Blog

<p>Innovation drives our impact at InterDigital, and our inventors and experienced researchers provide the fuel that propels our company, and our industry, forward. This year, we celebrate two outstanding inventors whose research and patented innovations have enabled critical technology features and helped shape global standards for wireless and video, and name both <span style="color: #00aeef;"><strong><strong>Paul Marinier </strong></strong></span>and <span style="color: #00aeef;"><strong><strong>Karam Naser </strong></strong></span>as winners of the <em>2023 Inventor of the Year</em> award.</p>
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<p><span style="color: #00aeef;"><strong><strong>Paul Marinier - Senior Principal Engineer</strong></strong></span></p>
<p>Over the course of his more than two-decade career at InterDigital, Paul Marinier has developed hundreds of patented inventions that can be seen across critical wireless releases, as he helped shape the evolution of features over three generations of wireless systems: 3G HSPA, 4G LTE, and 5G NR. His more than 425 US and 3,150 patents granted worldwide have contributed significantly to the network capabilities that enable increased data rates, reduced latency, ultra-reliability, and power efficiency for improved battery life across all wireless generations.</p>
<p>As an active participant in 3GPP standards and a contributor to both RAN1 and RAN2 working groups, Paul has been deeply engaged in the creation and evolution of features that shape the radio access networks for wireless ecosystems. Paul's contributions to spectrum aggregation solutions, such as carrier aggregation and dual connectivity, help fully utilize the available resources required to support applications with extremely high data rates. In fact, dual connectivity solutions have proven critical to enabling the first 5G deployments because they allow operators to continue using LTE deployments for connectivity while taking advantage of 5G's high data rates and reduced latency.</p>
<p>Paul's inventions have also shaped features like ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), improving support for use cases like smart sensors and smart actuators for use in factories and other industrial applications. He has also held leadership responsibilities in RAN1 to coordinate work related to URLLC and improving device reachability.</p>
<p>Paul takes pride in the applicability of his inventions across the wireless industry, recognizing the visible and tangible benefit wireless evolution has delivered to society at large. Looking towards the future, Paul is excited to continue to apply his innovation expertise to bolster the capabilities of our networks, especially to support the growth of Extended Reality (XR) devices, services, and experiences that will define next generation connected ecosystems.</p>
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<p><span style="color: #00aeef;"><strong><strong>Karam Naser - Principal Scientist</strong></strong></span></p>
<p>Charting a bright path since beginning his post-doctoral work in 2017, Karam Naser has developed a strong portfolio of patented inventions that have contributed to the evolution and improvement of video compression standards. As a named inventor in 540 patent applications, Karam's innovation impact is quickly building momentum.</p>
<p>Karam's innovative drive was first inspired by electrical engineering pioneer Georg Ohm and a RWTH Aachen University professor of video compression also named Dr. Ohm, and over his career Karam has witnessed the tangible impact of video solutions on industry and the world at large. Karam's inventions in critical areas like transform coding and intra-prediction straddle the balance of how to improve visual quality while maintaining the bitrate or to maintain high visual quality while reducing the bitrate, both pushing the limits of efficiency. Karam's contributions to JVET and the MPEG Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard and research into next-generation video coding enable new compression technologies that can enhance compression efficiency beyond state-of-the-art solutions and support more exciting content and experiences in the future.</p>
<p>As immersive experiences such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and 3D video streaming become increasingly popular, Karam believes that now is a great time to be an inventor. He shared, "in ten years, a new world of immersive technologies and communications will be more accessible to all because of the compression solutions we invent today."</p>
<p>On behalf of InterDigital, we celebrate Paul and Karam as winners of our <em>2023 Inventor of the Year</em> award, and celebrate their curiosity, perseverance, and innovative spirit that has pushed the potential for our future and made new capabilities in wireless and video possible.</p>