Dr. Eva Thelisson is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the AI Transparency Institute since December 2018, where she works at the intersection of Law, Technology, and Society. The AI Transparency Institute is affiliated to the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI.
Eva has been teaching in top Swiss, French, and Dutch universities in topics ranging from AI Policy, Comparative Law on Data Protection Law and AI Governance. She was a visiting researcher at Massachusset Institute of Technologies during 2 years for a postdoc on computational law under the direction of Prof. Alec. Sandy Pentland. Eva has also worked for the exchange of information in tax matters, for the Swiss Ministry of Finance. Eva focused on policy shaping, law making, and value alignment.
She holds a law degree in Business Law from Lyon III and Humboldt University, a Specialised Master in Management and International Business Law from ESSEC Business School and a Ph.D in EU and Swiss Data Protection Law in the context of digital technologies from Fribourg University, Switzerland. She also holds a Diploma on International Nuclear Law from the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (2005).
She is the author of multiple papers on Data Protection Law, Artificial Intelligence, Corporate Governance, Incentives for value alignemnt. The list of her publications is available here.
Since 2017, Eva has been member of Ethics Boards, and attended international conferences both in the research (IJCAI, AAAI, Applied Machines Learning Days) and public policy context (OECD and Council of Europe) to reflect on AI Governance models able to foster a robust and beneficial use of digital technologies aligning the interests of all stakeholders. Since 2022, Eva is also a fellow at the Royal Society of Arts.
Eva founded the AI Governance Forum with Prof. Himanshu Verma, which is an international and multistakeholders conference dedicated to a safe, trustworthy and sustainable AI. She is the Guest Editor of several special issues on AI Governance and Emergency Preparedness and Response Systems using data analytics and AI Tools to predict natural or human disasters (Frontiers).
She is also appointed as Ethics Expert by the EU Commission since 2018 to review H2020 and Horizon Europe grant proposals related to Emerging Technologies.
Languages: French (mother tongue), English, German, Spanish.