About the researchers
Els J. Kindt, Dr. LL.M, Ph.D
Short Bio
Els J. Kindt is an associate professor at eLaw at the faculty of law of Leiden University, the Netherlands, and a senior research fellow of the Centre for IT and IP Law (CITIP) of the faculty of law of KU Leuven, Belgium. She has 35 years of experience in the field of privacy and data protection as an attorney and as an academic researcher working in multiple European and other international projects. She has been teaching on IT, data protection and AI law at KU Leuven (2012-2020) and is regularly invited as a speaker at conferences (see also this website). She is member of the editorial board of the European Data Protection Law Review (EDPL, Lexxion), of the Supervisory Editorial Board of Privacy en Informatie (P&I, Paris) and is a scientific committee member of the annual Computer Privacy and Data Protection.ai (CPDP.ai) conference held in Brussels.
With Springer, she published a monograph on privacy and data protection issues of biometric applications and (co-)authored various studies, articles and book chapters about this emerging new field of law (see also this website). As of 2017, she was a member of the Board of the European Association for Biometrics (EAB) and since 2023 member of the EAB Advisory Council. In 2020 she set up the Biometric Law Lab (BLL). She is also providing research and advice on AI and Data Law (RADL).
Catherine Jasserand, Dr. LL.M, PhD
Short Bio
Catherine Jasserand is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Groningen, the Netherlands, within the STeP (Security, Technology, and ePrivacy) research group. She is also a research fellow at CiTiP (Centre for IT and IP Law), KU Leuven. Catherine has been working for more than 15 years in the field of new technologies and law. She studied in France and in the United States, where she obtained an LL.M in law and new technology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is qualified as a lawyer in France and in the United States (New York Bar).
Her PhD research project was on ‘Reprocessing of Biometric Data for Law Enforcement Purposes: Individuals’ Safeguards Caught at the Interface between the GDPR and the Police Directive?’ , which she defended in 2019. She was then awarded an individual post-doctoral Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship to pursue her postdoctoral research project on the impact of facial recognition technologies on the rights to privacy and data protection (DATAFACE). In that context, she joined Dr Els Kindt’s Biometric Law Lab, at CiTiP, where she was a postdoctoral researcher between 2020 and 2023.
Catherine is a regular speaker at international technical conferences on biometrics. She has co-organised two workshops on the AI Act with the European Association for Biometrics (EAB) in 2021 and 2022.
Natalia Menéndez González, Dr. LL.M, Ph.D
Short Bio
Dr. Natalia Menéndez González is a Research Associate on data governance at the Centre for a Digital Society of the European University Institute. She was also a visiting researcher at the Center for IT & IP Law at the KU Leuven Faculty of Law and Criminology, is a co-founder of The DigiCon blog, and a former vice-chair of the PhD students in AI Ethics research group.
She holds a PhD in Law and an LLM from the European University Institute and she has been a guest lecturer at the School of Transnational Governance and the Universities of Turin, York (Canada) and Toronto. She has numerous publications on the intersection between Law and Technology on diverse outlets including Interactive Entertainment Law Review, Communication Law Review. The recent book that she co-edited is entitled: Next Democratic Frontiers for Facial Recognition Technology (FRT). The Legal, Ethical and Democratic Implications of FRT, 2025 published with Springer.
Her Ph.D thesis : Cultured proportionality: navigating the EU’s fragmented facial recognition landscape, 2025, European University Institute, Florence. The full text can be downloaded here by BLL subscription members.
César Augusto Fontanillo López, Ph.D candidate
Short Bio
César is a lawyer and a PhD candidate at KU Leuven, currently serving as a La Caixa Postgraduate Fellow. He previously held the position of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow. César has two bachelor's degrees in social sciences and law, as well as two master's degrees in law and economic analysis. His master's thesis earned first place in the Spanish National Research Council's national thesis competition.
César’s academic journey has included research collaborations and stays at institutions such as Cambridge University, the European University Institute, the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, and Harvard University. His research is focused on how risk assessments related to fundamental rights and freedoms can be both technically feasible and morally justifiable. César is particularly interested in biometrics and brain data.
Abdullah Elbi
Short Bio
Abdullah Elbi is a qualified lawyer (Ankara Bar, Türkiye), certified data protection and AI expert (CIPP/E, CIPM, and AIGP by IAPP), and a doctoral researcher at the KU Leuven Centre for IT and IP Law (CiTiP). He specialises in the regulation of AI and EU data laws. His PhD research focuses on the human oversight requirements under the EU AI Act, with a particular emphasis on human-machine interfaces, employee surveillance, and their interaction with the GDPR.
Abdullah has contributed to several key EU and national research projects on AI and biometric technologies, including iMARS, FAITH, CORTEX2, and SALT . He is currently involved in the EU Horizon PopEye project, which aims to develop AI-driven multimodal biometrics for border control while ensuring the protection of fundamental rights and the alignment with EU values.
Key areas of expertise: Biometrics, AI regulation, human oversight, eID, deepfakes, emotion recognition, encryption techniques, cybersecurity, synthetic data, employee monitoring, data subject rights, transparency, explainability, DPIA and FRIA, accountability, international data transfer, employee surveillance, the use of AI in public authorities, migration, and border control.
Abdullah Elbi was awarded in 2020 the Jean Monnet Scholarship funded by the EU and completed his master's degree at Leiden University in 2021, specialising in Law and Digital Technologies.