Second-year Ph.D. student at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. Her dissertation project, supervised by Dr. Saptarishi Bandopadhyay, focuses on autonomous weapons systems (“AWS”), artificial intelligence (“AI”), international legal structures (including international humanitarian law, international criminal law, and international human rights law), and engineering ethics.
AWS, a type of emerging AI technology, are weapons capable of operating autonomously, or without human intervention or oversight. These operations can include the autonomous identification, selection, and targeting of humans. Through her research, Alexandra will (1) trace the development path of AWS from invention to commercialisation/deployment, (2) identify the points at which legal, professional ethical, and/or legal ethical issues are implicated along the way, and (3) evaluate the greater social and political context in which this developmental pathway exists (including the law and politics of technical expertise).
Alexandra holds a BSc (Hons) in chemical engineering, a JD, and an LLM from Queen’s University. Prior to attending law school, Alexandra worked as a process engineer-in-training for an oil and gas company in Alberta. She completed her articles at a large multinational law firm in Ottawa before returning to Queen’s University to complete her LLM (also on the subject of autonomous weapons systems) under the supervision of Professor Darryl Robinson.