Indian American economist Bhaven N. Sampat is working to understand how to design policies and institutions to promote scientific progress and shape innovation to address public problems.
Sampat, who recently joined Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Science and Innovation Policy, studies science funding, the links between scientific research and innovation, and patent policy.
“I’m interested in science policy with the ultimate goal of solving public problems and improving social outcomes,” Sampat says. “New knowledge and technologies have the potential to drive tremendous improvements in human well-being. That’s my North Star.”
Sampat’s work brings historical perspective and data together with modern empirical approaches to better understand how policy decisions shape science and innovation, according to the university.
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He has examined the role of World War II research and development in shaping U.S. science, science policy, and innovation; pharmaceutical patent policy in the U.S. and globally; and the economics, history, and politics of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the largest single funder of biomedical research in the world.
His work also examines how different stakeholders, including taxpayers, scientific interest groups, universities, Congress, and industry, interact to influence science policy. The stakes are enormous. For example, in health, the focus of much of his recent work, Sampat says there is much to gain from getting policy right.
“The economic value of new and better treatments, to say nothing of the human benefits, runs into the trillions of dollars,” Sampat explains. “The rate and direction of medical progress depend not just on scientific and technical factors but also on institutional design and policy choices. Improving our approaches to funding and governing science and innovation can yield large benefits for generations to come.”
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Sampat notes that we are at a critical moment in which the post-World War II framework for science policy in the U.S., which laid the foundation for the relationship between the federal government and scientific research, is under extraordinary strain.
Sampat, who spent most of his career at Columbia University before moving to Arizona State University, comes to Johns Hopkins as part of the Promoting and Governing Technology BDP cluster.
He describes the opportunity to join the nation’s first research university—and a long-standing leader in federally funded science and medicine—as particularly meaningful, given his career studying universities, federal science funding, and life science innovation.
Sampat previously worked at Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes and School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University. He has a BA, MA and PhD in Economics from Columbia University.