Gaétan de Rassenfosse is an Associate Professor in Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy at Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. He joined the College of Management of Technology at EPFL in 2014. Before that, he was a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia, from 2010 to 2014. He obtained a Ph.D. in Economics from the Solvay Business School at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, in 2010. He was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley in 2018 and MIT in the summer of 2019.
The overarching objective of Gaétan’s research is to provide the policy environment that best addresses the needs of the knowledge economy. This objective is met by producing sound empirical evidence on research questions related to science, technology, and innovation policy issues, with a particular interest in intellectual property. His work appeared in international peer-reviewed scientific journals such as the Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of Law & Economics, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Research Policy, and European Economic Review, among many others. He received more than $3 million in research funding from institutions including, but not limited to, the U.S. NSF, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Swiss Network for International Studies, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and the European Patent Office.
Gaétan keenly engages with international organizations, foundations, government agencies, and private companies. He was in charge of a report on the 'Patent Box' regime as part of Australia's Prime Minister's election promise to explore this policy tool. He has also done contract research for agencies and organizations such as the European Commission, the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) of the Swiss Confederation, the Australian Department of Industry, the Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance, the Australian patent office, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and the World Intellectual Property Organization. He occasionally serves as an expert witness in high-stakes patent litigation cases.
