Blog

<p>As we celebrate <a href="https://www.wipo.int/ip-outreach/en/ipday/">World Intellectual Property Day</a> on April 26, this year&rsquo;s theme is &ldquo;Women and IP: Accelerating innovation and creativity&rdquo;. Women are driving scientific breakthroughs, setting new creative trends, and building businesses, but the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) notes that: &ldquo;Too few women are participating in the intellectual property system [which] means too few women are benefitting from IP.&rdquo;</p>
<p>As an innovation company developing next generation technologies in video, wireless, and AI, at InterDigital we understand the crucial role that IP protections play in enabling innovators everywhere to see a return on their inventions and to keep developing new breakthroughs.</p>
<p>We also know that more must be done to optimize and reap the greatest benefit from the global innovation economy. Ultimately, we can only realize the full creative power of the innovation economy if women, men, and all parts of society are empowered to contribute to IP-rich sectors.</p>
<p>Engineering in advanced communications is one important area where women remain woefully underrepresented, but recognizing outstanding female innovators and role models is an important way to encourage and promote more diverse contributions and representations in IP. At InterDigital, our innovation footprint is bolstered by the leadership and contributions of senior female engineers who are outstanding in their fields. This week, in commemoration of World IP Day, we&rsquo;re highlighting several of our world-class engineers to explain why our ecosystem benefits with more contributions from women inventors.</p>
<p>InterDigital&rsquo;s Wireless Lab has been a leading innovator in each generation of wireless evolution, including 5G, driven by the contributions of several stand out female engineers.</p>
<p>Diana Pani, Vice President of 5G Standards and Research, leads our development of advanced 5G technologies and 3GPP standardization for future cellular systems. Since joining the company in 2006, she has focused on the design and development of 3G, 4G and 5G cellular and Wi-Fi systems, and has been granted more than 250 US patents and more than 1700 worldwide for her inventions.</p>
<p>An active contributor to the standardization of radio access protocols within 3GPP, Diana was 3GPP RAN WG2 Vice-Chair from 2013-2017. She is now working on 5G Advanced technologies, paving the way for 6G: this research spans artificial intelligence and machine learning, extended reality, network energy savings, satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles.</p>
<p>From a more technical perspective, Catalina Mladin is a Member of Technical Staff at InterDigital with more than twenty years of experience in telecommunications. A prolific inventor with more than 100 patents, Catalina has been recognized for her outstanding inventions and leadership in wireless and IoT both within InterDigital and amongst her industry peers.</p>
<p>In addition to serving as the IEEE Philadelphia-chapter Women in Engineering Vice Chair, Catalina has also been elected to serve as Vice Chair of the OneM2M Requirements Working Group, and recognized with an IEEE Technical Excellence Award, for her expertise in integrating OneM2M standards within underlying 3GPP networks.</p>
<p>Catalina exhibits leadership both within her research teams and industry standards organizations, and currently serves as rapporteur for a study on Application Capability Exposure for IoT Platforms for 3GPP SA6 Release 18. She has also contributed to several publications, including around enabling semantics in IoT service deliver platforms and blockchain-enabled applications in next-generation wireless systems.</p>
<p>We continue to take pride in the integral contributions that Diana and Catalina have made to advanced wireless technologies which underpin today&rsquo;s $4.5 trillion mobile economy. What is particularly exciting is what their research and innovation will enable next, as their contributions shape the contours of soon-to-be-released 5G Advanced and the early definitions of the 6G roadmap.</p>
<p>Their ongoing research means that Diana and Catalina will continue to play crucial roles in our wireless team and will no doubt leave their marks on consumer devices and connected experiences for years to come.</p>