Atilla Kasap (Laws LLM, 2018)
Dr Atilla Kasap (Laws LLM, 2018) tells us how this new Department came about, and his journey from CCLS:
“After I completed my doctorate studies in 2020, I started working as a doctoral lecturer at Ondokuz Mayıs University AFB School of Law. I designed two modules; IT Law and Legal Liability for Robotic Surgical Interventions and Medical Devices. I taught essential internet, AI, and robotics law principles in the former, whereas I focused on robotic surgery and its possible implications on Turkish product liability law in the latter. Because these courses have successfully gathered interest from undergraduate and postgraduate students, I have established an IT law department at Ondokuz Mayıs University, where I was asked to build the department. I gladly took the challenge, and my two-year effort in establishing this department was successfully accepted by the dean's office, the rectorate, and Turkey's Council of Higher Education. In this newly established Department, we plan to offer additional optional modules such as blockchain and the law, e-commerce law, intellectual property and emerging technologies, and data protection law. We are aiming to design courses that introduce novel legal issues arising from technological advancements to law students.
Having an LLM degree from QMUL was my dream from when I was a third-year law student at Istanbul University Faculty of Law. After I obtained my LLB degree, I worked as an intern and an attorney at a reputable international law firm in Istanbul. This experience led me to transpose my theoretical knowledge into a practical one. However, I decided to pursue my long-waited dream and applied for LLM at QMUL.
When I received an acceptance letter from QMUL, I wondered what impact QMUL would have on my academic and practical skills. The moment I saw the professionalism, range of modules, and inclusive academic environment at QMUL, I realized that I had made the best choice for my academic career, I took many modules, mostly on intellectual property, from great professors and lecturers such as Uma Suthersanen, Graham Dutfield, Duncan Matthews, Apostolos Chronopoulos, and Gaetano Dimita. Apostolos Chronopoulos’s invaluable mentorship was especially helpful during my LL.M. studies. I was inspired by his approach toward students and adopted this skill as a lecturer when I started teaching law to my students.
Most importantly, CCLS and these academics taught me to adopt “critical thinking” as an academic skill in essays and classes. This skill made my research concise, organized, and impartial. Thus, it was not surprising that I published my LL.M thesis in Wake Forest Journal of Business and Intellectual Property Law, named Copyright and Creative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Systems: A Twenty-First Century Approach to Authorship of AI-Generated Works in The United States.
Building upon my great experience at QMUL, I started my doctorate studies at Wake Forest University in 2018 in the USA. When researching a topic for an LLM dissertation, I encountered another fascinating subject: the interaction between law and autonomous vehicles. The fact that QMUL academics pushed us to research novel issues led me to find my doctorate thesis subject. I chose my doctorate topic because I, as a legal scholar and a lawyer, desired to contribute to the legal aspects of AV technology that will save lives, protect the environment for the next generations, and offer mobility to people in need.
During my doctoral research (which I did after completing my LLM at CCLS), I had the opportunity to grapple with several critical issues concerning fairness, accountability, and transparency in machine learning and AI as it relates to the emerging technology of AVs in the USA. This detailed research work is crucial to my recent monograph, “Autonomous Vehicles: Tracing the Locus of Regulation and Liability”, recently published with Edward Elgar Publishing in 2022. Moreover, a crucial aspect of my research program has been policy analysis. I analyzed the policies released by the US Department of Transportation and all states’ regulations, making it the first academic work to compare and contrast them systematically with each other. Roughly two years after I finished my doctoral studies, the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) declared its first binding regulation on AVs, which partly reflects the arguments I laid out in my dissertation. Ohio State Technology Law Journal will publish the developed version of this Chapter in its 19th volume in 2023."