Ph.D. Workshop

Francesca Ferrari is Professor of Civil Procedure Law in the Department of Economics at the University of Insubria, where she also serves as Director of the Teaching and Learning Centre. She is also a senior scholar at the Intellectual Property Policy Institute at the University of Akron School of Law. Her academic experience includes visiting scholar appointments at Harvard Law School and Maastricht University. With more than one hundred publications on civil procedure and intellectual property, her publication record includes four books and numerous articles published in esteemed academic journals. From June 2023 to June 2025, she served as Intellectual Property and Consumer Protection Attaché at the Permanent Representation of Italy to the European Union.

Alongside her academic career, Ferrari is an experienced lawyer who has worked as both a partner and of counsel at several law firms in Milan. Her practice has focused primarily on intellectual property law, particularly cross-border patent and trademark litigation, with extensive experience in the pharmaceutical sector. She has also been selected to serve as a neutral at the Patent Mediation and Arbitration Centre of the Unified Patent Court. Her expertise further encompasses copyright law, especially its intersection with emerging technologies and artificial intelligence, as well as antitrust law.

Ferrari is actively engaged in scholarly communities, being a member of several scientific associations, the Advisory Board of the European Civil Justice Centre, and of several editorial boards of prestigious journals. She is frequently invited to speak at both domestic and international conferences on civil procedure and intellectual property.

Stefania Fusco is an Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University. Her research lies at the intersection of intellectual property law, innovation policy, and business, with particular interests in copyright law, patent law, technological innovation, artificial intelligence, and comparative intellectual property law. She holds a Doctor of the Science of Law from Stanford Law School.

Her current research examines the operation of the Unified Patent Court, the role of injunctive relief in patent enforcement, and the effects of legal institutions on innovation incentives and market competition. Her publications address a broad range of intellectual property issues, including patentable subject matter, non-practicing entities, copyright harmonization, geographical indications, and the use of rules and standards in patent law. Drawing on doctrinal, comparative, and empirical methods, her work investigates how legal institutions shape innovation, business strategy, and economic development.

Fusco is actively involved in the international intellectual property community. She serves on the Peer Review Board of the Journal of the Copyright Society, regularly presents her research at national and international conferences, and collaborates with scholars on projects addressing contemporary issues in intellectual property and innovation policy.

At Oklahoma State University, she teaches courses on the Legal and Regulatory Environment of Business and mentors students pursuing careers in law and business.

Emilio Raiteri is an Assistant Professor in the Technology, Innovation, and Society group at Eindhoven University of Technology. An applied economist, his research focuses on the economics of innovation, with particular emphasis on innovation policy and intellectual property. Before taking up his current position, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Turin in 2015. He is also a co-founder of REGIS, a pan-European virtual reading group that supports the professional development of early-career researchers and fosters scholarly exchange on science, technology, and innovation.