Ido Kilovaty Joins GLC as New Cyber Fellow

Ido Kilovaty has joined The Center for Global Legal Challenges at Yale Law School as the new Cyber Fellow. In this role, Kilovaty will assist in developing a cross-disciplinary project on cyber conflict. The new position is part of a collaboration between Yale Law School and Yale University’s Department of Computer Science. The aim of the project is to bridge the gaps between the legal and technical aspects of cyber conflict. It seeks to promote research and encourage new ways of thinking about the issues raised when cyber attacks originate from state or quasi-state actors. Kilovaty will work on this project with Yale Law School Professors Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, and Joan Feigenbaum, chair of the Computer Science Department at Yale. The fellowship is funded by a grant from the The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Kilovaty earned his LL.B. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and an LL.M. at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. He is currently an S.J.D. candidate at Georgetown University Law Center, supervised by Professor Rosa Brooks. He previously held a fellowship position at the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions, University of Haifa, Israel, where he researched and published on a variety of international cyberspace regulation matters.

“The collaboration between Yale Law School and the Yale Department of Computer Sciences is both innovative and essential to fully address the wide array of challenges in cyberspace,” said Kilovaty. “The idea is to harmonize the way lawyers and computer scientists think about cyber conflict by creating a cross-disciplinary discourse that will enhance the understanding of these challenges from both perspectives. As a result, this will enable possible solutions to emerge, which will involve figures from the government, military, private sector, international organizations, and technologists. This cutting-edge project puts Yale in the forefront of cybersecurity research, and will by all means attract interested students, as well as leading experts, to contribute to our objective.”

Kilovaty ‘s current research focuses on international law and cyberspace, mainly, how different legal frameworks apply to cyberspace. Primarily, Kilovaty is interested in the legal and societal implications of the usage of cyber-attacks in times of war, whether by adversaries or civilians. In addition, Kilovaty explores other law and technology matters, including whether international law is at all adequate to address the challenges of transboundary cyber espionage, disruptive cyber-attacks, economic cyber-attacks, and cyber-crime.

The Yale Law School Center for Global Legal Challenges is an independent Center that bridges the divide between the legal academy and legal practice on global legal issues. It provides a forum where academic experts and students regularly interact with public and private sector actors responsible for addressing global legal challenges.