Faculty and Staff

Research Areas: Technology and Innovation Policy, Technology Transfer, Policy and Program Evaluation, Entrepreneurship

Albert N. Link is the Virginia Batte Phillips Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). He received the B.S. degree in mathematics from the University of Richmond (Phi Beta Kappa) and the Ph.D. degree in economics from Tulane University. After receiving the Ph.D., he joined the economics faculty at Auburn University, was later Scholar-in-Residence at Syracuse University, and then he joined the economics faculty at UNCG in 1982. In 2019, Link was awarded the title and honorary position of Visiting Professor at Northumbria University, U.K.

Professor Link is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Technology Transfer. He is also co-editor of Foundations and Trends in Entrepreneurship and founder/editor of Annals of Science and Technology Policy.

Among his more than 65 authored and edited books, some of the more recent ones are: Invention, Innovation and U.S. Federal Laboratories (Edward Elgar, 2020), Technology Transfer and U.S. Public Sector Innovation (Edward Elgar, 2020), Collaborative Research in the United States: Policies and Institutions for Cooperation among Firms (Routledge, 2020), Sources of Knowledge and Entrepreneurial Behavior (University of Toronto Press, 2019), Handbook for University Technology Transfer (University of Chicago Press, 2015), Public Sector Entrepreneurship: U.S. Technology and Innovation Policy (Oxford University Press, 2015), Bending the Arc of Innovation: Public Support of R&D in Small, Entrepreneurial Firms (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), Valuing an Entrepreneurial Enterprise (Oxford University Press, 2012), Public Goods, Public Gains: Calculating the Social Benefits of Public R&D (Oxford University Press, 2011), Employment Growth from Public Support of Innovation in Small Firms (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2011), and Government as Entrepreneur (Oxford University Press, 2009).

Professor Link’s other research endeavors consist of more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, as well as numerous government reports. His scholarship has appeared in such journals as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Economica, Research Policy, Economics of Innovation and New Technology, the European Economic Review, Small Business Economics, Scientometrics, ISSUES in Science and Technology, Scientometrics, and the Journal of Technology Transfer.

Professor Link’s public service includes being a member of the National Research Council’s research team that conducted the 2010 evaluation of the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Based on that assignment, he testified before the U.S. Congress in April 2011 on the economic benefits associated with the SBIR program. Link also served from 2007 to 2012 as a U.S. Representative to the United Nations (in Geneva) in the capacity of co-vice chairperson of the Team of Specialists on Innovation and Competitiveness Policies Initiative for the Economic Commission for Europe. In October 2018, Link delivered the European Commission Distinguished Scholar Lecture at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (in Seville).