Katie Szilagyi

• @katieszi

Katie Szilagyi is an Associate Member at the University of Ottawa Centre for Law, Technology and Society and an Assistant Professor of Law at Robson Hall, University of Manitoba.

Drawing from her training as both an engineer and a lawyer, Katie Szilagyi studies the perilous intersection of artificial intelligence, democracy, and the law. Her SSHRC-funded doctoral research is focused on potential erosion of the democratic institution of the rule of law due to machine learning algorithms, predictive analytics, and the fact that everyone spends all their time staring at their smartphones. She has published and presented on the transformative impacts of blockchain technology on the legal landscape and on the international humanitarian law implications of autonomous weapons systems on the battlefield.

Katie Szilagyi holds a BSc in Biosystems Engineering from the University of Manitoba; a JD from the University of Ottawa with joint specializations in International Law, and Law and Technology; and an LLM in Law and Technology from Tel Aviv University. After completing her JD, she clerked at the Federal Court of Appeal for Justice Marc Nadon and Justice Wyman W. Webb. Thereafter, she spent a couple years working as a commercial litigator at a large Toronto law firm and a couple years traveling the world solo. An avid moot court competition during her law school career, she now coaches uOttawa moot court students in the Intellectual Property Advocacy programme. In 2019, she was  a Global Fellow of the Institute of Technology & Society of Rio de Janeiro.

Since July 1st, 2021, Katie Szilagyi has been an Assistant Professor (tenure-track) at Robson Hall, University of Manitoba.

Katie Szilagyi speaks Hungarian, English, French, and smatterings of Spanish and Hebrew. She hopes to train the next generations of both robots and lawyers to be kind, benevolent, and responsible guardians of democracy.