A professor of economics at Georgia State University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Stephan will speak at 5 p.m. in LaRose Digital Theatre in the Koury Business Center through the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program.
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Economist Paula Stephan will visit Elon this week to talk about how economics shape science as practices at public research organizations, a lecture made possible through the Visiting Scholar Program of Phi Beta Kappa.
Stephan, a professor of economics at Georgia State University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, will speak at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 2, in LaRose Digital Theatre in the Koury Business Center.
Her talk will examine how incentives and costs affect the practice of science and the role of costs in the practice of science, ranging from the multi-million-dollar cost of high-end equipment to the not insignificant cost of buying and maintaining mice. Her lecture will include a discussion of how incentives and costs affect the way university labs are staffed, which addresses the extreme dependence upon staffing labs with graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in the U.S. Stephan will offer her thoughts on how the current funding environment promotes risk aversion on the part of researchers.
Stephan's recent work examines how bibliometric measures discourage risk-taking in science, the relationship between international mobility and scientific productivity, how gender pairing between student and advisor relates to the productivity of doctoral recipients and the economics of the postdoctoral position.
She is the author of "How Economics Shapes Science" and co-author of "Striking the Mother Lode in Science." She serves on the National Academies Committee on the Next Generation of Researchers and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and member of the Board of Reviewing Editors for the publication Science. She was named ScienceCareers’ first Person of the Year in 2012.
Stephan's talk follows the induction of Elon students into its Phi Beta Kappa chapter on Monday, April 1.