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Meet the JURIST Digital Scholars (Cohort of 2021)

Jessie (Ziyu) Lin is an incoming JD student at Harvard Law School. She graduated from Tsinghua University and earned her bachelor degree in law and economics. As a JURIST Digital Scholar, Jessie will study the use of location data tracking in the control and prevention of COVID-19. Jessie will examine various location tracking approaches adopted by different countries, including centralized approaches adopted by Asian countries, and decentralized and user-centric approaches favored by European countries and the United States. Her research will analyze the cycle of collection, storage, management and destruction of the location data. Her project also intends to understand the legal barrier to the use of location data tracking technologies, and will analyze the privacy concerns aroused by the application of such technologies and its implications under privacy laws (especially GDPR), criminal laws, and constitutional laws.

Jessie (Ziyu) Lin

Harvard Law School Class of 2024

Location Tracking Technologies and COVID-19 Control, The Privacy-Security Dichotomy

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Gloria Ren is currently working as a management consultant at Oliver Wyman in New York, New York. She graduated from Cornell University’s Operations Research & Engineering School with a bachelor of science in May 2020. She plans to apply for law school in the fall, combining her background in engineering and technology with law. Xinming Liu, Gloria Ren and Brian Liu have teamed up. Their research as JURIST Digital Scholars will focus on consumer privacy. Regulations governing the collection of personally identifiable information (PII) are ineffective towards protecting consumer privacy. As data-gathering technologies become more pervasive in everyday life, non-personal data can be easily leveraged to identify consumers. They aim to develop a regulatory framework based on differential privacy. This framework will better protect user privacy while preserving the performance of tools that depend on user data.

Gloria Ren

Cornell University Class of 2020

Differential Privacy: An Improved Paradigm for Safe Innovation

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Saifeldeen (Saif) Zihiri is an incoming JD student at Yale Law School. He graduated from Hunter College with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science, Religion and a Certificate in Human Rights. Saif has previously worked at various civil rights organizations, including the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Centre. His research interests include the movements of hate groups(outside of a War on Terror lens), the impact of national security on marginalized communities, and the encroaching danger of tech companies against individual and community privacy. His research has taken him from Ghana to South Korea, focusing on everything from community-led strategies against extremism to the QAnon movement. In his free time, he involves himself with pottery and various board games. Using a case study, the team aims to evaluate the impact of privacy intrusions on the ways in which marginalized communities, in particular the Muslim-American community, interact with commercial mobile applications. They additionally plan to examine the ways in which these privacy intrusions pose a risk to the safety of marginalized communities and erode the trust that such communities have in apps and technology in general. Finally, they will assess the effect that discontinued app use among marginalized communities following privacy intrusions may have on future innovation derived from user data. With the support of the JURIST Digital Scholars Program, they hope to publish an article detailing our findings.

Saif Zihiri

Yale Law School Class of 2024

[Muslim Data Redacted]: An Examination of Data Privacy through the Muslim Pro Controversy

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Viraj Aditya is a third-year student pursuing a BA, LLB (Honours) at Hidayatullah National Law University, majoring in Political Science. Viraj has worked with the Centre for Civil Society, Centre for Policy Research, and the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy on projects related to education laws, land laws, and sports laws. He is currently working as a Researcher at the Institute for Internet and the Just Society, Berlin in the Digital Constitutionalism cycle. Recently, he has started exploring the field of legal data analytics and hopes to resolve some complex legal challenges plaguing the justice system by extracting and analysing some interesting datasets. Apart from his interests in law, history, astronomy, technology, and psychology deeply excite him. He is an avid runner and an ardent bicyclist. In his free time, he reads legal history and practices his ukulele. Madhur Bhatt, Lithin Mathew Thomas and Viraj Aditya have teamed up. Their research as JURIST Digital Scholars will seek to understand and formulate a comprehensive legal and policy framework outlook relating to AI-enabled medical devices. The primary objective of their research is to determine a roadmap that balances privacy challenges with economic growth, particularly in the context of India. For this, they shall be undertaking a comparative study to determine best practices from around the world with an aim to better understand the global perspective. The countries chosen for this exercise include the USA, China, and South Korea. These countries, while being leaders in AI development, possess features that are similar to India or include aspects that India seeks to emulate (E.g., China’s data localisation). To further understand the legal-policy framework and provide tools to objectively assess its viability, they shall be creating a questionnaire consisting of a set of parameters that would serve as a benchmark for evaluating present and future legislations in this field. This, they hope, shall assist in judging the impact of potential policy framework changes. The last leg of their research will focus on studying the aptitude of AI-enabled medical devices to bridge the urban-rural divide in access to healthcare.

Viraj Aditya

Hidayatullah National Law University Class of 2023

AI-based Medical Devices: Creating a Balance Between Economic Growth and Data Privacy

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Xinming (Lily) Liu is currently pursuing doctoral studies in Operations Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Prior to embarking on her PhD, she completed her bachelor of science in Operations Research and Information Engineering & Computer Science at Cornell University in 2020. Xinming Liu, Gloria Ren and Brian Liu have teamed up. Their research as JURIST Digital Scholars will focus on consumer privacy. Regulations governing the collection of personally identifiable information (PII) are ineffective towards protecting consumer privacy. As data-gathering technologies become more pervasive in everyday life, non-personal data can be easily leveraged to identify consumers. They aim to develop a regulatory framework based on differential privacy. This framework will better protect user privacy while preserving the performance of tools that depend on user data.

Xinming (Lily) Liu

Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD in Operations Research Class of 2024

Differential Privacy: An Improved Paradigm for Safe Innovation

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Using a case study, the team aims to evaluate the impact of privacy intrusions on the ways in which marginalized communities, in particular the Muslim-American community, interact with commercial mobile applications. They additionally plan to examine the ways in which these privacy intrusions pose a risk to the safety of marginalized communities and erode the trust that such communities have in apps and technology in general. Finally, they will assess the effect that discontinued app use among marginalized communities following privacy intrusions may have on future innovation derived from user data. With the support of the JURIST Digital Scholars Program, they hope to publish an article detailing our findings.

Ayesha Qureshi

Rutgers University Class of 2020

[Muslim Data Redacted]: An Examination of Data Privacy through the Muslim Pro Controversy

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Melisa Olgun received her B.A. with high honors from Wesleyan University, where she double-majored in Neuroscience & Behavior and Science in Society. While there, she investigated the effects of social oppression on schizophrenia at the Wesleyan Schizophrenia Cognition Laboratory. She is currently a J.D. candidate at Yale Law School. Using a case study, the team aims to evaluate the impact of privacy intrusions on the ways in which marginalized communities, in particular the Muslim-American community, interact with commercial mobile applications. They additionally plan to examine the ways in which these privacy intrusions pose a risk to the safety of marginalized communities and erode the trust that such communities have in apps and technology in general. Finally, they will assess the effect that discontinued app use among marginalized communities following privacy intrusions may have on future innovation derived from user data. With the support of the JURIST Digital Scholars Program, they hope to publish an article detailing our findings.

Melisa Olgun

Yale Law School Class of 2024

[Muslim Data Redacted]: An Examination of Data Privacy through the Muslim Pro Controversy

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Madhur Bhatt is a third-year student pursuing a BA, LLB (Honours) at Hidayatullah National Law University, majoring in Political Science. Madhur is interested in public policy, health law, insolvency and bankruptcy laws. He has previously worked at NITI Aayog, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Centre for Civil Society, on topics related to sustainability, anti-doping and education. He also works as a Senior Editor in his university’s journal. He is passionate about the intersection of law and policy to solve long-standing problems of access to health, sustainability and education. His non-academic interests include art, philosophy and quizzing. Madhur Bhatt, Lithin Mathew Thomas and Viraj Aditya have teamed up. Their research as JURIST Digital Scholars will seek to understand and formulate a comprehensive legal and policy framework outlook relating to AI-enabled medical devices. The primary objective of their research is to determine a roadmap that balances privacy challenges with economic growth, particularly in the context of India. For this, they shall be undertaking a comparative study to determine best practices from around the world with an aim to better understand the global perspective. The countries chosen for this exercise include the USA, China, and South Korea. These countries, while being leaders in AI development, possess features that are similar to India or include aspects that India seeks to emulate (E.g., China’s data localisation). To further understand the legal-policy framework and provide tools to objectively assess its viability, they shall be creating a questionnaire consisting of a set of parameters that would serve as a benchmark for evaluating present and future legislations in this field. This, they hope, shall assist in judging the impact of potential policy framework changes. The last leg of their research will focus on studying the aptitude of AI-enabled medical devices to bridge the urban-rural divide in access to healthcare.

Madhur Bhatt

Hidayatullah National Law University Class of 2023

AI-based Medical Devices: Creating a Balance Between Economic Growth and Data Privacy

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Brian Liu works as a data and applied scientist at Microsoft in Bellevue, Washington. He graduated from Cornell University with a BS in Operations Research in 2020. Xinming Liu, Gloria Ren and Brian Liu have teamed up. Their research as JURIST Digital Scholars will focus on consumer privacy. Regulations governing the collection of personally identifiable information (PII) are ineffective towards protecting consumer privacy. As data-gathering technologies become more pervasive in everyday life, non-personal data can be easily leveraged to identify consumers. They aim to develop a regulatory framework based on differential privacy. This framework will better protect user privacy while preserving the performance of tools that depend on user data.

Brian Liu

Cornell University Class of 2020

Differential Privacy: An Improved Paradigm for Safe Innovation

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Ayesha Durrani received her BA in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University and her MA in Migration Studies from the University of Sussex as a US-UK Fulbright Scholar. She will begin her studies at Yale Law School this fall. Ayesha has worked at the ACLU, Reprieve, and the House Oversight Committee Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Liberties on issues including religious freedom, Guantanamo, police accountability, and immigration. Most recently, Ayesha served as the campaign manager for a U.S. Congressional candidate. A Muslim Kashmiri-American, Ayesha is interested in civil rights impact litigation at the nexus of immigration, national security, and religious freedom. Using a case study, the team aims to evaluate the impact of privacy intrusions on the ways in which marginalized communities, in particular the Muslim-American community, interact with commercial mobile applications. They additionally plan to examine the ways in which these privacy intrusions pose a risk to the safety of marginalized communities and erode the trust that such communities have in apps and technology in general. Finally, they will assess the effect that discontinued app use among marginalized communities following privacy intrusions may have on future innovation derived from user data. With the support of the JURIST Digital Scholars Program, they hope to publish an article detailing our findings.

Ayesha Durrani

Yale Law School Class of 2024

[Muslim Data Redacted]: An Examination of Data Privacy through the Muslim Pro Controversy

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Lithin Mathew Thomas is a third-year student pursuing a BA, LLB (Honours) at Hidayatullah National Law University, majoring in Political Science. Lithin is the Deputy Team Leader for Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access to Legal Education (IDIA, Chhattisgarh Chapter), a non-profit dedicated to empowering marginalized and underprivileged students in the field of legal education. He takes a keen interest in the intersection of law and technology, financial crimes and foreign policy. He is also a fledgling graphic designer and has worked with multiple organizations in the said capacity. In his free time, he engages in a futile battle with the ever-growing and scattered to-be-read lists in his possession. As a JURIST Digital Scholar, Agnes will focus her research on the evolution of sex and sexual orientation as a protected class in the US, particularly examining the behavior of consumers and producers of the news. She will analyze JURIST’s archive and Google Analytics data, as well as outside sources, to better understand the public’s interest in and media representation of LGBTQ+ rights at moments leading up to milestone achievements in the struggle for greater recognition of LGBTQ+ rights in the courts and legislation. Madhur Bhatt, Lithin Mathew Thomas and Viraj Aditya have teamed up. Their research as JURIST Digital Scholars will seek to understand and formulate a comprehensive legal and policy framework outlook relating to AI-enabled medical devices. The primary objective of their research is to determine a roadmap that balances privacy challenges with economic growth, particularly in the context of India. For this, they shall be undertaking a comparative study to determine best practices from around the world with an aim to better understand the global perspective. The countries chosen for this exercise include the USA, China, and South Korea. These countries, while being leaders in AI development, possess features that are similar to India or include aspects that India seeks to emulate (E.g., China’s data localisation). To further understand the legal-policy framework and provide tools to objectively assess its viability, they shall be creating a questionnaire consisting of a set of parameters that would serve as a benchmark for evaluating present and future legislations in this field. This, they hope, shall assist in judging the impact of potential policy framework changes. The last leg of their research will focus on studying the aptitude of AI-enabled medical devices to bridge the urban-rural divide in access to healthcare.

Lithin Thomas

Hidayatullah National Law University Class of 2023

AI-based Medical Devices: Creating a Balance Between Economic Growth and Data Privacy

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Peter Busscher is a rising junior at the University of Pittsburgh where he is pursuing a BPhil in History and International & Area Studies. In my research, I will be examining the question of whether the United States and Russia will be able to set up a regime of arms control for emerging weapons technologies. I will be evaluating legal texts, speeches, and articles using computational linguistics and creating infographic material for a two-part series on this topic, to be published on Jurist. I will employ a mixture of Russian and English texts in my research, to obtain valuable linguistic data on a political topic. Going forward, we could either be headed towards an international arms regime which is stable and based on rules, or one which is thoroughly chaotic. My research will evaluate the sorts of formal or informal understandings which could mitigate the deterioration of strategic stability between the two most advanced military powers and exporters.

Peter Busscher

University of Pittsburgh Class of 2023

The Data on Drones: Russia, the US, and Advanced Weaponry

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