Ignacio Cofone wins Principal’s Prize for Outstanding Emerging Researchers

The Faculty of Law is delighted to announce that Professor Ignacio Cofone has received the McGill Principal Prize’s for Outstanding Emerging Researchers. He was presented with the award at the Law Convocation Ceremony on 31 May.

Ignacio Cofone is an associate professor at the Faculty of Law and holds the Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence Law and Data Governance. A world-leading scholar of the law of privacy and artificial intelligence, his research focuses on data harms and on algorithmic decision-making. In his current projects, he examines how to evaluate privacy class actions and how to regulate algorithmic discrimination.

Professor Cofone’s research pays special attention to law reform. In 2020, for example, he was invited by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to author the office's report setting out the direction of the most significant reform to federal privacy law of the last two decades. This year, the Parliament of Canada is discussing a reform proposal that incorporates most of the report’s principal recommendations.

Professor Cofone is the author of The Privacy Fallacy: Harm and Power in the Information Economy, scheduled to be published by Cambridge University Press in December 2023. In this monograph, he tackles the pressing topic of digital harms to privacy by tech companies, proposing a legal framework to introduce meaningful accountability in data governance and a path for law reform to recognize the value of privacy.

“This well-deserved recognition of our outstanding colleague couldn’t be timelier, as all areas of society grapple with the implications of recent AI developments,” said Dean Robert Leckey, Ad. E. “Professor Cofone’s ambitious project to maximize the benefits of new AI technologies while protecting citizens’ rights promises to make an exceptional contribution to the social good.”