He received his BA, MA, MPhil and PhD (all in economics) from Columbia. Most of Sampat's research focuses on issues at the intersection of health policy and innovation policy. His current projects include (1) various empirical studies of drug and life science patent policy in the U.S. and developing countries (2) evaluating the validity of different approaches to measure science, innovation and science-technology linkages (3) examining whether and when science is self-correcting and (4) assessing the impact of federal indirect cost recovery policy on the biomedical research enterprise. His previous work includes research on the political economy of the NIH, patent examination and patent quality, and the roles of academic patenting in university-industry technology transfer.