Event Speakers
Aaron Shull is the managing director and general counsel at CIGI. He is a senior legal executive and is recognized as a leading expert on complex issues at the intersection of public policy, emerging technology, cybersecurity, privacy and data protection.
Ariel Katz is an associate professor in the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law, where he holds the Innovation Chair in Electronic Commerce.
Courtney Doagoo is a CIGI fellow as well as an Artificial Intelligence and Society Fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Centre for Law, Technology and Society.
Bassem Awad is a senior fellow and was previously the deputy director of International Intellectual Property Law and Innovation at CIGI.
Bianca Wylie is a CIGI senior fellow. Her main areas of interest are procurement and public sector technology. She focuses on examining Canadian data and technology policy decisions and their alignment with democratically informed policy and consumer protection.
Dan Ciuriak is a senior fellow at CIGI, where he is exploring the interface between Canada’s domestic innovation and international trade and investment. He is the director and principal of Ciuriak Consulting, Inc.
In addition to his commitment to CIGI, Jim Balsillie is the founder of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, the Centre for Digital Rights and the Arctic Research Foundation, and co-founder of the Council of Canadian Innovators.
Jonathan Obar is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at York University. He also serves as a research associate with the Quello Center, a communication policy research centre at Michigan State University. He previously served as a research fellow with the New America Foundation and with Free Press, as a researcher with the Open Society Foundations, and as a senior advisor to the Wikimedia Foundation’s Wikipedia Education Program.
Kurtis McBride is co-founder and chief executive officer of Miovision, a technology company that provides the foundation for tomorrow’s smart cities by transforming the way traffic networks are managed today. Under Kurtis’s leadership, Miovision has provided the data and insights to improve traffic flow in more than 17,000 municipalities worldwide.
Oonagh E. Fitzgerald was director of international law at CIGI from April 2014 to February 2020. In this role, she established and oversaw CIGI’s international law research agenda, which included policy-relevant research on issues of international economic law, environmental law, IP law and innovation, and Indigenous law.
Rohinton P. Medhora is a CIGI distinguished fellow, professor of practice at McGill University, and an expert in international economic relations, innovation policy, development economics and governance.
Sachin Aggarwal is the chief executive officer of Think Research, a leading provider of evidence-based clinical decision support tools with a focused mission: to organize the world’s health knowledge so everyone receives the best care. A recipient of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 Award in 2017, Sachin currently sits on the board of the Council of Canadian Innovators and has served on the board of directors for various community outreach programs. Sachin holds a law degree from the University of Toronto and an M.B.A. from the Rotman School of Management.
Teresa Scassa is a CIGI senior fellow. She is also the Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy and a full professor at the University of Ottawa’s Law Faculty, where her groundbreaking research explores issues of data ownership and control.
