Associate Professor of Economics and Business Kristina Lybecker has been awarded a Thomas Edison Innovation Fellowship for 2016-17 by the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property at the George Mason University School of Law.

The Thomas Edison Innovation Fellowship is a year-long, non-resident fellowship program that brings together a group of scholars to develop research papers on patent law and policy. The Edison Fellowship is one of the centerpieces of the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property’s mission to promote a better academic discussion about intellectual property rights with substantial scholarship produced from rigorous research that examines the moral and economic value of patented innovation.

The Edison Fellowship consists of a series of invitation-only conferences over the course of a year in which Edison Fellows study and discuss a structured curriculum, engage in roundtable discussions with expert senior scholars and industry representatives, and share and collaborate on both their research and early drafts. The fellowship culminates in the production of substantial academic research papers that are published in law journals or other peer-reviewed academic journals.

Lybecker’s research focuses largely on issues related to intellectual property rights protection, with a focus on pharmaceutical-related issues. Her recent publications include an evaluation of Canada’s intellectual property protection for pharmaceutical products based on international best practices, as well as examinations of alternatives to the existing patent system and the balance between pharmaceutical patent protection and access to essential medicines.

Lybecker has testified in more than a dozen U.S. states on the economics of pharmaceutical counterfeiting and has worked with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the OECD, and the World Bank on issues of innovation and international trade. She earned a B.A. from Macalester College and received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.