Professor Sean B. Seymore

Sean B. Seymore is the Centennial Professor of Law and Professor of Chemistry at Vanderbilt University.  His 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 rejoined Vanderbilt Law School in 2022 where he previously taught from 2010-2021.  He was the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School from 2021-2022.  Seymore also taught at Washington & Lee University School of Law, where he was an assistant professor of law from 2008-2010 and earned the designations of Alumni Faculty Fellow and Huss Faculty Fellow for his scholarship and teaching. He was a visiting assistant professor at Northwestern University School of Law in 2007-08. Before law school, 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 served on the executive committee for the Division of Chemistry and the Law from 2009-2012, on the Committee on Patents and Related Matters from 2006-07 and on the Younger Chemists Committee from 2002-06. In spring 2012, Seymore was 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.

Seymore earned his B.S. in chemistry at the University of Tennessee as a Tennessee Scholar, an M.S.Chem. (with thesis) from the Georgia Institute of Technology, a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Notre Dame with an Arthur J. Schmitt Presidential Fellowship, and a J.D. from Notre Dame Law School with an Allen Endowment Fellowship.