The Samit and Reshma Sharma Scholarships in Law, Technology and Society were created in 2024 by the Samit & Reshma Sharma Foundation to celebrate the excellence of research and mentoring at the Centre for Law, Technology and Society at the University of Ottawa, Canada’s premiere research hub for technology law, ethics and policy.
These new scholarships aim to enhance societal knowledge and interdisciplinary expertise in law, ethics and policy surrounding technology by supporting graduate students at the Centre for Law, Technology and Society who demonstrate outstanding academic achievement and research excellence with the most significant practical impact in law, technology and society.
The inaugural scholarship has been awarded to Diana Urian, a master's student in neuroscience at the Faculty of Medicine under the supervision of Dr. Jennifer Chandler. She is an extraordinarily accomplished, motivated, and resourceful graduate student whose outstanding academic achievements, fearless interdisciplinary engagement, and impactful research and publications demonstrate her excellence in everything that she undertakes.
The scholarship will support her research looking at emerging issues regarding the privacy of brain data. There is indeed increasing concerns about how this category of sensitive data is being protected, with calls for the recognition of novel rights to mental privacy and legislative reform in various jurisdictions to explicitly protect this data.
Faculty members of the Centre were invited to nominate graduate students under their supervision who demonstrated exceptional academic performance and research excellence. The Selection Committee was composed of Dr. Elizabeth Dubois, Dr. Jason Millar, and Dr. Florian Martin-Bariteau.
Thanks to the generous support of the Samit & Reshma Sharma Foundation, the Samit and Reshma Sharma Scholarship in Law, Technology and Society comes with a bursary of CA$3,500 for the recipient to support her academic excellence and research impact.