Distinguished Speaker Series - Turning Frequency into Fortune

Dear all, You are warmly invited to a distinguished lecture organized by the IEEE Student Branch Oulu under the IEEE MTT-S Outstanding Young Professional Lecturer Program 2026. Every year, researchers across disciplines make genuine breakthroughs—novel algorithms, inventive systems, elegant methods—only to unknowingly give them away through a premature publication, an arXiv upload, or a GitHub commit. The result: the commercial value of years of work flows to others, while the inventor walks away with nothing but a citation. This talk dismantles that outcome. Designed for early-career researchers and young professionals, it delivers a practical, engineer-friendly guide to intellectual property—from the foundational question of what a patent actually is to the strategic question of how to build a portfolio that generates real-world value. Attendees will learn how the three pillars of patentability—novelty, non-obviousness, and utility—apply to their daily research output; why the "file first, publish second" principle is non-negotiable in most jurisdictions outside the United States; and how the Patent Cooperation Treaty can secure international protection across 150+ countries from a single filing. The session also covers standard essential patents and FRAND licensing, the Qualcomm model of IP monetization at scale, and the growing intersection of AI tools with inventorship law following the November 2025 USPTO guidance. No legal background is required. What participants leave with is the knowledge that separates researchers who protect their work from those who simply publish it. Speaker Bio: Dr. Shobit Agarwal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, and a Senior Member of IEEE. His research focuses on applied electromagnetics and next-generation wireless communication systems. Dr. Agarwal earned his M.Tech. degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from LNMIIT, India, graduating with high honors, and he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Bologna in 2022. His doctoral research focused on enhancing planar electromagnetic structures using metasurfaces and integrating ferroelectric materials into RF circuits. In addition to his academic career, Dr. Agarwal has industry experience as a Senior Research Analyst at GreyB Research, where he worked on patent analytics for Fortune 500 clients, and as a Research Engineer at ULTIMETAS, contributing to the design and testing of microwave metasurface antennas. He is actively involved in the RESTAR project’s “6GWINET” initiative, working on intelligent reflective surfaces and terahertz communication systems. Dr. Agarwal has co-authored over 25 peer-reviewed publications, received an IEEE APS travel grant, and is deeply engaged in teaching and mentoring. We encourage all students, researchers, and professionals interested in wireless communications, RF engineering, and emerging technologies to attend.