TAMU Law professor Vishnubhakat awarded 2019 PESCA grant

The Texas A&M University Division of Research has awarded Professor Saurabh Vishnubhakat a 2019 PESCA Grant of $10,000.  Vishnubhakat received the grant through a competitive peer-review process.

The Division of Research funds the PESCA Grant Program to support significant research and scholarly projects that have the potential to lead to the awarding of external funding by agencies and endowments such as major federal research funding agencies, national endowments, institutes, foundations and councils.

Texas A&M University School of Law Dean Bobby Ahdieh comments, "At a university renowned for its strengths in science and technology, this recognition of Professor Vishnubhakat reflects the deeply interdisciplinary thinking of the Texas A&M School of Law faculty. Further, it bespeaks the scholarship with impact that has been a hallmark of our law school and its contributions.

Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development Timothy Mulvaney says, "Just five years into his academic career, Professor Vishnubhakat already has established himself as one of the nation’s leading experts in patent law and the administrative infrastructure of the patent system. Funded through the generous PESCA Grant Program of TAMU’s Division of Research, Professor Vishnubhakat’s latest project only will enhance the University’s efforts in pursuing path-breaking scholarship.

Professor Vishnubhakat’s proposal, The Patent Landscape of Bioinformatics, builds on earlier research that he did as a faculty fellow at Duke Law School and published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology together with leading IP scholar Arti Rai.  The project is highly data-intensive and will draw on a trove of United States Patent and Trademark Office records published over the past decade.  Vishnubhakat, a former biochemist who began his legal career in the USPTO Office of the Chief Economist, knows his way around that data quite well and has made notable contributions to patent policy with his empirical research in the years since.

“I am deeply grateful for the PESCA Grant Program’s support,” says Vishnubhakat.  “This research is a valuable chance to dig into detailed Patent Office files and learn not only how an interesting field like bioinformatics evolves but also how interdisciplinary approaches to problem-solving can reshape the arc of innovation itself.”