New Fellow Spotlights

Ramya Chandrasekhar is BCLT’s newest Visiting PhD Researcher. She leads the Biometrics Project, which aims to study biometric data regulation from a critical and comparative perspective. The project will bring together experts from multiple jurisdictions to discuss key aspects of global biometric data regulations. Through the project, Chandrasekhar is also interested in exploring more foundational questions about the changing relationship between the body and “data about the body” (such as biometric data). By leveraging her training as a lawyer who has worked in multiple sectors, Chandrasekhar is keen to explore the ways in which personal data protection law is both shaped by and shapes the relationship between the body and ”data about the body” in the age of Big Data. Her research interests lie in data and technology law, critical data studies, and science and technology studies.

Prior to joining BCLT, Chandrasekhar collaborated with the Digital Development team at the World Bank and the Information Communication and Technology team at UNICEF. She has also worked with academic research centres studying different aspects of digital development, such as Guarini Global Law & Tech as well as the Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice. Chandrasekhar holds a Master of Law from New York University and a Bachelor of Law and Humanities from the National University of Juridical Sciences, India. She is qualified to practice in India, and has worked with both law firms and civil society in India, on personal data protection, FinTech and data governance. Dr. Hao Yuan joined BCLT in 2021 as a Senior Fellow on our Asia IP Project. Yuan’s academic interest is focused on the specific role IP plays in fostering a healthy ecosystem of innovation, and the curious interplay of IP and antitrust under this theme, particularly in the dawning age of AI-assisted information economy. Her recent paper (En) is The Rise of “Centaur Inventors”: How Patent Law Should Adapt to the Challenge to Inventorship Doctrine by Human-AI Inventing Synergies, as a chapter of her book titled “Human Creativity and IP in an AI-enabled Age”. On the interplay of AML and IP, her recent paper is Through the Anti-monopoly Lens: What Constitutes “Unfairly High Patent Pricing” in China?

Consistent with her academic interests, Yuan has hosted a series of indepth discussions on controversial issues of standard essential patent (“SEP”) licensing and litigation since she joined BCLT, aiming to help facilitate an inclusive and constructive communication. Yuan is also the director of the new Berkeley-China IP and Tech Law Engagement Initiative under the Asia IP Project, which aims to strengthen a “peopleto-people” channel that continues to build on the good wills of the transpacific IP and Tech Law communities at a time of difficulty.

Prior to Berkeley, Yuan taught patent law and anti-monopoly law (“AML”) at the Tsinghua University School of Law (2015-2020). Yuan has advised multiple IP and AML legislation projects in China, including the Guangdong High Court’s Guidelines on SEP Litigation (2018), and SAMR’s Anti-monopoly Guidelines for IP (2020). She also participated in a dozen litigation, enforcement and arbitration cases, including landmark SEP cases, as an advisory member or expert witness. Before becoming an academic Yuan practiced years in IP litigation at King Wood & Mallesons, and is qualified to practice law in New York and China. Yuan received her J.D. from Brooklyn Law School (2011), Ph.D. in Nano-electronics from Penn State University (2006), and B.S. in Physics from Peking University (1999). Yuan received an IP square fellowship from the Stanford Hoover Institution in 2017.

Wayne Stacy Executive Director, BCLT