Manfred Siegel was born in Germany in December 1942. He received the Diplom-Ingenieur degree in communication technology (Nachrichten-technik) from the faculty of Electrical Engineering of Aachen Technical University (TH Aachen) in 1972.He joined Krupp Atlas Elektronik GmbH, Bremen, Germany, in 1972 as a member of the Research Department and was engaged in research on digital signal processing, detection, and estimation problems. Since 1978, he has been in charge of a research group which is working in the fields of underwater acoustics and optics.