Research Interest
My research interests include two major thrusts:
(1) Economics and policy of innovation and science and technology policies, including patent systems, university patenting and licensing, technology adoption and diffusion, entrepreneurship, innovation networks, etc.
(2) Technological innovation and investment in energy and environment, both in the U.S. and China, the two largest economies and the two biggest energy consumers and emitters of greenhouse gases in the world.
Working Papers:
Zhen Lei and Brian D. Wright, “Why Weak Patents? Examiner Ignorance or Pro-Applicant Procedural Rules?”
Kyriakos Drivas, Zhen Lei and Brain D. Wright, “Academic Patent Licenses: Roadblocks or Signposts for Unlicensed Innovators?”
Mingwei Fu, Zhen Lei, Yuxi Meng and Jingyi Ye, “Local Content Requirement, Foreign Technology Diffusion and Domestic Innovation: Evidence from Chinese Wind Technology Industry.”
Zhen Lei, Chen-Hao Tsai and Andrew Kleit, “Electricity Market Restructuring and Investment in Generation: Evidence from Nuclear Power Uprates in the United States.”
Zhen Lei and Anastasia V. Shcherbakova, “Culture and Investor Perceptions: Evidence from Trans-altantic Market Response to Fukushima.”
Kyriakos Drivas, Zhen Lei, Steve Merrill and Brain D. Wright, “Corporate Sponsored Academic Research: What Do the UC-OTT Data Tell us?”
Kyriakos Drivas, Zhen Lei, and Brain D. Wright, “Information Disclosure or Patent Grant: Which Matters More for Technology Licensing?”
Publications:
Oh, Sooyoung, Zhen Lei, Wang-Chien Lee, Prasenjit Mitra and John Yen. “CV-PCR: A Context-Guided Value-Driven Framework for Patent Citation Recommendation,” ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2012), San Francisco, CA, U.S.A., Oct. 2013.
Graff, Gregory D., Devon Phillips, Zhen Lei, Sooyoung Oh, Carol Nottenburg, and Philip G. Pardey. “Not Quite a Myriad of Gene Patents: Assessing the Potential Impact of the U.S. Supreme Court on the Changing Landscape of U.S. Patents that Claim Nucleic Acids,” Nature Biotechnology, 2013, 31(5), 404-410. [pdf]
Daniel R. Cahoy, Joel Gehman and Zhen Lei, “Fracking Patents: The Emergence of Patents as Information Containment Tools in Shale Drilling,” Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review, 2013, 19(2), 279-330.
Sooyoung Oh, Zhen Lei, Prasenjit Mitra and John Yen, “Evaluating and Ranking Patents Using Weighted Citations,” in Proceedings of The ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2012), 281-284, Washington D.C., U.S.A., 2012. [pdf]
Zhen Lei, Rakhi Juneja and Brian Wright, “Patents vs. Patenting: Implications of Intellectual Property Protection for Biological Research”, Nature Biotechnology, 2009, 27(1), 36-40. [pdf]
Steven E. Sexton, Zhen Lei and David Zilberman, “The Economics of Pesticides and Pest Control”, International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, 2007, 1(3), 271-326. [pdf]
Book Chapters and Reports
Daniel R. Cahoy, Joel Gehman and Zhen Lei, “The transformation of patents into information containment Tools”, in “The Changing Face of US Patent Law and its Impact on Business Strategy,” Edited by Daniel R. Cahoy and Lynda J. Oswald, The New Horizons In International Business, Edward Elgar, 2013.
Kyriakos Drivas, Zhen Lei and Brian Wright, “A Preliminary View of University of California Data on Disclosures, Licensing and Patenting,” Prepared for The Committee on Management of University Intellectual Property: Lessons from a Generation of Experience, Research, and Dialogue, National Research Council, The National Academies.
Publications in Chemistry and Biochemistry
Zhen Lei, Weiguo Chen, Min Zhang and Joseph L. Napoli, Reduction of all-trans-retinal in the mouse liver peroxisome fraction by the short-chain dehydrogenase/reductase RRD: induction by the PPARα-ligand clofibrate, Biochemistry, 2003, 42, 4190-4196.
Zhen Lei, Ling Zhang, Liang Ren Zhang, Jun Chen, Jimei Min and Lihe Zhang, Hybrid Characteristics of oligonucleotides consisting of isonucleoside 2’,5’-anhydro-3’-deoxy- 3’-(thymin-1-yl)-D-mannitol with different linkage modes, Nucleic Acids Research, 2001, 29(7), 1470-1475.
Zhen Lei, Jimei Min, Lihe Zhang, Synthesis of 3-deoxy-3-nucleobase -2,5-anhydro-D -mannitol: a novel class of hydromethyl-branched isonucleosides, Tetrahedron Asymmetry, 2000, 11, 2899-2906.
Weisheng Tian, Zhen Lei, Ling Chen, Ying Huang, Some new reactions of per(poly)alkyl sulfonyl floride with steriodic molecules , Journal of fluorine chemistry, 2000, 101, 305-308.