BU Cyber Alliance hosts 4/4 Seminar, Featuring Rory Van Loo

3:00 pm – 4:30 pm on Wednesday, April 4, 2018
Refreshments & networking at 2:45 pm
Hariri Institute for Computing, 111 Cummington Mall, Room 180

This Wednesday@Hariri seminar is hosted in collaboration with the BU Cyber Alliance.

Regulating Digital Intermediaries
Rory Van Loo
Associate Professor of Law, Boston University

Abstract: Online platforms such as Amazon and Facebook have presented a host of potential societal challenges, touching on independent elections, free speech, monopoly power, and consumer protection. These issues raise questions about how government agencies can best use their existing authority, and how the current regulatory architecture should be updated. This discussion will consider existing regulatory efforts with a goal of exploring structural reforms to improve digital intermediary oversight.

Bio: Rory Van Loo is a second-year law professor whose research focuses on consumer transactions, with a particular interest in the intersection between technology and regulation. His most recent project was selected by blind peer review for the 2017 Stanford/Yale/Harvard Junior Faculty Forum, and his articles have been accepted for publication in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, UCLA Law Review, and Duke Law Journal.

Prior to joining BU, Professor Van Loo lectured at Harvard Law School and conducted empirical studies at McKinsey & Co. for multinational consumer companies in mergers and acquisitions, organizational design, and sales. He also served on the implementation team that set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, helping to build the framework for supervision of large banks.

Professor Van Loo’s intellectual study of digital markets began with an undergraduate major in Science, Technology, and Society, with a focus on Computer Science. He then received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to spend a year in Argentina, Costa Rica, the Cote d’Ivoire, India, Mali, Peru, Senegal, and Vietnam researching the economic impact of the Internet.