InterDigital Honors Wireless and Video Innovation Leaders Paul Marinier and Karam Naser as Inventors of the Year

Paul Marinier and Karam Naser celebrated for outstanding inventions contributing to wireless evolution and improved video delivery


WILMINGTON, Del., Feb. 23, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- InterDigital, Inc. (Nasdaq: IDCC), one of the world’s largest pure research and innovation companies driving innovation in wireless and video, annually honors the company’s outstanding inventors to celebrate the depth of their ingenuity and impact of their innovation. This year, InterDigital has named both Paul Marinier and Karam Naser as winners of the 2023 Inventor of the Year award, selected for their critical research and inventions that have guided wireless evolution and enabled new possibilities for delivering and enjoying video content.

Inventors are the cornerstone of InterDigital’s innovation, and the Inventor of the Year award celebrates researchers and innovators who have made exceptional contributions to enabling, growing, and discovering new solutions for the connected ecosystems upon which we all depend. The innovation impact of this year’s winners Paul Marinier and Karam Naser can be seen within the foundational infrastructure and global standards that make wireless and video technologies what they are today.

“Recognized as one of the world’s most innovative companies, InterDigital is driven by world-class engineers and inventors like Paul and Karam who deeply understand the wireless and video ecosystems and have displayed the expertise to improve them by solving challenging problems that others cannot,” said Liren Chen, President and CEO at InterDigital. “This year’s Inventor of the Year award winners are celebrated not only for the depth and breadth of their patented innovations but also for their leadership and contributions to standards that deliver impact to our technology ecosystem at large.”

InterDigital 2022 Inventor of the Year Award Winners

Paul Marinier

With more than two decades of innovation impact, Paul Marinier’s inventions and contributions to global standards have helped shape the path of wireless evolution from 3G to 4G to 5G and beyond. Since 2001, Paul has developed more than 425 U.S. and 3,150 worldwide granted patents that help comprise the foundation for our wireless experiences today, enabling increased data rates, reduced latency, ultra-reliability, and power efficiency for improved battery life for the plethora of devices, industries, and experiences that drive our connected world.

As an inventor, Paul is motivated by a deep curiosity to find practical solutions for real world problems, and he enjoys the practice of collaborating with peers to build solutions with an impact far greater than the sum of its parts. Alongside his longstanding contributions to 3GPP wireless standards, Paul's significant innovations in spectrum aggregation solutions and contributions to wireless features like ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC) have paved a way for networks to reduce latency and support extreme high data rates for emerging use cases like AR and XR, immersive gaming, remote operations, connected industries and more.

Highly revered amongst his peers in research and standards, Paul’s innovation trajectory is synonymous with wireless evolution and his patented inventions can be seen across critical wireless releases. The quality of his innovation and the quantity of his contributions ensure that Paul’s impact is felt through 5G and well beyond.

Karam Naser

Karam Naser has dedicated his research expertise to developing new algorithms and innovative solutions that improve state-of-the-art video compression standards. A named inventor in 540 patent applications, Karam is already driving significant impact in the evolution of video compression capabilities.

With a fondness for math and research that produces clear, objective results, Karam has committed his career to understanding the complex world of video compression and developing advanced coding algorithms to efficiently deliver increasingly data-dense video content. His work addresses the critical question of how to squeeze additional coding efficiency improvements from modern codecs which are already incredibly sophisticated and highly efficient, and his contributions to the 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. Among his inventions, Karam leads innovation in transform coding, which uses complex mathematical algorithms to convert video pixels into essential components for more efficient transmission and decoding in devices, and intra-prediction, which compresses components of a video image without referencing previously coded images, to facilitate efficient transfer of video content without sacrificing quality. In sum, his innovations help us more efficiently deliver video, whether streaming a video conference or playing an immersive game on the go.

Karam has quickly gained recognition and respect within video standards as a leading contributor to the JVET group and active contributor of diverse compression algorithms to MPEG. His research leadership has helped to shape important innovation in video compression and build a framework to support both today’s traditional video services and emerging interactive and immersive experiences of the future.

InterDigital’s Inventor of the Year award is granted to outstanding inventors whose innovation impact is reflected in both quantity and industry influence. To learn more about this year’s winners, please click here.

About InterDigital®

InterDigital develops mobile and video technologies that are at the core of devices, networks, and services worldwide. We solve many of the industry’s most critical and complex technical challenges, inventing solutions for more efficient broadband networks, better video delivery, and richer multimedia experiences years ahead of market deployment. InterDigital has licenses and strategic relationships with many of the world’s leading technology companies. Founded in 1972, InterDigital is listed on Nasdaq.

InterDigital is a registered trademark of InterDigital, Inc.

For more information, visit: www.InterDigital.com

InterDigital Contact:
Roya Stephens
Email: Roya.Stephens@interdigital.com
+1 (202) 349-1714