2025 Symposium
Meet Our Speakers:
Dana G. Jones, LLM
Dana G. Jones is an Assistant Professor of Law and serves as Co-Director of the North Carolina Central University (NCCU) Social Justice and Health Equity Institute. She received a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Wisconsin- Madison. She is an alumna of NCCU School of Law and received her LL.M. in Health Law from Loyola University-Chicago. Professor Jones engaged in the private practice of law in the areas of health care policy, regulation/compliance, licensing/credentialing, health plan administration, bankruptcy, and domestic relations for 25 years and is licensed to practice before the courts in Illinois and North Carolina. She is also admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court. Prof. Jones has served as General Counsel and Compliance Officer for several health care organizations.
Professor Jones teaches Contracts, Health Law, and Trial Practice. She was voted professor of the year and received the Cheryl Amana award for commitment to teaching excellence in 2024. She is a certified Superior Court Mediator, Family Financial Mediator, and a certified American Health Lawyer’s Association Arbitrator. She serves as a Civil Litigation Arbitrator in several judicial districts.
Professor Jones serves as the Trial Advocacy Board Inter-School Competition Coach and has proudly coached the NCCU team to the final rounds of competitive mock trial during her tenure. Professor Jones’ scholarship addresses the threats and challenges integral to health care disparities and artificial intelligence. She is particularly interested in the complexities of state and private insurance structures, the disproportionate distribution of health care financial benefits and the impact of cybersecurity risk on the provision of health care privacy. Her latest work entitled “Artificial Intelligence Can Kill You”, which discusses Medicare Advantage and its treatment of elderly insurance beneficiary’s is slated for publication in the Elder Law Journal (University of Illinois-Urbana) Spring 2025.
Title: The Emperor Has No Clothes: Addressing AI Powered Medical Device Bias, A Transatlantic Perspective on Regulation
Paolo Davide Farah, PhD
Professor Paolo Davide Farah is Full Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy (with tenure) at West Virginia University, Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, John Rockefeller IV School of Policy and Politics, having joined the faculty in 2014. He is Director of the Energy Justice and Just Transition Lab, and Coordinator, Eberly College Interdisciplinary Research Collaborative on Global Challenges and Local Response Initiatives. He is Founder, President and Director of gLAWcal – Global Law Initiatives for Sustainable Development (www.glawcal.org.uk). He was a Visiting Professor of Law at University of Pittsburgh School of Law (2021-2024).
Title: Balancing Innovation and Control: Global Lessons in Blockchain Governance
David Sella-Villa joined the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law faculty as an Assistant Professor in July 2024. His primary research and teaching interests focus on law and technology, privacy, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence.
Prior to his full-time faculty appointment, Professor Sella-Villa served as an adjunct faculty member at the Joseph F. Rice School of Law at the University of South Carolina and William & Mary Law School. He also brings extensive practical experience to his academic role. He served as South Carolina's Chief Privacy Officer, leading the Enterprise Privacy Office and educating state agencies on privacy best practices. Before that, he was Assistant General Counsel for the South Carolina Department of Administration, where he advised the state’s IT division. In the private sector, Professor Sella-Villa worked as General Counsel for Tempus Applied Solutions and Global Flight Relief, managing complex transactions and regulatory compliance in the aviation industry. He has also maintained a solo law practice focused on serving pro bono clients.
Professor Sella-Villa's scholarship appears in University of Richmond Law Review, University of Missouri Kansas City Law Review, the International Journal of Remote Sensing, and The Business Lawyer. He is an active member of the Sedona Conference Working Group on Data Security and Privacy Liability. His work has also been selected for discussion at the Privacy Law Scholars Conference – Europe (PLSC-E) and the Annual Symposium on Applications of Contextual Integrity (PrivaCI).
He holds a J.D. from William & Mary Law School. He also earned an M.Sc. in European Political Economy from the London School of Economics and dual bachelor's degrees from West Virginia University. Professor Sella-Villa holds the highest designation from the International Association of Privacy Professionals – Fellow of Information Privacy (FIP). He is admitted to practice law in South Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
Title: Regulating AI as a Person: Lessons from International Law
Peter K. Yu (余家明) is University Distinguished Professor, Regents Professor of Law and Communication and Director of the Center for Law and Intellectual Property at Texas A&M University. He previously held the Kern Family Chair in Intellectual Property Law at Drake University Law School and was Wenlan Scholar Chair Professor at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, China. He served as a visiting professor of law at Bocconi University, Hanken School of Economics, Hokkaido University, Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa, the University of Helsinki, the University of Hong Kong, the University of Strasbourg and Washington and Lee University. He also founded the nationally renowned Intellectual Property & Communications Law Program at Michigan State University, at which he held faculty appointments in law, communication arts and sciences, and Asian studies.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Professor Yu is a leading expert in international intellectual property and communications law. He also writes and lectures extensively on international trade, international and comparative law, and the transition of the legal systems in China and Hong Kong. A prolific scholar and an award-winning teacher, he is the author or editor of nine books and more than 200 law review articles and book chapters. He is Vice-President of the American Branch of the International Law Association and has served as the general editor of The WIPO Journal published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). He is an elected member of the American Law Institute and sits on the Scientific Advisory Board of Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Germany.
Professor Yu has spoken at events organized by WIPO, the World Trade Organization, the International Telecommunication Union, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Chinese, EU and U.S. governments and at leading research institutions from around the world. His lectures and presentations have spanned over 30 countries on six continents. He is a frequent commentator in the national and international media. His publications have appeared in Chinese and English and have been translated into Arabic, French, Hausa, Japanese, Persian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese. They are available on his website at www.peteryu.com.
Title: The Future Path of Artificial Intelligence and Copyright Law in the Asian Pacific