When Marta Karczewicz logs into an online conference call or streams video, she's not looking at the shirt you're wearing or clever background you're using. She's fixated on something else entirely: the call's clarity and quality.
That's because her life's work helped create the age of Zoom calls and other live, online presentations. Her technology powers most online videoconferencing platforms. And it's thanks to her, video calls are now as common as street corner pay phones were a generation ago. She played an outsize role, too, in making the streaming experience flawless for Qualcomm.
Karczewicz holds nearly 700 patents. The vast majority of them are for video compression innovations. She ranked No. 1 among women inventors on patents with a collective estimated value in excess of $1 billion as of last year as identified by PatentVector, a patent data analytics company.
"She is one of the most successful inventors in the world — a patent value billionaire," said Dr. Andrew W. Torrance, president and CEO of PatentVector. "In light of her brilliant accomplishments as a scientist and inventor, Dr. Karczewicz should be a household name."
Find Your Angle Like Qualcomm's Karczewicz
Karczewicz is Qualcomm's vice president for technology. She leads a team that spends workdays creating the equations and algorithms behind codecs. Codecs are pieces of code that compress or decompress video up to 1,000 times its original size. Codecs are at the core of everyday tech devices — even if most people have never heard of them.
The daughter of a physician mother and mechanical engineering father, Karczewicz grew up with a love of math and science in a port city in Poland. She discovered her passion and won a prestigious Polish math competition while still in high school.
She then moved to Finland to attend college and work for cellphone maker Nokia where she could put her affection for problem-solving to use. It was there she earned her Ph.D. before transferring to Nokia's office in Dallas in the mid 1990s. Then about a decade later she headed to wireless technology company Qualcomm.
Transform Your Talent Into A Career
Karczewicz concluded early in her career that video was the future. She's drawn to the challenge of solving problems, of unlocking a mystery to come up with a solution. The tougher the problem, the more she enjoys coming up with an answer.
"I was just really good at math and physics and other stuff really didn't interest me at all," Karczewicz said in an interview with Investor's Business Daily. "I wouldn't have been a very good historian."
'Question Everything'
Karczewicz, 52, attributes her success to persistence and questioning assumptions. Even in school, she found herself challenging the veracity of textbooks and academic papers. "Basically," she said, "I have kind of a type of nature that I pretty much question everything."
All that questioning often led to nothing more than validating that the original information was correct. "I am more wrong than I am right," she said. But she says in the process she gains the satisfaction of having discovered an answer on her own. As a consequence, she considers checking assumptions an essential part of pushing boundaries.
Be Patient — It Pays Off
The key to finding an answer is staying organized, Karczewicz says. She divides up her days. She will sit in front of the computer and try to take on some of the headier problems directly. But she will leave enough time in the afternoons to let her mind wander — "taking a walk, driving somewhere, being in a restaurant, I just never know" when creative solutions will strike.
Karczewicz tries to think broadly about problems. She doesn't just look at whatever research was done previously. Instead, she reads seemingly unrelated material or draws from other areas in order to find an answer.
"It might take you hours, or sometimes in some cases, a week or two or three to solve it. And very often there is not really a single solution. There are multiple solutions. It's really like a challenge," Karczewicz said.
Know Today's Dead End Is Tomorrow's Solution
Karczewicz is diligent about scribbling down possible answers. She's not afraid of dead ends. Often an idea will go nowhere. But then, a couple of years or even decades later, she will recall having it in a notebook and suddenly it becomes useful.
"There (are) dead ends and there (are) ideas that look good and they don't work out. You go as far with them as you can, and then go nowhere and 20 years later, someone else figures out a way to work them into something," she said.
Dead ends help in another way. Working them through leads to a better understanding of the problem. And that better grasp is what leads to an eventual solution.
She's not in a great hurry. She credits Qualcomm with being patient when it comes to trying to find breakthroughs. Everything builds on everything else.
Inspire Your Team
It helps to have a team behind you. As codecs have become ever more sophisticated, the number of experts assigned to finding new solutions has grown as well.
"You cannot do it alone anymore," Karczewicz said. "You need to manage the team and inspire people."
Can a particular problem be solved? Can it be done better than before? Qualcomm workers love the challenge, she said. She makes sure she points out that, "Hey, we can do it better than last time."
Lead The Charge For Women
Working in technology, she says she became accustomed to often being the only woman in the room. The interest among women in the field has improved somewhat, she says, adding that there certainly could be more.
Karczewicz says women need encouragement to choose her fascinating field. There should be nothing holding them back. Growing up in Poland, she says, it seemed like the interest in mathematics and science was fairly evenly split between boys and girls.
As for advice, she said women need to learn to be assertive, especially when it comes to presenting their ideas. They'll come up with a winning solution, but can be reluctant to persuade others to give it a try.
Fight Disappointment
It takes persistence and not becoming easily discouraged to find valuable patents, she says.
As a leader in her field, Karczewicz certainly has earned a reputation that makes her a role model.
"The technological wonders she has created make her a heroine of innovation and she should be celebrated as one of the top inventors in the world," PatentVector's Torrance said. "I personally have made sure my children, including my daughters, know her name and appreciate her amazing accomplishments."
Broaden Your Horizons
And those accomplishments are sure to continue.
Even with all that has already been accomplished, Karczewicz sees a bright future when it comes to applying video compression and decompression technology. The applications seem endless.
"When we talk about all the smart cars, smart cities ... smart factories, it's all driven by video," she said.
Get Ahead Of New Technologies
Looking further, another technology that appears ripe is neural networks, critical to developing artificial intelligence capabilities. It allows computers to think like people.
Karczewicz studied neural networks while working on her university doctoral program, "but it wasn't seen as something that's practical because of their complexity. So now they are mainstream and we are looking at them."
Be Nimble
Switching between different projects isn't a problem for Karczewicz. In fact, she relishes it.
A scientist could spend their entire career improving a single video compression technology, but the bigger improvements will come from those who take a broader approach.
"I'm kind of always thinking of how they interact with each other," she said. "You just can't really work on a single one of them."
Karczewicz is proud to have contributed to important products and to advancing the science of video compression.
"I don't think you can find a phone or TV without them," Karczewicz said.
Karczewicz's Keys
- Qualcomm's vice president for technology who ranks No. 1 among women inventors, holding patents with a collective estimated value in excess of $1 billion as of last year.
- Overcame: Domination of the science and technology field by men.
- Lesson: "It might take you hours, or sometimes in some cases, a week or two or three to solve (a problem). And very often there is not really a single solution. There are multiple solutions."
