Supervisors and gender shape PhD patenting track record

Doctoral students are 10 times more likely to file patents when supervised by researchers who have many patents already than those who are not, according to a new paper.

And the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), also found that men were much more likely to file patents than women.

Co-authors Mercedes Delgado and Fiona Murray noted that science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects were a critical source of human capital in the economy, but that little was known about the opportunities available to students for commercialising their discoveries through patenting during graduate school.

They examined the rates at which doctoral students became new inventors across the top 25 US universities by the number of patents filed.

Of the almost 185,000 PhD graduates examined between 1995 and 2015, 4 per cent filed for their first patents while still in graduate school, or within two years after graduation.

However, students who were taught by supervisors defined as “top inventors” (TIs) themselves had a 23 per cent success rate – about 10 times higher than those with less successful supervisors.

The study found that these advisers played a “key role” in training PhD students to become new inventors by co-patenting.

However, it also revealed that female students were much less likely to become new inventors than their male counterparts – even after controlling for university, field, supervisor gender, and thesis topic.

The authors said that the reasons for this could be that female PhDs were less likely to be trained by TIs and less likely to be trained by the larger number of male TIs.

Finally, they said, female PhD students also had a lower probability of becoming new inventors.

“Given the much higher rate at which TI advisees are likely to patent, increasing the number of female PhDs working with TIs would be a critical step,” the authors said.

“Potential interventions would require a better understanding of the adviser-advisee matching process.”

And they suggested that offering further patent training for PhD students, especially women, could help to expand inclusive innovation.

“The outlook for universities contributing to human capital, invention and patenting in the US economy is positive,” the authors noted.

“Yet to be more relevant to the innovation economy, universities might take additional steps to provide opportunities for all PhD students to engage in commercial science.”

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com