RegulatingAI Expert
Nicolas Kourtellis
Co-Director & Head of Systems AI Lab (SAIL), Telefónica Research
Spain Speaks English, French, Spanish
“Translating frontier AI risk into policy that legislators can actually use.”
About Nicolas
Nicolas Kourtellis is Head of the Systems AI Lab (SAIL) and Co-Director of Telefonica Research, a 25+ researcher team based in Barcelona, Spain. He holds a PhD in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of South Florida, USA (2012), a MSc in Computer Science from the University of South Florida (2008), and a Meng in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece (2006).He has over 90 published peer-reviewed papers and 8 filed patents. Currently, he focuses on privacy-preserving AI and federated learning on the edge, modeling/detecting with AI user online privacy leaks, as well as inappropriate/fraudulent behavior on social media. He executed several research visits in ANL (USA), INRIA (France), Yahoo (Spain/USA), UCL (UK), CUT (Cyprus), AUTH (Greece), FORTH (Greece), and others. He has served in many technical committees of top conferences and journals, and presented his work in top academic and industrial venues including Mobile World Congress 2021 and 2023, Apache Foundation, etc. His work has been covered by major news outlets such as Nature, New York Times, The Atlantic, New Scientist, Washington Post, Wired, and others. In 2022, he was ranked among the World’s Top 2% Scientists (2021) in the list prepared by Elsevier BV, Stanford University, USA.
Areas of Expertise
Cyberprivacy
Foundation model oversight, licensing regimes, and the design of enforceable regulation across US and EU frameworks.
Cybersecurity
Pre-deployment evaluation, red-teaming standards, and accountability structures for high-risk systems.
Data Privacy
Governance of autonomous systems, dual-use risk, and export-control implications for national security.
Experience
Research Scientist
Credentials & Affiliations
- Advisory committee, international AI safety standards body
- Advisory committee, international AI safety standards body
- Advisory committee, international AI safety standards body
- Advisory committee, international AI safety standards body
- Advisory committee, international AI safety standards body
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