September 25, 2008
Life celebration planned for Michael Wellings
A gathering to celebrate the life of Michael C. Wellings will be held from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 26, in the Walker Ames Room at Kane Hall. Wellings, a pioneer in interactive and streaming media for the Internet, died Thursday, Aug. 28. He was 57.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations in Wellings’ memory to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. Checks with notation that the donation is in honor of Michael C. Wellings should be sent to: Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, P.O. Box 19023, Seattle, WA 98109. Credit card donations can be made over the phone by calling Diana Benson at 206-667-6121 during normal business hours.
Wellings was director of broadcast and Internet media engineering at the UW, where he had worked since 1996. He was also was director of engineering for the ResearchChannel consortium, which provides programming via the Internet and supports a round-the-clock broadcast channel available nationwide.
In addition, Wellings was director of engineering for UWTV, the UW’s award-winning television channel, as well as KEXP-FM, a radio station licensed to the UW and operated in partnership with the Experience Music Project.
“His contributions to pioneering progress in interactive and streaming media for the entire Internet are incalculable,” said Amy Philipson, UW associate vice president for UWTV.
Wellings held a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Alaska. He also was certified in broadcast engineering by the Society of Broadcast Engineers.
Wellings led the team that first broadcast uncompressed high-definition video over the Internet. He also led a team of engineers that pushed advances at the intersection of technologies that combine Internet, satellite and cable distribution. For example, the team was the first to transmit real-time, high-definition video from the sea floor.
At KEXP-FM, Wellings launched the world’s first uncompressed audio stream over the Internet.
