Chair, 2022-2024: Kartar Singh Arora (Clarivate) 

Kartar is presently working as a Team Leader in the IP Search area for Clarivate. He started his professional career as a research scientist with the Sherwin-Williams Company and continued that path for many years with Mead Corporation, Henkel and Johnson Polymer. Patent information has been central throughout his professional career. He got involved in prosecution of patents and later became responsible for the management of IP at Johnson Polymer and then at BASF. During this time, he passed the Patent Bar and registered as a Patent Agent with the USPTO.

Kartar joined PIUG in 2000 as patent information and searching took more importance in his professional career. He joined Landon IP in 2012 which became part of Clarivate through a couple of mergers and acquisitions where he is now responsible for management and execution of patent searches in the areas of Chemistry and Materials. Kartar has been an active volunteer for PIUG, starting as web page editor and continuing as Annual Conference Exhibits Committee chair and Annual Conference Program Committee Co-Chair.

Telephone: +1 248-697-7761 (US)
Email: kartar at ahkhs dot com

Vice-Chair, 2022-2024: Devin Salmon (IFI CLAIMS Patent Services) 

Devin Salmon is currently a Product Manager at IFI CLAIMS. Devin has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She began her career at the USPTO as an examiner, followed by a short stint as an Applications Engineer working for a small microfluidics company. In 2014, she joined IP.com as a Patent Analyst delivering novelty, FTO, and landscape studies for commercial clients. While at IP.com she was also a Client Success Manager and served as the “Voice of the Customer” for the development and content teams. Equipped with this experience, she realized a key component of improving patent tools is to work from within the tool providers. She has also served as a guest lecturer on patent information usage for university students, ran patent search basics training workshops, and spoke to a variety of audiences about leveraging AI for patent information users.

Telephone: +1 541-740-0825 (US)
Email: oakesdev at gmail dot com

Vice-Chair (Special Projects), 2022-2024: Martha Yates (Bayer) 

Martha Yates is currently a Principal Information Scientist and Science Fellow at Bayer Crop Science. Martha was previously the Senior IP Information Specialist for Monsanto in the Law department. Prior to that, she was a patent scientist and a scientific searcher. Martha has been in the information industry for over 20 years with both Monsanto and Mallinckrodt Medical. She has a B.A. in Biology from Colorado College and a M.S. in Biochemistry and M.S.L.S. in Library Science from the University of Kentucky.

Telephone: +1 636-737-5830 (US)
Email: martha dot yates at bayer dot com

Secretary, 2022-2024: Mrinalinin (Mini) Muralidharan (Boehringer Ingelheim) 

Mrinalini (Mini) Muralidharan has worked as an Information analyst within the Legal Department at Boehringer Ingelheim since 2020. In this role she partners with patent attorneys to understand the strategic direction of R&D and provides summarized reports to assess patentability, freedom to operate and validity of internal assets and 3rd party products. Mini is a point of contact between Research and IP legal in the US and coordinates the search requests flowing into IP legal. Coming from a research background, Mini was able to bring in a fresh perspective and new tools to patent searches at BI and made IP searching more accessible to scientists. Prior to joining BI, Mini worked with The Antibody Society as their Education and Outreach Program Manager. In this role, she was responsible for coordinating the society’s initiatives and programs including their webinars and jobs board and their annual meetings in the US and Europe. She also helped curate the “Antibodies to Watch” list which is compiled by the society, presented at the annual meeting and published in journal MAbS. Mini got her Ph.D in Molecular Biology from Arizona State University for her work on plant defense mechanisms and then went on to do a PostDoc in HIV vaccine development at the Catholic University of America.

Telephone: +1 203-791-5881 (US)
Email: secretary at piug dot org

Treasurer, 2022-2024: Christopher Baldwin (Clarivate) 

Chris has been involved in the patent information field since 1999 and a member of PIUG (on and off) for nearly as long. Today he manages a very talented team of solution consultants for Clarivate supporting many of our well known products and services such as Derwent Innovation, Innography, IPfolio, and many others. Prior to joining Clarivate, he was a solution consultant for LexisNexis PatentSight helping clients use patent analytics to inform critical business decisions. However, he actually honed most of his patent information and analysis skills as an information scientist for nearly 20 years with E. I. duPont de Nemours & Co. While at DuPont, he learned the fine art of legally significant patent searching from Pat Dorler, a founding member of PIUG. She had a passion and dedication to the profession that easily transferred to her apprentice. Over the years, his role expanded into patent landscaping, competitive analysis, and providing innovation assessments for discovery programs in Central Research & Development. 

Telephone: +1 215-823-6665 (US)
Email: treasurer at piug dot org 

Immediate Past Chair, 2022-2024: Shelley Pavlek (Bristol-Myers Squibb) 

Shelley is a Senior Patent Analyst at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. She began her career as a medicinal chemist in the laboratory before moving into the information field. She has spent the last 23 years first as a chemical information scientist, followed by a patent information scientist/analyst. She performs patentability, freedom to operate, validity and due diligence searches to support both the patent department and the R&D Organization within Bristol-Myers Squibb. Shelley has a B.S. in Chemistry from Gannon University and a M.S. in Organic Chemistry from Ohio University.

Telephone: +1 609-252-3264 (US)
Email: shelley dot pavlek at bms dot com

Director-at-large, 2020-2024: Victoria Smith (Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research) 

Victoria received her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Notre Dame in 2016. While at the university, she worked in the areas of immunology, cancer biology, and infectious disease. During her time in the lab, Victoria began to transition her career interests to intellectual property and, in 2015, enrolled in a Master of Science in Patent Law program at the University of Notre Dame. Through participation in this program and subsequent internship at an office of technology transfer, she was taught the foundations of patent law, application drafting, and patent searching and analysis. Victoria Smith joined the Research & Development IP department at Novartis Institute of BioMedical Research in 2017.

Telephone: +1 617-871-3091 (US)
Email: victoria dot smith at novartis dot com

Director-at-large, 2022-2026: Barbara Miller 

Barbara is currently the Patent and Scientific Analyst in the Amgen IP Law group. Prior to joining Amgen in 2017, she was a Patent and Scientific Analyst at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research(NIBR) and an Information Scientist at Pfizer. She has a PhD in Biological Sciences from Emory University, a MS in Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance from Temple University, and a BS in Chemistry from Rhodes College. She has been a member of PIUG since 2010 and has served on various PIUG committees over the years, including the Biotechnology Conference Planning Committee and the Member Relations Committee. She is also a Qualified Patent Information Professional (QPIP) and serves on the QPIP Accreditations Committee.

Telephone: +1 617-444-5356 (US)
Email: bmille02 at amgen dot com

Director-at-large, (2yr term), 2022-2024: Ron Kaminecki 

Ron Kaminecki performs patent searches and instructs individuals on how to search patents. He is a Patent Attorney and an Adjunct Professor at the MS in Patent Law program at Notre Dame University School where he teaches patent searching. Next semester he will also teach a patent and trademark searching course at DePaul Law School. He has conducted technical and patent searches and has advised others on patent information since the mid-1970's. He worked as Manager of Patent Information at Abbott and also in various positions at Dialog, but has always worked with technical and patent information. He has a BS in Chemistry, an MS in Computer Science and a JD with a Certificate in Patent Law and is a co-inventor of a published patent application and a co-author of a NISO standard on a common command search language.

Telephone: +1 302-660-3275 (US)
Email: ron at kaminecki dot com