Lucy Nalbach Tournas has a J.D from Arizona State University, with certificates in
Biotechnology and the Law, Big Data and Privacy, and Health Law. She has contributed
academic journal articles, book chapters, commentaries, and public interest pieces on
the intersection of law, politics, and emerging technologies. Lucy visited us last week to
talk about neurotechnology governance. See her answers to our two questions below.
1- What led you to focus on neurotechnology governance?
With a background in philosophy, I entered Law School knowing I wanted to
focus on law and emerging technologies. I worked on bioethics, medical
advances, and political philosophy for my Bachelors. My original plan was to go
directly into law, but I went into business instead. While I really wanted a legal
education, I didn't want to practice law, and taking the time to work was
tremendously helpful. As I started a family, I found myself grappling with many of
the issues I was so passionate about earlier in academia in my personal life
because my eldest daughter was a micro-preemie and had cerebral palsy. Once
she was doing well, I decided to go back to law school. I chose ASU in part to
work with my now mentor, Gary Marchant. In law school, I worked on several
projects, including a law review on health span drug regulation and a working
document for the OECD on CRISPR-Cas 9. I finished law school with certificates
in biotechnology and the law, big data and privacy, and health law, and received
the Strauss prize for excellence in law, science, and innovation." After law
school I worked as a postdoc fellow on a project for WEF on personalized
medicine. But my passion was Neurotechnology. During my second year I
started writing on BCIs (Brain Computer Interfaces) which combine many of my
professional and personal passions into one technology. I still approach
neurotechnologies with the lens that it really is a technology of many digital
technologies, i.e., AI and big data, but in a much more powerful scope. I realized
governance and international coordination would require more work, so I began
my Ph.D. focusing on governance, comparative law, and political economics of
neurotechnologies. I have written a number of articles and chapters that I am
happy to share if anyone is interested.
2- What two words come to mind when you think of neurotechnology self-
regulation?
When I think of neurotech self-regulation, I think of the words “market disruption”.
I think there is a lot of hope in self-regulation and it supports a very American
way to lead in innovation, but self-regulation as a concept really developed
around biotechnologies. This is significant, as the regulatory and legal schemes
look different than in digital technologies. There have been many market
changes to traditional theory here and much of my work focuses on exposing
those assumptions in order to build better tools. I am hopeful, but I think right
now better knowledge of the system itself is needed.