Peter Asaro is an Assistant Professor in the School of Media Studies, part of The New School for Public Engagement at The New School, where he teaches digital media theory for the Master of Arts Program in Media Studies. He is also a founding member and co-director of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC). Previously, he was a Visiting Scholar in New Media Literacies and Fellow in Mind and Culture at the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University, and taught a course on “Minds, Machines and Persons” for the Department of Philosophy. He has also worked as an engineer in the areas of robot vision and control, neural networks, artificial intelligence and natural language processing at Iguana Robotics, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the Beckman Institute, and Wolfram Research. A philosopher of science, technology, and media, his work includes academic scholarship, documentary film making, and technological and artistic projects. His interests focus on natural and synthetic brains, and their relationships with and through computational, information and media technologies. In addition to continuing work on the history of cybernetics and brain modeling, he is studying how contemporary science and technology address the relationships between the brain, ideas, the mental self and culture. His latest project examines the new forms of identity and social practices that emerge from the use of tele-operated and autonomous systems, and the nature of tele-agency and responsibility in distributed socio-technical systems, with a focus on the use of robotics for police and military applications.
Annemarie Bridy is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Idaho. Before joining the faculty in 2007, Professor Bridy was an associate with the law firm of Montgomery, McCracken, Walker & Rhoads in Philadelphia, where she practiced in the area of complex commercial litigation. After graduating magna cum laude from the Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law, she served as a judicial clerk for the Honorable William H. Yohn, Jr. of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Honorable Dolores K. Sloviter of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Professor Bridy is admitted to the bars of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Before attending law school, Professor Bridy earned master’s and doctoral degrees in English literature at the University of California in Irvine, where she taught undergraduate courses in expository writing and the English novel. She concentrated her graduate studies in the areas of Victorian literature and critical theory. During her time at Irvine, she won an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Research Fellowship in the Humanities and was a residential scholar at the Huntington Library. Professor Bridy earned her bachelor’s degree summa cum laude with distinction in English from Boston University. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Internet and Computer Law Section. Her scholarly work focuses on Internet and intellectual property law, with specific attention to the impact of disruptive technologies on existing frameworks for the protection of intellectual property and the enforcement of intellectual property rights.
Ergun Calisgan, University of British Columbia, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vancouver, Canada.
M. Ryan Calo (Program Committee) is a longtime robotics enthusiast. He researches privacy and robotics at the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society. Calo co-chairs the American Bar Association Committee on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence and is on the program committee for National Robotics Week. His work on drones, driverless cars, and personal robotics has appeared in the New York Times, The Economist, Wired Magazine, and other major news outlets.
Samir Chopra is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Graduate Center and Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. BA (Honors; Mathematical Statistics, Delhi University, 1987); MS (Computer Science, New Jersey Institute of Technology, 1990), Ph.D, (Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center, 2000). His academic interests span pragmatism, philosophy of law, philosophical foundations of artificial intelligence, legal theory of artificial agents, philosophical implications of free software, and the politics and ethics of technology. He is the co-author (with Laurence F. White) of A Legal Theory for Autonomous Artificial Agents (U. Michigan Press 2011). His other publications include: (with Scott Dexter): Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software (Routledge, 2007); (with PVS Jagan Mohan) The 1965 India-Pakistan Air War (Manohar, 2005). He is currently working on a book on the changing political economy of modern cricket (forthcoming, Harper Collins 2012) and a history of the air component of the 1971 Liberation War for Bangladesh (forthcoming, Harper Collins 2013). He blogs at samirchopra.com and at The Pitch.
Gregory Conti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York. He holds a B.S. from the US Military Academy, an M.S. from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology, all in Computer Science. He is a Senior Member of the Association for Computing Machinery. His research interests are security data visualization, online privacy, secure and usable interface design, and cyber warfare. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2006. He is the author of two books, Googling Security (Addison Wesley, 2008) (an EFF Favorite Book) and Security Data Visualization (No Starch Press 2007), and also of many articles.
Kate Darling is an IP Research Specialist at MIT’s Media Lab. Having survived law school at the University of Basel (Switzerland), she is now a P.h.D. candidate in Intellectual Property and Law & Economics at ETH Zurich (Switzerland). She is passionate about innovation policy, rethinking copyright and patent law, and caffeinated beverages. Among her current projects, she is co-teaching a “Robot Rights” course at Harvard Law School.
Mary Anne Franks is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Miami. Before joining the UM faculty, Mary Anne Franks was a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2007. She received her D.Phil in 2004 and her M.Phil in 2001 from Oxford University, where she studied on a Rhodes Scholarship. Before she began law teaching, Prof. Franks taught courses in social theory and philosophy at Harvard University, and also worked as a Senior Consultant for a negotiation consulting firm. She currently teaches family law, criminal law, and criminal procedure. Her other research and teaching interests include cyberlaw, discrimination, free speech, and law and gender.
A. Michael Froomkin (Program Committee Chair) is the Laurie Silvers & Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Miami. His main academic focuses are Internet Law and Administrative Law. He is a founder-editor of the online law review Jotwell, The Journal of Things We Like (Lots). He serves on the Editorial Board of Information, Communication & Society and of I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society. He is on the Advisory Boards of several organizations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Prof. Froomkin is a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, and a non-resident Fellow of the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Yale Law School Information Society Project. He is also active in technology-related projects in the greater Miami area. Professor Froomkin writes primarily about Internet governance, electronic democracy, and privacy. Other subjects include e-commerce, electronic cash, the regulation of cryptography, and U.S. constitutional law. Previously, Prof. Froomkin practiced international arbitration law in the London office of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. He clerked for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, and Chief Judge John F. Grady of the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois. Prof. Froomkin received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he served as Articles Editor of both the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Journal of International Law. He has an M.Phil in History of International Relations from Cambridge University in England, which he obtained while on a Mellon Fellowship.
Oren Gross is the Irving Younger Professor of Law and the Director of the Institute for International Legal & Security Studies at the University of Minnesota Law School. He is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of national security law, international law, and international trade. He is also an expert on the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Professor Gross holds an LL.B. degree magna cum laude from Tel Aviv University, where he served on the editorial board of the Tel Aviv University Law Review. He obtained LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees from Harvard Law School while a Fulbright Scholar. Professor Gross was a member of the faculty of the Tel Aviv University Law School in Israel from 1996 to 2002. He also has taught and held visiting positions at Princeton University; Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law; the Max Planck Institute for International Law and Comparative Public Law in Heidelberg, Germany; the Transitional Justice Institute in Belfast (while a British Academy visiting professor); Queen’s University in Belfast; the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain); and Brandeis University. Professor Gross has received numerous academic awards and scholarships, including a Fulbright scholarship and British Academy and British Council awards. Between 1986 and 1991, Professor Gross served as a senior legal advisory officer in the international law branch of the Israeli Defense Forces’ Judge Advocate General’s Corps.
Sinziana Gutiu, J.D. Candidate Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, University of Ottawa.
Patrick O. Gudridge is Vice Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Miami. He received an A.B. from Harvard College in 1972 and a J.D. in 1976 from Harvard Law School. Professor Gudridge served as a law clerk to Justice Mathew O. Tobriner of the California Supreme Court. He joined the faculty in 1977, and served as Associate Dean at the Law School from 1990 to 1994. He has published articles on the structure of legal interpretation and analysis. His teaching interests are eclectic, and have included courses in federal jurisdiction, U.S. and Florida constitutional law, jurisprudence, business associations, torts, and agency.
Woodrow Hartzog is an Assistant Professor at the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University. He is also an Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. He holds a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an LL.M. in intellectual property from the George Washington University Law School and a J.D. from Samford University.
Josh Storrs Hall an independent scientist and author. He is the author of Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine, (Prometheus Books, 2007) and Nanofuture: What’s Next for Nanotechnology (Prometheus 2005). He was the founding Chief Scientist of Nanorex, Inc, and recently served as the President of the Foresight Institute, and is a Research Fellow of the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing. His research interests include Artificial General Intelligence and automated design for molecular manufacturing. His background is in computer science, particularly parallel processor architectures, artificial intelligence, particularly agoric and genetic algorithms as used in design, and reversible computing.
F. Patrick Hubbard is the Ronald L. Motley Distinguished Professor of Tort Law at the University of South Carolina. He has been a member of the law faculty since 1973. He currently teaches Torts, Jurisprudence, and Land Use Planning. In recent years, he has also taught Products Liability, Evidence, and Criminal Law. Before joining the faculty, Professor Hubbard was an associate at Mudge, Rose, Gutherie and Alexander (New York City) and was a staff attorney with Community Legal Services Program (Austin, Texas). He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Davidson College. He received a JD from New York University School of Law and a LLM from Yale Law School. Professor Hubbard has written books on tort law and criminal law and has published dozens of articles and book chapters on criminal law, jurisprudence, torts, and land use planning. As a legal realist, he actively relates his scholarship to the world outside the law school. For example, his interest in land use planning includes working on a drafting committee for recent amendments to the South Carolina zoning enabling act, serving as chair of the Columbia Planning Commission, and working with neighborhood organizations in zoning matters.
Ian Kerr (Program Committee) holds the Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law & Technology at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law, with cross appointments in Medicine, Philosophy and Information Studies. Dr. Kerr’s research lies at the intersection of ethics, law and technology and is currently focused on two broad themes: (i) Privacy and Surveillance; and (ii) Human-Machine Mergers. Building on his recent Oxford University Press book, Lessons from the Identity Trail, his ongoing privacy work focuses on the interplay between emerging public and private sector surveillance technologies, civil liberties and human rights. His recent research on robotics and implantable devices examines legal and ethical implications of emerging technologies in the health sector and beyond.
Dominic Larkin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the US Military Academy at West Point. He holds a B.S. from Troy State University, and a M.S. from the Georgia Institute of Technology, all in Computer Science.
Ajung Moon is a MASc. Candidate in Mechanical Engineering at The University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She received her BASc. with Honours Mechatronics Engineering from the University of Waterloo. She is a member of the Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory (CARIS Lab) at UBC. Ms. Moon’s main research interests lie in the intersection of human-robot interaction and roboethics; past research experience includes mechatronics design of precision controlled printing-cutting system (Precision Controls Lab, University of Waterloo). Her industry experience includes manufacturing (Toyota Motors Manufacturing Canada), automation (Prodomax Automation), software (Cognos International- now part of IBM), and power generation (GE Energy Canada). Anjung Moon is the blogger behind the Roboethics Info Database and microblogs (via Twitter) under the name @RoboEthics.
Jason Millar is a CIHR Science Policy Fellow-eHealth Policy, Health Canada, Ottawa, Canada and a Ph.D candidate at the Queen’s University Department of Philosophy. He has taught courses in robotethics and science ethics more generally.
John Nelson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at the US Military Academy at West Point. He holds a B.S. from the US Military Academy, a M.A. from Oregon State University, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from University of Washington.
Richard M. O’Meara is a retired Brigadier General, USA, and a Professor of Global and Homeland Security Affairs. He has received a PhD in Global Affairs from Rutgers University and a Juris Doctorate from Fordham University. He has also received two Master Degrees in History and International Affairs and graduated from the US Army War College and the Command and General Staff College amongst other schools. He presently teaches International Law in the Division of Global Affairs at Rutgers University and has developed and teaches in the first Homeland Security Studies Program in New Jersey. His interests are reflected in the various courses he has taught and developed over the years at various institutions including War, Genocide, and International Law; Nationalism and Ethnic Violence, US Security Interests in Sub-Saharan Africa, US Security Interests in the North Pacific, Human Rights Law and Practice, and The American Way of War. As a Fellow in the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership, United States Naval Academy, O’Meara worked with colleagues towards the adaption of military ethics to emerging technologies and he has written and presented widely in the area of the use of robotics and other technologies as tools of war. He continues this work as a member of CETMONS, Consortium for Emerging Technologies, Military Operations and National Security, The International Society for Military Ethics, the International Association of Genocide Scholars and CIVIC, Campaign for Innocent Civilians in Conflict.
Fiorella Operto, CNR, School of Robotics, Genoa, Italy.
Bernard H. Oxman is the Richard A. Hausler Professor of Law at the University of Miami. He earned an A.B. from Columbia College in 1962 and a J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1965. Before joining the Law School in 1977, he was Assistant Legal Adviser for Oceans, Environment, and Scientific Affairs of the U.S. Department of State. He also served as United States Representative to the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea and chaired the English Language Group of the Conference Drafting Committee. At the University of Miami, he regularly teaches conflict of laws, international law, law of the sea, and torts. He is Co-Editor in Chief of the American Journal of International Law, and a member of the American Law Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Institut de Droit international. Professor Oxman served as judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice in the Black Sea maritime delimitation case between Romania and Ukraine, and as judge ad hoc of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in the Land Reclamation case between Malaysia and Singapore and in the Bay of Bengal maritime delimitation case between Bangladesh and Myanmar. He is the only American ever appointed to serve as judge ad hoc before both of these international tribunals. Professor Oxman has published numerous books and articles on the law of the sea and other international law subjects. His essay entitled The Territorial Temptation: A Siren Song at Sea, appears in the centennial issue, Volume 100, of the American Journal of International Law (October 2006).
Amir R. Rahmani is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at University of Miami. Amir received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Before joining UM, Amir was a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgia Institute of technology, Atlanta, GA. Amir collaborated with NASA JPL on enabling technologies for spacecraft formation flying. Amir has designed a number of algorithms for operation of teams of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Boeing Phantom-Works, Rockwell Collins Inc., and others. Amir’s current research interests encompass control of networked dynamic system, including teams of autonomous land, air and space vehicles.
Neil M. Richards is Professor of Law at Washington University in St.Louis. Professor Richards is an expert on privacy law, First Amendment law, and legal history. His articles have appeared in a number of top law reviews, including the Columbia Law Review, California Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Georgetown Law Journal. He is a winner of the David M. Becker Professor of the Year Award by the Washington University student body. Professor Richards also directs the interdisciplinary Washington University Law and Politics Colloquium. Prior to joining the law faculty, he clerked for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Supreme Court of the United States, and the Hon. Paul V. Niemeyer, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He also practiced law in Washington, D.C., with the firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, where he focused on appellate litigation and privacy law. More recently, he successfully represented a St. Louis fantasy sports company in high-profile litigation against Major League Baseball. He was the inaugural Hugo Black Fellow at the University of Alabama Law School and a Temple Bar Fellow with the Inns of Court in London.
Lisa Shay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the US Military Academy at West Point. She holds a B.Sc. from the US Military Academy, an M.Sc. from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, all in Electrical Engineering. She is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
Laurie S. Silvers practiced law in South Florida for over 10 years before starting her career as a media entrepreneur. She is an owner of: Home Town Cable Plus, a telecommunications system providing TV, Internet, phone and alarm monitoring services in the City of Port St. Lucie; Treasure and Space Coast Broadcasting which operates five radio stations in Florida’s Treasure Coast; co-founder and President of Hollywood Media Corp. since its inception in January 1993; Co-CEO of Hollywood.com a major internet provider of entertainment news and information. Ms. Silvers was the co-founder of the Sy-Fy Channel, of which she served as Chief Executive Officer from January 1988 to March 1992 and Co-Vice Chairman from March 1992 to March 1994. Ms. Silvers is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Miami and is Chair of the Student Affairs Committee; 2010 Chair of the Economic Council of Palm Beach County; a Member of the Board of Directors of the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, a Member of the Board of Directors for the United Way Town of Palm Beach and a Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of WPBT Channel 2, the public broadcasting station for Miami. Ms. Silvers is the 2011 recipient of the Sun Sentinel’s Excalibur Award. She is also a Volunteer Mentor with the “Women of Tomorrow” program which mentors at-risk high school girls. Ms. Silvers is married to Mitchell Rubenstein and has three children.
Katie Szilagyi, J.D. Candidate Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, University of Ottawa.
William Smart is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. He is also the Director of the Media and Machines Laboratory and Co-director of the Masters of Engineering in Robotics program in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Washington University.
Suneil M. Thomas is General Counsel and Vice President of Government Affairs for Liquid Robotics. He was previously Director of Special Projects for The Nature Conservancy where he was responsible for negotiating partnerships and organizing political coalitions with private industry, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations. Prior to that Mr. Thomas was an attorney with Pillsbury Winthrop, and with Ellman Burke. He received his Juris Doctor from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. He studied at Georgetown University and Colorado College, where he received his BA in environmental policy. Mr. Thomas is a member of the California State Bar Association.
Kristen Thomasen, JD Candidate, Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, University of Ottawa.
H.F. Machiel Van der Loos, Mechanical Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Gianmarco Veruggio, CNR, National Research Council, Genoa, Italy.
Markus Wagner (Program Committee) is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Miami. Professor Wagner’s scholarship and teaching focuses on international law and comparative law, namely in the areas of military contractors, modern technology in present-day conflicts, the interplay between law and science in the WTO, as well as the domestic impact of international law. Professor Wagner graduated from the University of Giessen / Germany with a Erstes Juristisches Staatsexamen (J.D. equivalent) in 2002 and a master’s degree in international law in 2005. From 2002 to 2005, he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg / Germany where he specialized in the areas of WTO law, European law, international peace and security and Canadian law. During that time he also taught at the Heidelberg Center Para America Latina in Santiago / Chile and served as legal counsel for the Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations in New York. In 2006, he graduated from Stanford Law School with a master’s degree. Professor Wagner subsequently clerked for then-President of the Supreme Court of Israel Aharon Barak and in 2007 worked for the Brussels office of WilmerHale, focusing on international trade law and competition law. Prior to joining the Law School in 2009, Professor Wagner traveled from the Black Forest in Germany to the Yellow Sea in China by bicycle for charity.