Application areas
At TILT we apply our knowledge and test our research findings in different application areas, which are relevant to society and policy. Next to our key focus areas (Regulation, governance of AI, and human rights, Data sharing and data governance
Cybersecurity and Cybercrime, Competition law, Intellectual Property, regulation, digital platforms, Data justice, and Standardisation), we work mainly on three applications areas, namely energy, health, and fintech. This focus allows us to identify relevant stakeholders, offer targeted recommendations, stir the academic debate, and make tangible impact for our research.
Energy
In the area of energy, we focus on the application of law and policy in the energy sector. Energy markets are a fundamental pillar for our economy and society. In times of the energy crisis, there is an urgency to address both energy security and the goal of a carbon neutral continent at the same time. To support this approach and under Tilburg Law School`s Signature Plan “Regulating Socio-Technical Change”, researchers at TILT are investigating the regulatory framework of innovation for energy markets, e.g. how to accelerate sustainable hydrogen as a tool to facilitate the energy transition while securing our society`s high need for energy.
TILT’s focus
Our research analyses the need for the regulation of energy markets, currently with a special focus on sustainable hydrogen markets and the digitalization of energy markets. The research includes
- analysing of the relationship between regulation and competition law as well as the role of data sharing and governance in the energy sector
- studying the distribution networks and the electricity producing and consuming devices connected to them, and how AI regulation may accelerate the energy transition.
- helping infrastructure managers understand in what situations a system-of-systems approach can be meaningful and how to facilitate such an approach by means of effective IT governance, inter-organisational governance and regulatory governance frameworks
Together with several other energy law institutions from the Netherlands and Germany, we initiated the Dutch-German Forum on Comparative and European Energy Law (FCEEL) that constitutes a place for an interdisciplinary and multi-jurisdictional dialogue on how to jointly address the current challenges of the energy crisis in the Netherlands, Germany and the European Union. TILT is also a member of the European Clean Hydrogen Alliance, an initiative led by the EU commission that brings together key stakeholders to facilitate the scale up of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen production, distribution and deployment until 2030.
Related projects:
Health
Health is one of the dominant sectors in which technology is developed, experimented with and implemented to address the various challenges the sector faces now and in the future. The implementation of technology in health raises a variety of ethical, legal, and social issues, which TILT researchers look at from a range of different perspectives and through various methods. Perspectives of specific interest are AI’s influence on medical knowledge-making, the legal and ethical standards and safeguards impacting the sharing of health and genetic data, shifting roles and responsibilities of societal actors and, more general, responsible innovation within the healthcare domain.
TILT’s focus
At TILT, we are interested in the regulation of healthcare technology. We look at issues around data protection and data sharing (such as the EHDS), the right to explanation in a healthcare context, platform regulation and health, the regulation of health apps, and the (unintended) ethical, legal, and social consequences these technologies have and how to address them productively. We also teach about these issues, for instance in our LLM Law & Technology course Health, Care, Technology, and Regulation.
Related projects:
- POC project APPSAFE- Linnet Taylor and Tineke Broer: We investigate subjective notions of safety in relation to mental health apps, and whether and how these can be used to automatically rate such apps in a dashboard (working together with computer scientists from Radboud University Nijmegen).
- WeCare project – Broer: Through a collaboration with the Tilburg ETZ hospital, in this project, we investigate the implementation of a decision aid for patients with a fracture. We do this mainly through qualitative research, e.g. interviews and focus groups.
- Aviva de Groot’s PhD thesis’ “Care to explain?” A critical epistemic in/justice-based analysis of legal explanation obligations and ideals for ‘AI’-infused times’ looks at the informed consent obligations for General Practitioners in the Netherlands
- Horizon Europe Encrypt - ENCRYPT will develop a scalable, practical, adaptable privacy-preserving framework, allowing researchers and developers to process data stored in federated cross-border data spaces in a GDPR-compliant way. The ENCRYPT framework will be designed taking into consideration the needs and preferences of relevant actors, and will be validated in a comprehensive, 3-phase validation campaign, comprising i) in-lab validation tests, ii) use cases provided by consortium partners in three sectors, namely the health sector, the cybersecurity sector, and the finance sector, that include cross-border processing of data, and iii) external use cases including privacy-preserving computations on federated medical datasets.
- The sectorplan project ‘Digitalization of Health and Wellbeing’ – Meyers: The Digitalization of Health and Wellbeing project brings together a multidisciplinary group of researchers to investigate, both from a technical and SSH perspective, the expectations, risks and challenges of further digitalization in healthcare and wellbeing practices.
- Taner Kuru’s PhD research focuses on the legal implications of implementing artificial intelligence into genomic research. As part of his project, he conducts research and publishes on regulating genetic data in the EU and the effectiveness of the existing and upcoming legislation in answering the challenges posed by AI-driven genetic research.
Fintech
The financial sector is among the most regulated sectors in the economy. The principal function of that sector is to mobilize and deploy capital, facilitate payments, and allow for risk sharing. The financial sector comprises financial intermediaries and markets. Financial intermediaries, such as banks, insurance companies, or pension funds are regulated at an institutional level as well as at a system-wide level. The regulation of financial markets, such as equity or debt, applies to entities engaged in the trading of assets bought and sold in those markets. The financial sector is currently undergoing a structural transformation associated with the entry of new actors, sometimes referred to as FinTechs. FinTechs seek to leverage technological advances in areas such as artificial intelligence, big data analytics or distributed ledgers to compete with incumbent financial intermediaries and markets. The future impact of the rise of FinTech on the functioning of the financial sector is unclear. However, the widespread implementation of advanced technologies, whether by new entrants or incumbents, poses a challenge for the regulation of the financial sector. Conceivably, these technologies can also be harnessed by regulators to help them achieve their objectives.
TILT’s focus
TILT’s research in the financial sector examines the challenges associated with the application of regulation to FinTech firms as well as incumbents who increasingly embrace advanced information and communication technologies. More specifically, TILT’s expertise in the technology-enabled financial sector centers in the application of 1) data protection law, 2) anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing law, 3) cybersecurity law and 4) competition law. TILT researchers also study questions of data justice as well as issues related to standardization and the use of technology as regulation in the financial sector.