Eduard Fosch-Villaronga becomes Assistant Professor at eLaw
eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies, has promoted Dr. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga to Assistant Professor to work on Law and Artificial Intelligence.
Dr. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga arrived at eLaw in January 2019, holding a Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowship to work on legal and ethical issues arising from healthcare robots and AI technologies.
In his new position, Dr. Fosch-Villaronga will be the coordinator of the courses Law and Artificial Intelligence, the Honors College Pre-University course on Robot Law, and the Digital Government course at the Advanced Master in Law and Digital Technologies. He will also continue investigating topics on Law and Artificial Intelligence.
Dr. Fosch-Villaronga's research addresses the legal and regulatory aspects associated with the use and development of robot and AI technologies. He investigates the interplay between various aspects of the law (privacy, transparency, responsibility, discrimination, and dignity) and different robot embodiments (social robots for therapy, physical assistants for rehabilitation, robotic avatars, or artificial intelligence). Eduard's work helps devise interdisciplinary safeguards for making robots and AI safe to use for society, including children, persons with disabilities, and older people. In this respect, he developed the Robot Impact Assessment methodology to promote responsible robot development.
His ultimate goal is to understand the legal and societal consequences robot and AI technologies have on human nature and inform policies accordingly.
His contribution to this field led the European Commission to appoint him as an Expert at the Sub-Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI), connected products and other new challenges in product safety to the Consumer Safety Network (CSN), a consultative expert group chaired by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers to revise the General Product Safety directive.
He is also the PI of LIAISON, a project that received the COVR Award, and aims to link robot development and policymaking to reduce the complexity in robot legal compliance (European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program grant agreement No 779966). He is the co-leader of the Working Group on the Ethical, Legal and Societal Aspects for Wearable Robots at the H2020 COST Action CA16116 and an MC Member of the H2020 Cost Action CA19121 GoodBrother that aims to increase the awareness of the ethical, legal, and privacy issues associated with audio- and video-based monitoring and to propose privacy-aware working solutions for assisted living.