Bridget Fahey Named Co-Director of New Data Science Research Initiative
Assistant Professor of Law Bridget Fahey has been named co-director of a new Research Initiative at UChicago’s Data Science Institute, following a $1 million dollar grant she received with co-directors Raul Castro Fernandez, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Michael Franklin, Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor.
The new initiative, which focuses on “data ecology,” expands an earlier collaboration funded by the Neubauer Collegium. The goal of the Initiative is to integrate legal, technical, social, and economic thinking about how to exert control over the production and movement of data.
“The thesis,” Fahey said, “is that we frequently over- or under-share data—or share data on socially or economically suboptimal terms—because we lack the legal rules, technical systems, and continuities between them to better calibrate what we share.” How data moves between people, firms, and governments, she added, impacts a wide range of policy areas, from immigration enforcement and policing, to benefits administration, to health and safety regulation, to AI and climate change.
The initiative will support research, host scholarly discussions, and advance student instruction about data generation, data sharing techniques, and data regulation.
Fahey is an expert in structural constitutional law and data policy. Her research on data ecology builds upon her 2022 article, Data Federalism, which revealed a vast intergovernmental market in individual data—in which the federal government, states, and local governments routinely trade, share, and pool data about their constituents—and the unusual government structures used to regulate it.
Data Ecology is one of three research initiatives launched by Data Science Institute this fall. The other two are AI for Climate and Complementary AI.