible for strategizing the future of Harman’s core technologies– the HiQnet control protocol and its core system configuration application HiQnet System Architect. In addition, he will coordinate HiQnet development with all brands of the Harman Professional division and will direct the integration of the Ethernet AVB protocol into Harman’s system strategies.
“I’m extremely excited to have the opportunity of spearheading the development of Harman Professional’s core technologies, and integrating the next generation of Harman products,” Hammell said in a statement. “The adoption of the AVB protocol is hugely critical to the future of Harman systems and I very much look forward to integrating the protocol seamlessly into the Harman HiQnet ecosystem.”
Former director Lynn Eggli will take up a new position at SDIG focusing on managing an engineering team dedicated to developing system design software targeted at specific markets.
