LAST-JD

The LAST-JD International Doctorate in ''Law, Science, and Technology'' is an interdisciplinary integrated doctorate, designed to address new challenges in: (1) Bioethics and Biolaw, (2) ICT Law, and (3) LegalTech.

From 2015 until 2020, I was responsible of the LAST-JD students who were carrying out their PhD activity at the University of Luxembourg.

The doctorate program was initially retained for funding from EACEA, from 2012 until 2016. Afterwards, LAST-JD students were supported by self-financed fellowships from the Universities in the consortium. Currently, a new version of LAST-JD, titled LAST-JD RIoE (Rights of the Internet of Everything), has been retained for funding by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks .

LAST-JD RIoE involves 24 international partners, including 9 universities in Europe that will host 15 PhD students, two of whom at the University of Luxembourg. Each PhD student will visit some of the other partners in the consortium, thus obtaining the training needed to carry out his PhD activity.

The Internet of Everything poses technical, legal and ethical challenges for a society which is still under-prepared for its emergence, lacking suitable personnel (developers, policy advisors) with the necessary understanding of the complex set of issues involved. The PhD program ranges over five ``Internet of'':

  • Internet of Things brings in automatic sensors to all kinds of equipment, and allows real-time data analytics in the cloud. Disparate Internet of Things systems are connected via an ever expanding network to allow cognitive computers capable of learning and sorting information.
  • Internet of Persons, i.e. persons who contribute each day with a huge amount of content and create new relations via social networks.
  • Internet of Data addresses the problem of how to deal with a huge amount of interconnected data via Big Data technologies, that can give meaning to data and make devices smart.
  • Internet of Healthcare deal with the availability of data in the field of medicine, promising us new approaches to take care of patients, also at home.
  • Internet of Money promises a revolution in the financial world, through underlying distributed ledger technologies (such as the Blockchain). Such technologies create a layer of trust above the Internet, thus allowing financial transactions and more.