I study how legal and policy institutions shape innovation.

I am an Associate Professor in Science and Technology Policy at EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland), where I joined the College of Management of Technology in 2014. My work focuses on intellectual property and the data infrastructure that enables large-scale empirical research.

Before EPFL, I was a Research Fellow and then Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne (2010–2014). I earned my Ph.D. in Economics from Solvay Business School, Université libre de Bruxelles, in 2010, and have been a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley (2018), MIT (summer 2019), and NYU (2024–2025).

Research

My research aims to inform science, technology, and innovation policy by producing rigorous empirical evidence at the intersection of innovation economics, intellectual property, and data science. My work has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of Law & Economics, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Research Policy, and European Economic Review. I have delivered more than 240 conference and seminar presentations worldwide and have secured more than USD 3.8 million in research funding from organizations including the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Swiss Network for International Studies, and the European Patent Office.

Engagement and Public Communication

I regularly engage with governments, international organizations, foundations, and private companies on evidence-based IP and innovation policy, including commissioned research and policy reports (e.g., work on patent box design in Australia). I also serve as an expert witness in patent litigation. I write The Patentist, a newsletter on patents, innovation, and IP policy, and I enjoy communicating research beyond academia, including through visual formats (e.g., the comic book An ABC of IP, translated into multiple languages).