In 2002, she founded the internationally acclaimed program, Technological Innovation: Generating Economic Returns (TI:GER®)--a unique educational collaboration between Georgia Tech and Emory. TI:GER teams PhD students in engineering and science with MBA and JD students in an experiential curriculum focused on the intersection of technical, legal and business issues at the heart of innovation. Established with an NSF Integrative Graduate Education in Research Training (IGERT) award, TI:GER has received numerous awards including the Award for Exceptional Activity in Entrepreneurship across Disciplines from the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers, the Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Pedagogy Award, and the Model Specialty Entrepreneurship Program Award from the United States Association for Small Business Enterprise.
Dr. Thursby has published extensively on the economics of innovation, with particular emphasis on the role of universities in innovation systems, multinational R&D decisions, and the role of contracts in effective technology transfer. Her publications have appeared in top peer reviewed journals such as the American Economic Review, Management Science, and Science. Her current research is focused on incentive problems in biomedical translational research and in information sharing among competitive researchers. She has been an Associate Editor in the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Area of Management Science 2003. Her research has been funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and National Science Foundation. Additionally, she has been the Georgia Tech Social and Ethical Coordinator for the NSF National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network.
During her years of service to Georgia Tech, she held the Hal and John Smith Chair of Entrepreneurship. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, she held the Burton D. Morgan Chair of International Policy and Management at Purdue University where she established three multidisciplinary programs: the Innovation Realization Lab (IRL) established in 1998 with an NSF IGERT, the Alan and Mildred Peterson Technology Transfer Initiative, and the Purdue Center for International Business Education and Research. She held prior faculty appointments at the University of Michigan, Ohio State University, Syracuse University, and North Carolina State University. She received her A.B., cum laude, in Economics from Mount Holyoke College and her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
