Professors Alschner and Salyzyn Receive Pretigious Ontario Early Researcher Awards

Centre for Law, Technology and Society
Technology Law, Ethics and Policy
Aerial view of the University of Ottawa Campus and the Rideau Canal.
The Centre for Law, Technology and Society is honoured to announce that Faculty members Dr Wolfgang Alschner and Dr Amy Salyzyn have each received an Early Researcher Award (ERA) from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation. The ERA program provides funding to new researchers working at publicly-funded Ontario research institutions to assist them in building research teams.
Wolfgang Alschner and Amy Salyzyn.

Dr Alschner’s project is focused on equipping tomorrow’s lawyers with tools to perform their work more efficiently and effectively through the use of artificial intelligence (AI). This research builds on his work on the computational analysis of law, primarily in the domain of international economic law. Dr Alschner is assembling a research team dedicated to developing new metrics for the computational analysis of law, which will complement the Legal Text Mining Lab that he is setting up with colleagues from the School of Engineering and Computer Science to increase legal technology research capacity in the Nation’s Capital.

Dr Salyzyn’s research project aims to study and suggest concrete ways that technology can be used to facilitate more effective access to justice for Ontarians. In particular, the work will focus on mobile and web-based apps, which are already changing the ways that the public interacts with the law. Dr Salyzyn is a recognized leader on this topic, and will use her funding to continue enhance her research in the area, ensuring that legal apps can be optimally and responsibly used, while also contributing to Ontario’s Innovation Agenda by positioning the province as a leading hub of legal app research and development.

The Early Researcher Award program helps promising, recently-appointed Ontario researchers build their research teams of undergraduates, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, research assistants, associates, and technicians. The goal of the program is to improve Ontario’s ability to attract and retain the best and brightest research talent.

Congratulations to Professor Alschner and Professor Salyzyn on these well-deserved awards!