Conducted by Fiona Murray, MIT Sloan professor and associate dean for Innovation and Inclusion, and Mercedes Delgado, associate professor of Strategy and Innovation at Copenhagen Business School and research affiliate at MIT, the research focused on whether Ph.D. students start their careers as inventors early, filing their first patent during doctoral studies., titled"Faculty as Catalysts for Training New Inventors: Differential outcomes for Male and Female Ph.D.
"To put this starkly: female Ph.D.s have a 21% lower likelihood of being matched with advisors who are top inventors than male Ph.D.s, and even when matched, are approximately 17% less likely than their male Ph.D. counterparts to become new inventors," Murray said. The researchers found no measurable differences in the thesis topic that male and female students are doing that might contribute to lower patentability. On the demand-side,"our findings are consistent that women's innovation skills and contributions are somewhat under-valued by advisors" Murray said, noting that,"even in the same lab with the same advisor and in similar fields, female Ph.D.s have a lower probability of patenting.