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Hamid Piroozi, ’06, joined the faculty at IU McKinney in Spring 2017, where he will play an active role in the Center for Intellectual Property and Innovation, and teach patent law. He’s planned the IP Center’s weekly luncheon speaker series for students, and is orchestrating the center’s annual symposium, slated for March 22.

“I’m so excited to work with the law school,” Piroozi said. “This is where I went to law school, and it’s great to be back.”

Piroozi comes to IU McKinney directly from his role as Director, Legal, of the Purdue Research Foundation. In that job, he crafted a legal practice, unique in the nation, Piroozi said, in which patent attorneys handle all of the intellectual property that is generated at Purdue University. That’s about 400 disclosures every year, and over about 1,000 active projects going on at any one time. The research foundation manages Purdue’s technology transfer process, as well as all of the university’s real property. The intellectual property is handled out of the Office of Technology Commercialization.

This is Piroozi’s third career. He was an engineer for 17 years, first working as a mechanical engineer and then as an electrical engineer. He received three Purdue engineering degrees, and has worked at three different metropolitan Indianapolis law firms on intellectual property matters.

“I have filed hundreds of patent and trademark applications,” Piroozi said, “and prosecuted many of them. That’s where my value is -- the practice of IP law.”

Piroozi will also serve as a Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor of Engineering on the IUPUI campus. There he will oversee formation and roll out of a new intellectual property minor in the engineering program. Students who complete the program will be able to take the patent bar and become a patent practitioner if they desire, work as a patent engineer, or for most, become better engineers.

“What I desire more than anything else in the world,” Piroozi said, “more than money or fame, is to make sure I provide a deep level of impact. As I’m going through my life, I want to make sure I’ve touched as many things as possible. That’s what keeps me going - is when I’m able to be impactful.”