Current Employment Position(s)

Patent Agent

Lawyer Overview

Feng Ma, Ph.D., is a registered patent agent with Foley & Lardner LLP, and is a member of the Electronics Practice and Nanotechnology Industry Team.

Dr. Ma brings extensive research experience in the fields of microelectronics, optical communications, medical physics, astronomy and physics into patent prosecution, and finds common languages with researchers and inventors in many different fields. He has authored and co-authored about 50 publications, including journal articles in Science, the Physical Review Letters, the Applied Physics Letters, and various IEEE Transactions. Dr. Ma is also an inventor of several pending patents.

Dr. Ma focuses on prosecution of large portfolios of patent applications related to semiconductor processing, and optical communications. In addition, he has drafted a number of new patent applications related to MEMS devices, nanoelectronics, and organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) for universities and startup companies.

Prior to joining Foley, Dr. Ma worked as a patent agent, and has also taken postdoctoral positions at various universities. His postdoctoral research involves compound semiconductor devices including photodetectors, lasers, and light emitting diodes (LEDs), and Monte Carlo simulation methods and their applications in radiation oncology. He has collaborated with, and presented seminars and provided technical consulting for companies in the infrared technology industry. He also presented seminars on intellectual property as well as technical seminars in major universities in China.

Dr. Ma graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, where he received his Ph.D. in the fields of electrical engineering (2003) and astrophysics (2000) and also his M.A. in astrophysics (1997). He received his M.S. (theoretical physics, 1994) from Beijing Normal University and his B.S. (applied physics, 1991) from Beijing Institute of Technology. In 2002, Dr. Ma was awarded one of the eight university-wide George H. Mitchell/University Co-op Graduate Awards for Research, for the discovery work published in Science magazine.

Dr. Ma is admitted to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He is also fluent in Chinese. Outside the office, he is a licensed instrument-rated pilot.

Dr. Ma's representative publications, of which he is a lead author or sole author, include:

• "Shot Noise Suppression in Avalanche Photodiodes," Phys. Rev. Lett., 2005 
• "Monte Carlo Simulation of the Bandwidth of InAlAs Avalanche Photodiodes," IEEE Trans. Electron Dev., 2003
• "Monte Carlo simulation of Hg_0.7Cd_0.3Te Avalanche Photodiodes and Resonance Phenomenon in the Multiplication Noise," Appl. Phys. Lett., 2003
• "Monte Carlo Simulation of Low-Noise Avalanche Photodiodes with Heterojunctions," J. Appl. Phys., 2002
• "Low-Temperature Breakdown Properties of Al_xGa_1-xAs Avalanche Photodiodes," Appl. Phys. Lett., 2002
• "Discovery of Newly Formed Broad Absorption Lines in a Radio-Loud Quasar," Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 2002
• "Spin-Down Power in Astrophysics," Relativity and Gravitation, 2002
• "Discovery of Hidden Blazars," Science, 2001
• "Comment on 'Signal of Quark Deconfinement in the Timing Structure of Pulsar Spin-Down," Phys. Rev. Lett., 1998
• "Does Every Quasar Harbor a Blazar?" Astrophys. J. Lett., 1998

Areas of Practice

• Electronics

Bar Admissions

• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Past Employment Positions

• Myers Dawes Andras & Sherman LLP, Patent Agent

Education

• University of Texas, Austin, 2003
  Ph.D.
  Major: Electrical Engineering
• University of Texas, Austin, 2000
  Ph.D.
  Major: Astrophysics
• University of Texas, Austin, 1997
  M.A.
  Major: Astrophysics
• Beijing Institute of Technology, 1991
  B.S.
  Major: Applied Physics
• Beijing Normal University, 1994
  M.S.
  Major: Theoretical Physics

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(202) 672-5399

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