Keynote Speaker

Dr. Terry Bray is the Director of Technology Licensing at Georgia Tech Research Corporation (GTRC) and has 30 years experience in the creation, development, and commercialization of innovative technologies. Prior to joining GTRC, he held positions as the Executive Vice President of Business Development at Atherotech Diagnostics Lab, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) as the Director of Physical Sciences in the UAB Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (formerly the UAB Research Foundation), in the Office of Technology Transfer at North Carolina State University as a Senior Licensing Associate, and at UAB as a researcher and faculty member in the department of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Bray has extensive experience the management, patenting, and licensing of intellectual property, as well as facilitating start-up company formation and economic development. While a researcher at UAB, Dr. Bray developed several technologies that were commercialized and is an inventor on several issued patents. Dr. Bray holds a B.S. in chemistry from Mercer University, a M.S. in chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Deven Desai is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Scheller College of Business. He joined the faculty in fall of 2014 in the Law and Ethics Program. He was also the first and, to date, only Academic Research Counsel at Google, Inc., and a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy.

Professor Desai’s scholarship examines how business interests, new technology, and economic theories shape privacy and intellectual property law and where those arguments explain productivity or where they fail to capture society’s interest in the free flow of information and development. His work has appeared in leading law reviews and journals including the Georgetown Law Journal, Minnesota Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Florida Law Review, Wisconsin Law Review, U.C. Davis Law Review, Brigham Young University Law Review, and Harvard Journal of Law and Technology.

Prior to becoming a professor, Desai has been a litigator handing intellectual property and technology matters with Quinn, Emanuel, Urquhart, & Sullivan, LLP, in-house counsel for an idealab! Internet infrastructure company, and part of the policy and fundraising teams on the 2002 Cory Booker for Mayor campaign.

Professor Desai has been interviewed about 3D printing, intellectual property, privacy, and technology by the New York Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, NBC News, and the news show, Take Part Live. He has blogged about technology, intellectual property, and privacy at Concurring Opinions.

He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with highest honors and the Yale Law School, where he was co-editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities.

Amir R. Ghavi is a corporate partner resident in Fried Frank’s New York office and leads the Firm’s Technology Transactions Practice. Mr. Ghavi concentrates his practice on intellectual property transactions on behalf of multinational corporations, private equity sponsors, and venture capital firms in a variety of industry sectors, including software, financial technology, high-technology, aerospace, banking and insurance, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and energy and industrial sectors.

Laura Himelstein is Vice President & Assistant General Counsel at EXL Service, where she reports to the General Counsel. Laura advises EXL on intellectual property matters, supports the company’s Analytics and Insurance business lines, negotiates client and vendor contracts, advises on privacy and information security matters, works with teams developing new products and services, and advises on risk and other matters. Laura has worked at EXL since 2011 and, prior to EXL, worked at an investment bank, large and small law firms, and for NYC governmental agencies. Laura is a graduate of Fordham University School of Law and Yale College.

Charles R. Macedo, a physicist by training, uses his comprehensive patent experience to tackle the most important and complex developments affecting IP strategy today, including subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101, divided infringement under § 271, and navigating PTAB and PTO proceedings. He has been counsel on amicus briefs to the Supreme Court in the influential subject matter eligibility cases decided in the past few years, including Alice, Mayo, Myriad, and Bilski.

Mr. Macedo is considered an authority on IP issues, and writes prolifically and lectures regularly as he tracks and analyzes in real time the most important developments affecting IP strategy and litigation. He is consistently at the forefront of complex and emerging patent issues in the financial services and transaction processing industries. Clients ranging from international banks, broker dealers and new business ventures call on Mr. Macedo to develop patent strategies, prepare patents, assert rights and defend against infringement claims.

He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from The Catholic University of America and a law degree from Columbia Law School, all with honors. He was the sole law clerk to Hon. Daniel M. Friedman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, 1989–1990. The recipient of the prestigious AIPLA Robert C. Watson Award, Mr. Macedo is included in Super Lawyers, IP Stars and Million Dollar Verdict. He also was a member of the Editorial Board for the American Intellectual Property Law Association Quarterly Journal and currently serves on the Editorial Board for Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice published by Oxford University Press.

Dr. Dipanjan “DJ” Nag is currently the Chief Investment Officer leading the ventures group at Ventech Solutions. With a $800M+ contract with the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Ventech is one of the largest providers of information technology services in healthcare to the US federal government. In this role, he invests in both internal and external technologies and collaborating with Central and Eastern European start-up ecosystems.

As an entrepreneur he led a number of start-ups in the intellectual property strategy, artificial intelligence, and medical device space. He has successfully assisted capital raise for many start-ups. As a consultant in patent monetization and intellectual property strategy he has worked with Fortune 500 companies, universities, and national governments. He was the Associate Vice President at The Ohio State University and Executive Director at the Office of Technology Commercialization, Rutgers University. DJ was Vice President at ICAP Ocean Tomo, a subsidiary of ICAP Plc, a $2B+ publicly traded company. Prior to that as a director at Ocean Tomo, he led patent auctions, IP markets, and was an inventor of the first IP exchange (IPXI).

He served on the Board of Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) responsible for professional development globally (2012–2014). He led the global education program as the Sr. Vice President at the Licensing Executive Society (LES). In 2019 he was selected by the Intellectual Asset Management magazine (IAM) as one of the top 300 IP strategists globally. In 2005, he received the Howard Bremer Scholarship in technology transfer.

He is currently a professor of practice at Rutgers University and visiting faculty at Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu. He is an internationally acclaimed speaker and has delivered keynote addresses in USA, Japan, Poland, Brazil, Korea, Turkey, and many other countries on topics of technology commercialization, intellectual property, and innovation strategy. He holds a Ph.D. in biophysical chemistry and instrumentation, an MS in chemistry and computer sciences, an MBA from University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Chad Rutkowski’s practice focuses on the intersection of copyright and technology. As co-lead of BakerHostetler’s Digital Transformation and Data Economy team, he assists clients in the midst of the “digital transformation,” helping them identify and capture the intellectual property (IP) in their valuable data, algorithms, and enterprise software. Clients rely on him to help identify their IP, to build internal processes for its management, navigate open source and other open innovation strategies, and to create licensing programs that enable full value realization. He further protects that value in disputes and litigation, whether through enforcing his clients’ IP rights or fending off attacks by competitors.

Chad is the principal author of the firm’s Beyond Source Code web tool, which digests all court decisions addressing the scope of copyright protection in the non-literal elements of source code. Chad writes and presents regularly on the robust protections afforded by copyright law to software, data, artificial intelligence, and related innovations. He has helped his clients protect innovations in healthcare technology, water management, smart cities, population health management, and online consumer lending.

Chad’s interest in how IP law has adapted to digital transformation began in his former role as a founder and business manager of a digital media publisher. Drawing from his professional and legal experiences, he co-leads the firm’s Technology & IP Transactions and Outsourcing practice team and contributes regularly to the firm’s IP blogs. Additionally, he is an active member of the Copyright Society of the USA and the ABA IP Law Section. Chad is AV Preeminent-rated by Martindale-Hubbell and has been voted by his peers as a Pennsylvania Super Lawyer and Rising Star.