Bhaven Sampat is a renowned economist who works to understand how we can design policies and institutions that promote scientific progress. His work brings historical perspectives and data together with modern empirical approaches to better understand how policy decisions shape science and innovation.

Sampat has examined the role of World War II research and development in shaping U.S. science, science policy, and innovation; pharmaceutical patent policy in the U.S. and globally; and the economics, history, and politics of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest single funder of biomedical research in the world. His work also examines how different stakeholders, including taxpayers, scientific interest groups, universities, Congress, and industry, interact to influence science policy. In rebuilding science policy, Sampat investigates many complex questions such as how science is funded, the roles of universities, the role of science in democracy, and the value of science to society. Recent advances in computational social science and artificial intelligence have complicated these questions and transformed how Sampat measures and understands innovation.

Sampat joined Johns Hopkins University as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in 2026 from Arizona State University as part of the Promoting and Governing Technological Advances Cluster.