Dr. Senad Bulja, PhD, FIET, SMIEEE

Senad Bulja, Ph.D., FIET, SMIEEE

Dr Bulja’s profile
Email : contact@drbulja.com

PROFESSIONAL Profile

Accomplished career of 20 years demonstrating consistent success as a Researcher, Leader and Mentor in the Wireless industry research environment.
Strong leadership skills demonstrated by leading Ph.D. level educated cross-continental and cross-departmental teams to successful project execution.
Proven Strategic Business Impact – introduced own developed technology into Nokia’s future technology roadmap (RF filters) and business transfer of the smart surface technology.
Creative, internationally awarded and well-driven inventor with over 70 filed patents in the area of hardware for Radio Frequency (RF), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), Internet of Things (IoT) and wireless systems architectures. E.g. Nokia patent award entitled: “A top inventor in implementation patent first filings”, 2020.
Significant contribution in the identification of high revenue IP assets and leadership on the creation of Nokia’s patent portfolio roadmap.
Excellent Scientific contributions in the field of RF, EMC and telecommunications with 4 Nature Journal publications and over 70 peer-reviewed articles and conference papers.
Experienced in research grant writing for both internal research and development projects and external collaboration with academia, including a € 2,000.000 research grant funded under the Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN). This was the first ever Marie Curie funding to be received by the Bell Labs in Dublin, Ireland.
Effective communicator with excellent planning, organizational, and negotiation strengths with an ability to lead, reach consensus, establish goals, and attain results.
Languages: English (fluent) and Serbian (mother tongue), French and Vietnamese (conversational)

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Tyndall National Institute, Dublin Dec. 2020 – Present

Job Title: Principal Scientist/Department Head

Focused on the creation of wireless research group of excellence at Tyndall National Institute. My focus is on important challenges of 5G, 6G and beyond.

RF front-ends (antennas, filters, antenna arrays).
Exploitation of synergies between existing Tyndall strengths (material science) and new wireless expertise to create new wireless technologies.

Nokia Bell Laboratories, Dublin Jul 2010 – Oct. 2020

Job Title: Senior Research Scientist

Responsible for the identification and formulation of technical challenges of Nokia into research and development programs and for delivering innovation into products. Some examples:

RF and mm-wave filters: Created a family of filter-related IP, centred on miniaturisation of RF filters. Created IP that led to filter size reduction of 20% with no price differential compared to competition. Introduced into ALU / Nokia portfolio. Led multidisciplinary, cross-organizational and cross-continental efforts and enabled technology transfer.
Smart reconfigurable 5G surface: Created IP and led a diverse team of 5 people for the creation of a smart RF surface.
Novel tuneable materials: Discovered high frequency dielectric tunability of electrochromic (EC) materials and high frequency switching behaviour of Transition Metal Oxides (TMO). Led a cross-disciplinary and geographically diverse team of 5 people. Published 3 papers in a Nature’s journal.
Tuneable, reconfigurable reflect array with 13000 + antenna operating at sub-THz frequencies. Led a cross-and multi-disciplinary team of 5 people. World first reflect array operating using EC-based materials.
WSN: Designed a “smart” wireless sensor network node. The project aim was to increase the low range of standard, low-powered WSN nodes. For this purpose, a full TDD-based transceiver with an array of 4×2 antennas operating at the ISM band at 2.45 GHz was designed and tested both on site and at an external location in a propagation-wise challenging environment.
Provided consultancy, technical guidance and thought leadership to our Wireless Business Division and Senior Leadership Teams (SLT) on a variety of in-house projects. Organising and taking an active role in patent mining workshops for up to 100 participants. Some examples:
Active part in the creation of the patent portfolio. Close collaboration with all relevant stakeholders, including SLT members. Filed over 70 patents (Nokia value of $25 M).
Identification of high revenue IP assets, roadmap creation and its translation into research and development directions.
Expert advising Nokia C-level executives.

Actively led research on new tuneable RF dielectric and optical media, RF filters, RF amplifiers, specialized antennas, complete RF transceivers and a plethora of RF passive and active devices (attenuators, couplers and phase shifters) up to 240 GHz. Some examples:

Transparent RF filters – Initiated external collaboration with TDK.
TMO based switches/attenuators at 160 GHz.
Tuneable feeder networks – Discovered a lossless way of variable RF power splitting. Implemented the solution as part of the single transmitter MIMO.

Masan Resources Corporation, Hanoi, Vietnam Dec 2016 – July 2020

Job Title: Consultant

Masan Resources is a subsidiary of Masan Group Corporation, focused on mining of midstream tungsten products.

Following pioneering research which demonstrated the usability of tungsten oxide in the wireless industry, provided technical leadership and guidance on various R&D activities and development of strategies for the sustainability and corporate governmental reports aimed for the shareholders.

Technical guidance on the use of tungsten in the electronics industry and in nanoelectronics technology (nanowires)
Technical assistance on R&D activities, such as the importance of high-grade tungsten-polymetallic ore in the production of tungsten oxide (used in smart windows).
Validating and auditing the technical reports for governmental consumption.
Technical advisor to the General Director and Management Board.

CTO and Founder, ArqKos, Dublin May 2020 – Present

Nokia spin-out, focused on the development of high-performance filters for 5G and space applications.

Activities:

Based on 8 patents I filed in the area of extremely low profile, high power resonators
Bespoke filter design house. Revenue based on NRE and royalties from filter suppliers.
Senior Researcher, University of Essex, UK Jul 2007 – Jul 2010
Investigated the use of liquid crystals as tunable dielectric media for mm-wave microwave applications.
Developed a numerical technique for rigorous characterization of liquid crystal RF properties and designed and implemented a variety of mm-wave liquid crystal-based circuits, such as antennas, phase shifters, filters and attenuators.

Research fellow, University of Essex, UK Oct 2002 – Jun 2007

Investigated memory effects in discrete FET transistors and their subsequent application for power amplifier linearization. The aim of the project was to perform power amplifier linearization using harmonic injection techniques.

EDUCATION

Oct 2002 – Jun 2007 Ph.D. University of Essex, UK.

Ph.D. in RF Engineering; thesis title: “New phase shifter, amplifier linearisation and transistor characterisation”

Oct 2000 – Jun 2002 B.Eng. Colchester, University of Essex, UK.

BEng in Telecommunications Engineering, 1st Class Honours