Renan Gadoni Canaan is a Ph.D. candidate in Law at the University of Ottawa Centre for Law, Technology and Society under the supervision of Dr. Teressa Scassa.
Renan Gadoni Canaan was named an Emerging Leader in the Americas by the Canadian government through the ELAP program and is a former MITACS fellow at the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. He is currently pursuing his doctorate in Data Governance at the University of Ottawa. With a multidisciplinary background that perfectly aligns with research at the intersection of Law, Innovation, and Data Governance, Renan has a unique academic journey. He initially studied Science and Economics at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Later, he earned a Chancellor’s International Scholarship to join the Science and Technology Policies Program at the University of Sussex. His research contributes to the ongoing global discussion on two main topics: (i) the Governance of Health Data for AI Innovation and (ii) the post-colonial influence of Western Digital Regulations on the Global South.
Large health datasets are crucial for AI-driven innovation, and can revolutionize healthcare. However, the rapid expansion of health data collection presents significant challenges, such as risks of misuse, privacy breaches, exacerbating wealth inequality, and systemic biases that further marginalize protected groups. Supported by the Big Ideas Grant from the University of Ottawa, Renan Gadoni Canaan's research aims to develop principles for the use of health data in Brazil that balance the need for AI innovation with fundamental rights. His work focuses on defining guidelines for the use, sharing, and protection of public health data, ensuring transparency and accountability by both public and private data stewards.
Renan Gadoni Canaan's research also seeks to understand the policy transfer of digital regulations from the Global North to the Global South, their causes, and impacts. One primary mechanism of digital policy transfer is known as the Brussels Effect. His findings indicate that replicating the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Brazil's General Data Protection Law (LGPD) provided a legal framework that encourages innovation in the Brazilian privacy-enhancing technologies market. However, the economic benefits of this innovation are often appropriated by Western firms, which are better positioned to introduce and secure technology monopolies in the Brazilian market, to the detriment of Brazilian firms.
Another important finding is that the Brussels Effect has a limited impact on the Brazilian Fake News Bill. This is due to criticisms of the bill's inability to address local platform liability concerns and the absence of economic and legal drivers for convergence with EU regulations. Therefore, the EU's legal solutions should not be automatically applied when transferring any new digital policy to different contexts.