Dr. Andrea M. Matwyshyn is an academic and author whose work focuses on the intersection of technology design, innovation policy, and law. In particular, her work engages with questions of information security/ "cybersecurity" and safety, artificial intelligence/machine learning and "data ethics," health tech and infodemiology, disinformation and technology fraud, legal rights in information, privacy and technology competition, and technology workforce pipeline policy. Her full vitae is available here.
Professor Matwyshyn is a full professor in the law school and engineering school at Penn State, the Associate Dean of Innovation at Penn State Law (University Park), and the founding faculty director of both the Penn State PILOT Lab (Policy Innovation Lab of Tomorrow), an interdisciplinary technology policy lab, and the Anuncia Donecia Songsong Manglona Lab for Gender and Economic Equity, a technology equity lab and clinic. She is also a member of the steering committee of the Penn State Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence and a faculty affiliate of both the Bioethics Program at Penn State and the Penn State Institute for Computational Data Sciences, as well as an affiliate scholar of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School.
She has worked in both the public and the private sector. In 2022-2023, she served as both a Senior Special Advisor on Law, Technology, and the Digital Economy to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection and as a Senior Special Advisor on Information Security and Data Privacy to the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Office of Enforcement. Previously, in 2014, she served as the Senior Policy Advisor/ Academic in Residence at the Federal Trade Commission. In 2015, she led a team of proponents to obtain a security research exemption to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, permitting consumer IoT, medical device software, and voting system firmware to be security tested for the first time without fear of copyright sanction. Also as public service, she has testified in Congress and before various regulatory agencies on issues of information security regulation, IoT, machine learning and other technology regulatory issues. Prior to becoming an academic, she was a corporate attorney in private practice, focusing her work on technology transactions. She continues to maintain collaborative technology industry relationships and has authored articles for the popular business press. In particular, her "landmark" piece The Internet of Bodies has generated international interest in the business and think tank/ policy community.
A recent profile piece about Prof. Matwyshyn's work
Professor Matwyshyn has previously held primary appointments in University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Northwestern University School of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law, where she founded the Center for Information Research (CIR), and Northeastern University School of Law/School of Computer Science, where she co-founded the Center for Law, Innovation, and Creativity (CLIC). She has also held visiting appointments or affiliations at the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh School of Law, Singapore Management University, Indian School of Business, University of Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania School of Law, and Princeton University, where she was the Microsoft Visiting Professor of Information Technology Policy during 2014-15 and an affiliate scholar in 2015-2017. She has previously also served as Senior Fellow of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security.
Professor Matwyshyn was a US-UK Fulbright Commission Cyber Security Scholar award recipient in 2016-2017. In 2019-2021, she was a Fellow of the John W. Kluge Center in the Library of Congress and remains a member of the Kluge alumni advisory board. Also in 2019-2021, she was a visiting researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) Institute for Communication Sciences (ISCC) at the Sorbonne.
Her Erdos number is 4. Her primary hobbies are photography, documentary film, and collecting books about Grace Hopper and pieces by street artists.
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Financial support disclosure
Current:
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Professor Matwyshyn's research was directly financially supported by the Hewlett Foundation in 2019, and the foundation continues to fund the resulting textbook project.
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Professor Matwyshyn is also engaged in compensated consulting on behalf of federal agency clients but no private sector entities.
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PILOT lab research has been directly supported by the Craig Newmark Foundation.
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Professor Matwyshyn's work through Manglona Lab is supported by gifts and an endowment created by the Pay Equity Now Foundation and other unrestricted gifts to Penn State from the public.
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Penn State Law offers students the opportunity to participate in a Technology Scholars Program that is supported by Microsoft Corporation. These law and post-doctoral students are interested in careers in technology law and policy and collaborate on research with PILOT lab under Professor Matwyshyn's supervision.
Past direct financial support:
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2004: Trustworthy Computing Curriculum Grant, Microsoft Corporation