Dr. Robert Thomas
Darden Restaurants Professor Chair, Department of Management University of Florida

Graduate Student Conference in Business and Economics is pleased to have Dr. Robert Thomas as the Keynote Speaker.

Robert Thomas is Darden Restaurants Professor, and Chair of the Department of Management in the Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida. He is also Past President of the Academy of Legal Studies in Business.  He is an expert in the areas of intellectual property, technology law and negotiations and has published multiple articles in these areas. He teaches intellectual property, e-commerce law, technology law, business law and negotiation courses in the Warrington College graduate programs. His courses are typically among the most popular elective offerings in the Florida MBA curriculum, and he has received awards for excellence in teaching and research. Prior to his University of Florida appointment, Professor Thomas held dual faculty appointments in the University of Michigan Business School and the University of Michigan Department of Economics.

Professor Thomas has lectured throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, University of London, the Whitney Young Visiting Professor of Legal Studies at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and Invited Professor at the Institut D’Administration Des Entreprises D’Aix-en-Provence, France. His current research examines attempts to reform patent law and the political economy of enacting intellectual property legislation. His analysis is multidisciplinary employing tools from law, economics and institutional political theory. Professor Thomas is a graduate of Princeton University and holds a law degree from Stanford Law School and a PhD from Stanford Business School. More info about Dr. Thomas can be found at: http://warrington.ufl.edu/contact/profile.asp?WEBID=947