Visiting Scholars Enrich BU Law’s Technology & Policy Research Initiative
Visiting professors, graduate assistants, and postdoctoral fellows conduct research at the intersection of technology and society.
In June 2017, Boston University School of Law launched the Technology & Policy Research Initiative (TPRI), an organization dedicated to examining how new technology impacts society and the policies that can best shape that impact. Since then, scholars with deep expertise in a range of critical areas have come together to collaborate on research that focuses on the effects of new technology on the workforce, intellectual property policies that can encourage innovation, and how government policies affect employee incentives, startup creation, market competition, and economic dynamism generally.
Executive Director James Bessen, a School of Law lecturer who studies technology and innovation policy, and Faculty Director Michael Meurer, a BU Law professor who teaches courses in patents, intellectual property, and policy toward high-tech industries, are leading the research initiative. They are joined by MIT Professor David Autor (labor economics, automation), Brookings Institution researcher Ian Hathaway (startups), Case Western Reserve University Professor of Economics Susan Helper (supply chains), and NYU Stern School of Business Associate Professor Rob Seamans (entrepreneurship).
The initiative also supports the research of visiting scholars, law students, graduate students, and post-docs. In the 2017–18 academic year, TPRI welcomed scholars from around the world to BU Law to collaborate on research related to automation and artificial intelligence, the allocation of patent applications to patent examiners at the US Patent & Trademark Office, and labor market impacts of technological progress:
Research Assistant Raphael Martins is PhD student in Management at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He received a BA in Economics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, an MA in Economics from the University of São Paulo and an MPA in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School. Previous professional experiences include the Brazilian Development Bank, the Center for International Development at Harvard University, and the Brazilian Ministry of Strategic Affairs.
Right after submitting her PhD thesis at the University of Pavia, Lydia Reichensperger moved to Boston and joined TPRI as a postdoctoral associate. Her current research projects study automation and artificial intelligence. At TPRI she manages preliminary data collection and coordinates the US-wide implementation of a survey for auto suppliers. She holds a BA in International Business from the Nuremberg Institute of Technology Georg Simon Ohm (Germany) and a MSc summa cum laude in International Business and Economics from the University of Pavia (Italy). In 2016, Reichensperger was a visiting scholar at BU School of Law where she piloted and implemented a survey that targets a sample of US scientists that won a R&D prize.
Cesare Righi is a postdoctoral associate at TPRI. His research focuses on the economics and strategic management of intellectual property rights and technology standards. His current research projects study the allocation of patent applications to patent examiners at the US Patent & Trademark Office, the impact of standard setting organizations’ patent disclosure rules, the relationship between standard setting organizations and the scope of cumulative inventive activity, the prosecution of standard essential patents and the relationship between continuation applications and patent litigation. Righi received his BA in Economics of International Markets and New Technologies and his MS in Economics and Management of International Markets and New Technologies from Bocconi University in Milan (Italy), and his PhD in Management (concentration in Strategy & Innovation) from Questrom School of Business at Boston University.
Visiting Faculty Fellow Anna Salomons is professor of employment and inequality at Utrecht University’s School of Economics in the Netherlands, having obtained a PhD in Economics at the University of Leuven in Belgium. Her research focuses on the labor market impacts of technological progress and has been awarded research grants from the Strengthening Efficiency and Competitiveness in European Knowledge Economies (SEEK) program and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. Salomons is an affiliated researcher at the University of Leuven and a fellow of the Research Centre for Education and the Labor Market (ROA, University of Maastricht). She has held positions as a visiting researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, London School of Economics, and the Center for European Economic Research (ZEW). She has provided policy advice to among others the European Commission, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) and the Dutch government.
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