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.

Efrat Kasznik is President of Foresight Valuation Group and a Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Efrat is a Silicon-Valley based valuation and intellectual property expert with two decades of consulting experience, focusing on assisting IP holders across industries with the creation, commercialization, and monetization of their intangible assets. She helps clients, ranging in size from Fortune 100 companies to start-ups, with IP and business valuations in support of licensing deals, IP and technology acquisitions, M&A transactions, financial reporting, strategic planning, and fundraising. She frequently serves as a testifying expert in disputes involving IP and startup valuations and damages. Efrat currently serves as Chair of the High-Tech Sector – LES USA-Canada and has been recognized as one of the top IP strategists in the world by IAM every year since 2013.

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.