PhD and Postdoc Projects

Olga Kokoulina’s postdoctoral research (funded by Carlsberg Foundation) addresses the topic of algorithmic decision-making. While offering an untapped potential to bolster economic efficiency, algorithms are meant to minimize human involvement. However, given the innate attributes of modern algorithms - ongoing alteration, adaptation, and self-improvement – the legal enquiry into the workings of the automated decision-making process highlights the complexity of arriving at a balanced solution. On the one hand, opacity and unpredictability of algorithms calls into question the ability to have recourse to legal remedies in cases of potentially anti discriminatory decisional outcomes. On the other hand, the limits of transparency and accountability of algorithms are often predicated on the interests and rights of IP holders. While trying to reconcile the rights and interests of concerned parties, the postdoc project explores IP, data protection, human rights, and competition law dimensions of the issue.

Postdoc Olga Kokoulina

The postdoctoral research is part of the ‘LEGALESE’ project, which aims to develop a natural language processing tool to optimize legal information retrieval. It is supported by the Innovation Fund Denmark Grand Solutions and will be conducted in cooperation with the Faculty of Computer Science of the University of Copenhagen, the National Social Appeals Board, and IT company Schultz. From a legal perspective, the study investigates to what extent issues concerning bias, discrimination and privacy may arise in legal algorithms’ development. It explores their consequences and proposes methods to mitigate them, in accordance with the current EU non-discrimination and privacy legal framework.

Research assistant Letizia Tomada

This project is in the field of public procurement. I look into the obligations relating to the evaluation of tenders and the subsequent awarding of contracts. The aim is to analyze European and Danish legal sources to identify which obligations the Contracting Authorities has to comply with when setting award criteria that will be used to evaluate the tenders.  In other words: How do the Contracting Authority choose award criteria and select the winner of the public contracts?

PhD Student Rasmus Horskjær Nielsen

- Regulatory approaches for safeguarding current and future access to space

Outer Space is unfathomably vast and stretches out infinitely in all directions. Space might be infinite, but the sections of space surrounding our little globe containing the orbits useful for satellites are not. Recent technological developments have significantly decreased the cost of sending objects into space and has precipitated a sharp increase in the number of satellites set to launch in the next decade. The rapidly growing number of satellites increase risk of congestion, collisions and debris in the orbits closes to earth.

The PhD project investigates regulatory approaches for governing near-earth space to foster sustainable use of the space under the current conditions of increasing activities by private and public space actors. The project examines the major policy initiatives proposing legal frameworks or governance regimes for Space Traffic Management.

Hjalte Osborn Frandsen