Sean Seymore has been appointed to the Program in Science, Technology and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Associate Professor in Spring 2012.
MIT established the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professor Program in 1995 to enhance and recognize the contributions of outstanding scholars. The program is designed to allow visiting professors to enhance their scholarship through intellectual interactions with MIT peers, and enrich the intellectual life of MIT with their participation in MIT research and academic programs. Appointments as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professors have been in all of MIT’s academic areas of Architecture, Engineering, Humanities, Management and Science.
Professor Seymore’s research focuses on how patent law should evolve in response to scientific advances and how the intersection of law and science should influence the formulation of public policy. He holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Notre Dame as well as a J.D. from the University of Notre Dame with an Allen Endowment Fellowship. His dissertation, Polar Effects in Metal-Mediated Nitrogen and Oxygen Atom Transfer, led to four peer-reviewed publications in Inorganic Chemistry, including a cover article.
Before law school, Professor Seymore held academic appointments in chemistry at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and Rowan University and was a Visiting Scientist at Indiana University-Bloomington. After earning his law degree, he practiced patent law with Foley Hoag in Boston.
As an active member of the American Chemical Society (ACS), he currently serves on the executive committee for the Division of Chemistry and the Law. He served on the ACS’s Younger Chemists Committee from 2002 to 2006 and on the Committee on Patents and Related Matters from 2006 to 2007.
At Vanderbilt, Professor Seymore is affiliated with the Intellectual Property Program and teaches Torts, Patent Law and a seminar, Law, Science and Technology.
