Professor of Law and Strategic Management, Gillian Hadfield, has been named a recipient of the U of T President's Impact Award and Carolyn Tuohy Impact on Public Policy Award "for contributions impacting access to justice, innovative design for legal and dispute resolution systems in advanced and developing market economies, and governance for artificial intelligence."
Professor Hadfield holds the Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society, was named a CIFAR AI Chair and a Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Senior Fellow.
The President’s Impact Awards (PIA) celebrate and honour faculty members and teams of faculty whose research has led to significant impact beyond academia. They recognize contributions that emerge from academic scholarship and have fully realized, demonstrable impacts on any domain of society, whether through a single influential contribution or through an ongoing commitment to research translation.
Recipients of the PIA are designated as members of the President’s Impact Academy for a period of five years, during which they receive an award of $10,000 per year to be used toward their research. The Academy meets to discuss matters relevant to research impact, offers advice to the Vice President, Research and Innovation, and Strategic Initiatives, and advocates for sustained excellence in research and innovation impact within and outside of the University.
PIA nominees are also considered for the Carolyn Tuohy Impact on Public Policy Award, presented annually under the banner of the U of T Awards of Excellence (AWEX).
Professor Hadfield, was the inaugural Director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society from 2019-2023 and is known for her innovative and penetrating work in the areas of access to justice, markets for legal services, regulation, contracts, and for pioneering work on the regulation of artificial intelligence generally and “frontier AI” in particular. Among her most influential work is Rules for a Flat World: Why Humans Invented Law and How to Reinvent It for a Complex Global Economy, the popularity and importance of which led to the release of a paperback edition and recently, an audio book version.
Professor Hadfield’s work has influenced regulators in states and provinces to explore and undertake innovative reform in an effort to provide more affordable legal services and regulate them in a way that protects the public rather than lawyers. She has also helped policy makers understand the need to regulate AI and identified options for doing so, including harnessing AI to regulate AI. She has worked on options to design-in guardrails for “frontier AI” which has the capacity to become dangerous to humans in unpredictable ways.
Professor Hadfield has collaborated with researchers and leaders within and outside academia, bridging gaps between disciplines and participating in myriad projects, such as the Ontario Health Data Platform for COVID-19, and the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law’s efforts to use AI to help close the access to justice gap for people in the many countries where the legal infrastructure is insufficient or non-existent.
“Gillian is at the leading-edge of addressing the challenges posed by the fast-paced, complex and sweeping innovations in the field of artificial intelligence (AI)," said Dean and University Professor Jutta Brunnée, James Marshall Tory Dean’s Chair. "The President’s Impact Award and the Carolyn Tuohy Impact on Public Policy Award are fitting recognitions of her leadership on these urgent and profound questions."
President's Impact Awards
The President’s Impact Awards (PIA) celebrate and honour faculty members and teams of faculty whose research has led to significant impact beyond academia. They recognize contributions that emerge from academic scholarship and have fully realized, demonstrable impacts on any domain of society, whether through a single influential contribution or through an ongoing commitment to research translation. PIA nominees are also considered for the Carolyn Tuohy Impact on Public Policy Award, presented annually under the banner of the U of T Awards of Excellence (AWEX).
