Jacob Babcock is CEO of NuCurrent, Inc., a Chicago-based electronic component solutions provider that focuses on antennas for wireless power transfer. His focus at NuCurrent Inc. is on leading technology development and commercialization, building strategic partnerships, developing a world-class IP portfolio, communicating with stake holders and growing the business.

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Jacob’s other experiences include: legal counsel for cleverbridge, Inc., a leading e-commerce provider for digital distribution; technology attorney at Foley & Lardner LLP, a 900-person global law firm; and high school teacher and football coach as part of Teach For America in St. Louis. Jacob is a named inventor on more than 20 patents, has a JD from Northwestern University School of Law, a BA from Indiana University. He lives in Chicago with his wife, daughter and two dogs.

Emily leads operations and strategy for Booth’s Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence, which believes the future of AI depends on a combination of AI with people, markets, and society. She helps to build partnerships with industry, academia, and policymakers. Previously, Emily served as Associate Director of Pedagogical Innovation at the University of Chicago Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, working in ed-tech and digital learning, and building partnerships between industry and higher education. Her background is in digital storytelling. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, focusing on narrative and digital media.

Emily’s interests include narrative and character development in ancient epic and modern video games, both graphical and text-based. She has explored the image of the hero and cultural and individual identity through play, immersion, and game design.

Dan Brown is an award-winning designer, serial inventor, entrepreneur and professor, in the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University. Dr. Brown has received over 100 US and International Utility patents for his novel new product solutions in industry and entrepreneurially, taking many to market himself as a founder of two startups. A recognized innovator in industry with 10 International Design Awards, Dr. Brown has also been elected to the National Academy of Inventors and appointed to the PPAC (Patent Public Advisory Committee) for a three-year term at the USPTO by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce.

Dr. Brown has seen both sides of the American Dream with his American Made Bionic Wrench invention: innovation-based market success, while at the same time having to continuously fight knockoffs in the marketplace almost destroying his business. Dr. Brown has committed himself to creating an equitable, protectable, and sustainable intellectual property system for all inventors.

Alex Castrounis is the founder and CEO of Why of AI, a book author on AI, and a professor of AI for Northwestern University's Kellogg & McCormick MBAi program. He has over two decades of experience advising startups to Fortune 100 companies on using data, analytics, and AI models to drive business growth and customer success.

Alex is also a former INDYCAR engineer, race strategist, and data scientist who drove winning results for teams such as Andretti Autosport in world-renowned races, including the Indy 500. His experience applying analytics to make smarter, data-driven decisions in racing now helps businesses gain and maintain a competitive advantage in their industry. Why of AI is an Execution Partner of 1871, the Innovation Hub founded by J.B. Pritzker. Other Partners include Discover, McKinsey & Company and the Chicago Cubs.

James Conley is clinical professor of technology at Northwestern University. He serves on the faculty of both the Kellogg School of Management and the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University. He is a faculty contributor in the Kellogg Center for Research in Technology & Innovation and serves as a Faculty Fellow at the Segal Design Institute (NU IDEA). Beyond academia, Professor Conley is an inventor, an active advocate of IP education for business and other students and leads seminars globally for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). He is a member of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

Professor Conley was appointed a member of the U.S. Department of Commerce Trademark Public Advisory Committee (TPAC) of the Patent and Trademark Office and has been an expert and author for the UN based World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). He serves on the board of several companies and the US Intellectual Property Allliance and the Illinois Intellectual Property Alliance. Professor Conley's research investigates the strategic use of intangible assets and intellectual properties to build and sustain competitive advantage. Kellogg School of Management, under Professor Conley’s leadership, partnered with CIPU on the 2021 IP Awareness Summit.

Dennis Daniels is Vice President and Co-Founder of the Chicago Inventors Organization and an advocate for rebuilding communities using the Intellectual Property (IP) ownership elements of Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights and Trade Secrets.

Dennis’ academic background includes serving as an Adjunct Faculty member at Chicago’s Olive-Harvey College teaching Business Planning and Customer Relationship Management. Dennis’ 25-year corporate background focused on managing HR Compensation/Benefits programs and Information Support resources for Senior Management at one of Chicago’s leading financial institutions. 

Albhy Galuten is a technology executive, inventor, record producer, composer, musician, conductor and futurist. He has produced 13 number one singles with songs and albums selling over 100 million copies worldwide. He has been nominated for seven and won two Grammy Awards and is the recipient of multiple gold and platinum records. He created the first drum loop for ‘Saturday Night Fever.’ Versions are used today in thousands of recordings. Albhy invented and developed the Enhanced CD, which is used and distributed by all major labels.

He served as Senior Vice President of Advanced Technology at Universal Music Group where he started and ran the music industry’s first technology division. He also was an executive at Sony Corporation of America and is currently a Senior Fellow at digital rights management pioneer Intertrust technologies, which is owned in part by Philips and Sony. As an inventor, Albhy has 11 issued patents. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Notable Fellows include Charles Dickens, Benjamin Franklin, Stephen Hawking, Marie Curie, and Tim Berners-Lee. 

Terry Hart is GC of the Association of American Publishers, a trade association of the American book publishing industry, representing book, journal and education publishers. Terry’s interests include a wide range of copyright topics, including AI and streaming issues. He is a Lecturer at the George Washing University Law School and publishes a well-known blog, Copyhype, devoted to balanced, in-depth analysis of topics and issues concerning copyright law and its role in a digital era.

Previously, he was Assistant General Counsel for U.S. Copyright Office, providing legal guidance to the Office’s divisions, promulgating regulations governing the administration of the copyright system, and advising congressional offices. Prior to the Copyright Office, he was Vice President of Legal Policy and Copyright Counsel for the Copyright Alliance, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization representing over two million individual creators and 15,000 organizations across the spectrum of copyright disciplines. He joined the CIPU board of directors in 2023, succeeding Jennifer Pariser, former Associate General Counsel of the Motion Picture Association.

Brian Hinman is Chief Innovation Officer at Aon Intellectual Property Solutions.  Mr. Hinman is part of the senior leadership team, where he helps lead efforts for Aon to establish market-accepted standards for assessing IP assets. Mr. Hinman has more than 30 years of experience in the IP field and in 2023 was inducted by IAM into the IP Hall of Fame.

Prior to joining Aon, Mr. Hinman served as chief IP officer at Philips, based in the Netherlands, where he led a worldwide team of more than 400 IP professionals in nine countries. He engaged in many forms of IP monetization, including patent, technology, and brand licensing, design patents, know-how and the formation of IP ventures. Prior to Philips, Mr. Hinman was Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Unified Patents Inc, Vice President of Intellectual Property and Licensing at IBM, Verizon, and InterDigital, and was founding CEO of Allied Security Trust.

James Howard is a college professor, design historian, entrepreneur, industrial designer, inventor and restauranteur. Howard also brings over 25 years of experience as a design professor and has authored a course on Design Thinking and Design History that explores the impact of design on society.  

An accomplished Industrial Design educator and entrepreneur, Howard has lectured on the experience of the Black American inventors, often drawing a parallel with many of his own experiences as an AA innovator to those innovators of the past. Howard is an inventor who has been awarded 20 patents. Many of these innovations save people's lives every day. His latest venture is Entrepreneurial U, Morris County’s first school of Design Thinking. Mr. Howard owns and operates one of New Jersey’s top niche food establishments, “Cozy Cupboard Tea Room”.

Efrat Kasznik is President of Foresight Valuation Group, a Silicon-Valley based IP valuation and strategy consulting firm. Ms. Kasznik also serves as a Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she has been teaching MBA and executive education classes for over a decade. Efrat has over 25 years of IP consulting experience, focusing on assisting IP holders across industries with the valuation, 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 also frequently serves as a testifying expert in disputes involving IP and startup valuations and damages, in civil litigation and in family court. 

Efrat currently serves on the Board of LES USA-Canada, as well as on the Board of the LES Silicon Valley Chapter. She is Chair of the upcoming LES 2022 Annual Meeting in San Francisco (October 2022).  Efrat has been recognized as one of the top IP strategists in the world by IAM 300 for 9 years in a row (2013-2021).  She has been a co-founder, CFO and Board member in several startups, and is an active mentor and advisor in the startup community, where she has worked with hundreds of startups, accelerators and incubators in Silicon Valley, Europe and Israel.

The Honorable F. Scott Kieff is former Commissioner of International Trade Commission, Professor at the George Washington University Law School, and founder of Kieff Strategies LLC. After nomination to the ITC by President Obama and unanimous confirmation by the Senate, he served as commissioner from 2013 to 2017. 

He also served during the George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations as a special government employee in the Senior Executive Service, sitting on advisory panels in the national security defense–intelligence community as well as advising on matters of economics, innovation, and oversight and compliance. He was previously a professor of law and medicine at Washington University in Saint Louis and a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is a graduate of MIT, where he focused on molecular biology and microeconomics.

Patrick Kilbride is senior vice president of the Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He oversees the Center’s domestic, multilateral, and international programs and leads GIPC’s policy work to promote intellectual property-driven innovation and creativity.

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Mr. Kilbride served in the Executive Office of the President during the George W. Bush administration as deputy assistant U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) for intergovernmental affairs & public liaison. At USTR, he worked with state and local officials, business organizations, and non-governmental organizations to advance the President’s trade policy agenda. Earlier in his career, Mr. Kilbride held various private sector roles advocating on behalf of business for rule of law and market openings through free trade agreements.

Phillip Kim has led the education practice of Michelson Philanthropies since 2015. With a background in entrepreneurship and venture capital, he has overseen the development of the social impact investment platforms at Michelson 20MM and Michelson Found Animals, providing seed funding to more than 40 mission-aligned education technology startups. In addition to his work at 20MM, Phil helps oversee a number of early stage programs at Karlin Asset Management, a Los Angeles-based investment firm with over $1.4 billion in unleveraged capital under management.

Phillip is actively engaged in several entrepreneurship and intellectual property programs across the country, including those at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, MIT, Stanford University, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Daryl Lim is the H. Laddie Montague Jr. Chair in Law at Penn State Dickinson Law and co-hire at the Institute of Computational and Data Sciences at Penn State University. He also serves as Associate Dean for rResearch and Innovation and founding director of the Intellectual Property and Innovation Initiative. He is the host of the Penn Dickinson’s podcast, “Profiles in Leadership.”

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Professor Lim is an award-winning author and commentator on national and global trends in IP and competition policy. He helps policymakers, attorneys, corporate counsel, scholars, and the public make sense of the world around them. He is a founding member of the Global IP Alliance. In December 2022, the American Law Institute elected Professor Lim to a member.

Jerry Ma is an executive, technologist, and registered patent practitioner currently serving as Director of Emerging Technology at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Jerry hails from an industry background including management and senior technical roles at Facebook AI Research, Quora, and Hummingbird Regtech. He has overseen initiatives resulting in the world’s first public-domain superhuman Go bot and the first deep neural network to be trained on the known protein universe.

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Jerry is an avid developer and scientist, publishing at venues such as ICML, ICLR, AAAI, and S&P. He has explored diverse topics including the mathematics of nonconvex optimization, quasi-linguistic structure in proteins and passwords, and energy-based neural modeling of atomic structures. As an educator, Jerry has taught computer science & mathematics in undergraduate, graduate, and professional settings. Jerry earned an A.B. in Economics and the Classics from Harvard University.

Adam Mossoff is Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. He is a Founder and past-Executive Director of the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP now C-IP2). His academic research has been cited by the Supreme Court, by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and by federal agencies.

Professor Mossoff has been invited to testify several times before the Senate and the House on proposed patent legislation, and he has spoken at numerous congressional staff briefings. His writings on patent law and policy have appeared in The New York Times, Forbes and many other media outlets. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Copyright Alliance and has served as past Chair of the IP Committee of the IEEE-USA. He is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, where he chairs Hudson's Forum for Intellectual Property, is a Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and is a member of the CIPU board of directors. 

Pioneering physicist, bioengineer and serial entrepreneur, Dr. Alan C. Nelson is Chairman and CEO of VisionGate, a company that has developed the world’s first AI-driven 3D cell analysis platform, Cell-CT, to address the unmet medical need for non-invasive, early-stage detection of lung, bladder, prostate and breast cancer. He holds 142 patents. Previously, he was the founder and CEO of NeoPath, where his team developed the world’s first and only fully-automated AI-driven platform to detect cervical cancer, now marketed as FocalPoint by Becton Dickinson.

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He is the former Executive Director of Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute and has held professorships at ASU, University of Washington, MIT and Harvard. Dr. Nelson, who has been using AI techniques in research since the 1990s, has more than 100 peer-reviewed publications in the field of biomedical imaging. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from U.C. Berkeley and is a fellow in the National Academy of Inventors. 

At 27 Tiffany Norwood raised over $670 million dollars to fund a startup to build the first global digital radio platform and launch three satellites into space. The capital helped to establish XM Radio. As one the first successful black female tech entrepreneur, Tiffany's career has spanned 52 countries, 30+ years and seven startups. Tiffany established her first start-up as a teenager and had been granted a patent by the age of 23. Her ventures have ranged from the first one-strap backpack to the automation technology behind self-install kits for broadband internet, and a virtual reality gaming platform. In 2022, she was named Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year.

Tiffany has led some of the first digital content licensing deals, including those with Bloomberg News and CNN International. She was also an early collaborator with the Fraunhofer Institute on their MPEG technologies. Tiffany is the Founder and CEO of Tribetan, a company that teaches entrepreneurship and innovation literacy as a life skill and the human science of success. Venues with which she has consulted include the European Parliament, Yale, the USPTO, KMPG and the South African Embassy. Her dream is that the science of turning imagination into reality is as well-known to the core curriculum as reading, writing, and math. Tiffany received an MBA from Harvard and a Bachelor’s in Economics with a concentration in statistics and electrical engineering from Cornell.

Daniel Papst is managing director and co-owner of Papst Licensing GmbH & Co KG, an international licensing and patent monetization firm located in Germany. Papst Licensing has concluded over 185 licenses. In addition to managing actions against patent infringers and negotiating licenses, Mr. Papst analyses products, technologies and markets and oversees an international network of attorneys, patent lawyers, technical consultants and market analysts.

The Papst name has been closely associated with the protection and licensing of intellectual property for more than 85 years. The engineer Hermann Papst (1902-1981), Mr Papst’s grandfather, was a prolific inventor associated with more than 400 patents. Georg Papst, Mr Papst’s deceased father is a named inventor on over 120 patents. Today, Papst Licensing makes it possible for small and medium-sized businesses to participate in international licensing activities especially through financing and monetization support.

Mr Papst, a licensed patent attorney, earned a dipl ing in electrical engineering and information technology from the University of Karlsruhe. After graduation, he gained experience as an intern at Chicago IP law firm Welsh & Katz.

​Armando Pauker is Co-Founder General Partner at Tensility Venture Partners (2016 to present), whose investments include artificial intelligence, digital health, cybersecurity, fintech. Previously, he was a General Partner at Apex Venture Partners (2000-2016) with an investment focus in enterprise hardware, software and cleantech. Armando served as a management consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton, where he worked with clients in technology industries. He also had operating roles at operating roles at Tandem Computers, EFI, and Cybernet Systems. He is a Caltech alum and has served on the boards of six companies, all of which exited through acquisition. 

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Laura A. Peter is the former Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) under Andrei Iancu. She was responsible for all agency operations and managing approximately 13,000 employees. Prior to joining the USPTO, Ms. Peter was the Deputy General Counsel of A10 Networks, where she oversaw daily legal matters related to commercial agreements, litigation, and intellectual property (IP) portfolio development. In 2014, she helped shepherd the company through its initial public offering. An area of her expertise focuses on the rights of artists in motion pictures.

Ryan is a registered patent attorney who works with clients in all areas of intellectual property. He holds an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and works with clients to achieve their business objectives, including developing and protecting their innovations and businesses.

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A former technology consultant with Accenture, Ryan has a background in computer science and engineering, and has extensive experience in computer system, hardware, and software design, engineering, development and related technologies. He represents numerous startup and Fortune 500 clients in technical areas and industries including artificial intelligence and machine learning, medical devices, biometrics data and services, data storage and management, encryption and security, mechanical devices, among others. Ryan's article, Artificial Intelligence & the Intellectual Property Landscape, details how artificial intelligence is reshaping the business and intellectual property landscape. 

Ryan has founded and run several multi-million dollar companies from inception to exit. He is a Strategic Advisor to several technology companies including Soteria Battery Innovation Group, and Havenshine, providing insight and expertise for a number of related adjacent technology industries. He began his career as an Army Ranger with the 75th Ranger Regiment, having served multiple tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. He is a trusted voice in the drone industry, serving as the North American Chapter Director for the Drone Logistics Ecosystem in determining the next round of drone regulations for the industry.

He has led teams with limited resources to overcome large obstacles and complete the mission, a skill which developed as a Ranger, that was sharpened as a successful serial entrepreneur. He has a BA in Economics and his MBA, and also is the lead inventor on all of Valqari’s granted patents to date. He has been featured in many major news outlets such as Fox Business, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, and many others. 

Bruce Beman is Managing Director of Brody Berman Associates, a management consulting and communications firm that serves innovative businesses. Brody Berman has supported more than 200 innovative businesses and portfolios since 1988, as well as many law firms and their clients. In 2016, he co-founded CIPU, which he serves as chairman. Bruce is responsible for five books about the business of IP, including From Ideas to Assets. His articles have appeared in Forbes, Nature Biotechnology, National Law Review and The New York Times. 

'Understanding IP Matters,' a podcast series he hosts, gives guests the opportunity to share their IP story, e.g. the journey from creator ro entrepreneur. The Intangible Investor column he writes currently appears on IP Watchdog. The column had appeared in every issue of IAM magazine from 2003 to 2019, 97 in all. IP CloseUp, a weekly update on trends he publishes, is read in more than 60 countries and has received more than 390,000 visits. He hosts CIPU's top-3 IP podcast, 'Understanding IP Matters,' currently in its third season. Bruce holds a Masters’ Degree film scholarship from Columbia University, where he taught for four years and completed course work and comprehensives for the Ph.D.

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