Seokbeom Kwon

Research

The questions I care about

My work treats science and innovation as systems we can measure and model. I combine causal inference on large bibliometric and patent datasets with formal models to ask how policy choices shape what gets discovered, by whom, and at what cost.

01Science of science

How knowledge is produced

How funding allocations, incentives, and institutions shape what gets discovered — from interdisciplinary integration to the emergence of new fields. Recent work in Science and Research Policy.

02Research data policy

Open science, real tradeoffs

Whether mandatory data sharing penalizes the original team has been contested. My recent work in Research Policy finds null effects on data providers — with implications for how funders design disclosure mandates.

03Patent & IP policy

IP institutions & innovation

Patent examination, transfer, and consolidation decisions ripple through the innovation economy. I’ve studied antitrust regulation of patent consolidation, the prevalence of weak patents, and patent assertion entities using large-scale patent data.

04Emerging tech & ML/AI

Tracing what’s new

Identifying emergence is hard — established categories miss what’s genuinely novel. I’ve developed methods for tracking emerging fields (synthetic biology, nanomedicine, quantum computing) and studied how exclusive data shapes innovation in AI markets.

05Methods

How I work

i.

Causal inference

Quasi-experimental designs on bibliometric and patent panels, with attention to identification strategy.

ii.

Game-theoretic modeling

Formal models of strategic behavior among researchers, firms, and policy actors.

iii.

Agent-based simulation

Computational models for systems where heterogeneity and interaction matter more than averages.

06Current support

Active grants

Interested in working together?

Looking for collaborators & students

I’m always open to conversations with researchers working on related questions — bibliometrics, patent examination, data policy, or formal models of scientific behavior. For prospective students, see the students page.

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