Indira Gunda Saladi Engineering Research Prize

Established 2012

Indira Saladi is managing director and director of patents at Accenture LLP. In this capacity, Indira has global responsibility for leading a worldwide team of attorneys in harvesting and protecting Accenture’s intellectual property assets and managing the associated strategy and operational efficiencies. As an attorney, Indira works at the intersection of technology and law to protect and assist engineers with their inventions.

Indira previously worked at Zebra as the company’s vice president and chief intellectual property counsel. In this important role, Saladi became responsible for working with the Operations and Engineering teams to develop a global intellectual property strategy that aligned with Zebra’s business strategy. Her other responsibilities included oversight of the global patent portfolio, management of IP disputes, strategic IP transactions, and management of Zebra's global IP operations and risks.

Saladi previously worked at Motorola Solutions from 2004-2012. While there, she held roles of increasing responsibility in areas of IP litigation, IP counseling, and patent procurement. She successfully deployed repeatable and sustainable legal process improvements to enable improved operation efficiencies, including the effective offshoring of legal services to support the IP function.

Before joining Motorola, Saladi managed her own law practice at IP Resource, Ltd., and worked at Welsh & Katz, Ltd., where she counseled and assisted clients in preparing and prosecuting U.S. patent applications. She began her career at Motorola as a computer engineer, where she led design efforts for a handheld data terminal and designed a radio communications protocol.

In addition to her BS in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Saladi earned an MS in electrical and computer engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.

Description:

While at Illinois, Saladi did her research with ECE Professor Wen-mei Hwu, one of her formative experiences while at Illinois. Saladi‘s son, Shyam Saladi, also attended Illinois to study computational biology and electrical engineering.

Saladi established this award because her son has chosen a career in research, and she wants to encourage, give visibility to, and reward undergraduate engineering students who have also chosen to pursue research.

Requirements:

• Undergraduates in ECE who are involved in research projects.
• Preference will be given to independent thinkers.

Selection Process :

To be considered for this award, students shall submit an abstract of their research, along with a letter of support from their faculty mentor outlining their direct contributions.

Award:

The recipient(s) will be recognized during an annual Student Awards Banquet. All student recipients are featured on the second floor of the ECE Building's Student Honors Wall.

Past Recipients of the Award