Pascal Pichonnaz is currently full professor (since 2000) for Swiss contract law, Roman law, as well as European consumer law and comparative contract law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Fribourg. He was Dean of the Faculty of Law from 2014–2017. He has been President of the Department of Private Law and vice-president and president of the IBL. He is one of the cofounder of the LLM Programme at the Faculty of Law (MLCBP).

He has published several books, and more than 150 articles, on fundamental aspects of Swiss contract law (including AI and the Law), on Comparative Contract Law, on Set-off and Arbitration, as well as on Roman law, unfair competition and family law. Pichonnaz is also a member of several boards of legal periodicals.

He is a standing member of the Jury of the Premio internazionale di diritto romano Gérard Boulvert and is active as an international commercial arbitrator (ICC, Swiss Rules-SCAI, ad hoc), as well as arbitrator in sport (CAS). He has been member of the board and then president in 2008–2009 of the European Law Faculties Association (ELFA). Since 2018, he has been a member of the Council of the European Law Institute, its vice-president from 2019-2021, and its president from 2021-2023 and 2023-2025. More on www.unifr.ch/ius/pichonnaz

Marco Bassini is an Assistant Professor of Fundamental Rights and Artificial Intelligence at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT), Tilburg University. He teaches, among other courses, Regulation and Governance of AI in the Law and Technology master’s program and Law, Technology, and Society in the Global Law bachelor program. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Dutch-government funded research grant “RetrAIn – Enforcing Constitutional Rights in the Age of Generative Artificial Intelligence” and one of the experts selected by the European AI Office for the drawing-up of the General Purpose AI Code of Practice. He previously served as Adjunct Professor of Constitutional Law and Internet Law at Bocconi University, where he was also the Coordinator of the LLM in Law of Internet Technology from 2020 to 2023. He obtained his PhD in Constitutional Law and European Law from the University of Verona in 2016. A qualified lawyer with the Bar of Milan (Italy) since 2013, Dr. Bassini has over a decade of experience combining academic research with legal practice. He has worked as data protection counsel at international law firms in Milan and Rome, and served as Data Protection Officer for a leading Italian company. In addition, he has advised the Italian Communications Authority and the Italian Ministry for Technological Innovation. His expertise spans data protection law, AI regulation, and media law.

Daniel Kraus is a professor, attorney (www.patentattorneys.ch/en  and www.vialex.ch) , and deputy judge at the Swiss Federal Patent Court with over three decades of experience in intellectual property, technology, and innovation law. A graduate of the University of Geneva and King’s College London, he earned the Walther Hug Prize for his doctoral thesis on parallel imports of patented products.

Before joining academia, he held senior roles at the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, leading international affairs and technical cooperation. His expertise spans IP, software law, and AI law, advising on copyright, licensing, open-source compliance, and emerging regulatory frameworks for artificial intelligence.

Daniel is co-author of leading works on blockchain law, trademark, patent, and copyright law, and is a frequent speaker at international conferences. In 2025, Managing IP named him an IP Star in recognition of his contributions to the field.

Outside his legal work, he enjoys composing music, outdoor sports, and social-entrepreneurship projects.

Pascale Schwerzmann
Legal Tech Lead & Sr Technical Specialist

Karim Tejani
Head Legal Switzerland

Thomas Spörri
Regional Counsel EMEA at Global Deal Team

and others.

In this exclusive course led by experts from Microsoft, students will explore how AI is transforming legal practice. Through real-world use cases, interactive workshops, and hands-on challenges, participants will gain practical experience with AI tools such as Copilot, agent development, and prompt engineering.Pedro Morales

Erdem Büyüksagis is an internationally recognized expert in contract law, commercial law and tort law. Professor Büyüksagis is lecturing at Fribourg University in Switzerland. Some of his works were cited by the Swiss Federal Court. In addition to his academic activities, He regularly acts as an arbitrator under the ICC Rules, Swiss Rules, or in ad hoc panels. Professor Büyüksagis holds both Swiss and Turkish citizenship and is a Member of the Swiss Arbitration Association (ASA) and the ICC Turkey.

Some of his publications are:

• Duncan Fairgrieve/Christoph Busch/Erdem Büyüksagis et al., Product Liability and Online Marketplaces: Comparison and Reform, ICLQ 2/2024, pp. 477-504.
• Liability of E-Commerce Platforms for Third-Party Defective Products, in: Eva Maria Belser, Pascal Pichonnaz, Hubert Stöckli (Eds.), Le droit sans frontières - Recht ohne Grenzen - Law without Borders, Mélanges pour Franz Werro, Bern 2022, pp. 127-141.
• The Bounds between Negligence and Strict Liability, in: Mauro Bussani & Anthony J. Sebok (Eds.), Global Tort Law, Edward Elgar Publishing – 2nd ed. Cheltenham 2021, Chapter 10 (with Franz Werro).
• Towards a Transatlantic Concept of Data Privacy, 30 Fordham Intell. Prop. Media & Ent. L.J. 2019, pp. 139-221.

What Europeans Can Learn from an Untold Story of Transjudicial Communication: The Swiss-Turkish Experience, in: Mads Andenas & Duncan Fairgrieve (Eds.), Courts and Comparative Law, Oxford University Press - Oxford 2015, Chapter 37.

Rick Magnan currently serves as the General Counsel, Chief Information Officer, and Chief of Cyber Security for Rising Tide. During his career as a lawyer and computer scientist, he has served in diverse positions in both career fields in private industry, international organizations, and government. He teaches courses involving law and technology, including cyber security, artificial intelligence, and blockchain.

He holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of New Hampshire, a M.S. in Computer Systems from the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology, a J.D. with honors from Georgetown University, and a LL.M. from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland."

I am a Group Chief Information Security Officer with more than ten years in information security management and engineering, including over five years as CISO and Data Protection Officer for international, regulated organisations. Today I lead enterprise security, governance and AI risk for a group protecting mission-critical insurance and health platforms across Europe. Uniquely, I pair this hands-on security leadership with a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in international business law focused on compliance, so I can read cyber and AI risk through both a technical and a legal, regulatory lens.

Alongside my executive role I serve on several boards and advisory boards, including the ISACA Switzerland Chapter, and contribute to the EU CyberNet expert pool and the SANS CISO Network. I was named Swiss CISO of the Year 2024 and listed among the '40 under 40 in Cybersecurity'. Because I sit on boards myself, I speak from one board member to another, sharpened by executive board-governance education at IMD and its world-class business faculty. My focus is independent oversight: helping leaders ask the right questions about cyber and AI risk, understand the answers, and govern with confidence.

My background combines deep academic and professional credentials. Beyond the LL.M. and an MAS in Cyber Security, I hold several postgraduate CAS degrees and the field's gold-standard certifications, including CISSP, CISM and CRISC. I lecture on AI and the law from a corporate perspective at the Faculty of Law of the University of Fribourg, train professionals at Digicomp, and speak regularly at conferences, keeping my advice current, rigorous and grounded in both practice and research.

Ali Osman Özdilek PhD is a lawyer, lecturer at the Ozyegin University Law School and computer programmer at the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Tuzla Vocational School. He holds Bachelor’s degree from Istanbul University Law School and an LLM from Fribourg University Law School in Switzerland. In his doctoral studies, he specialised in public law. Osman Özdilek published nine books, three of them on IT law and over 200 articles in various periodicals and web portals. He is member of the Istanbul Bar Association, International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), European Law Institute (ELI) and Dispute Board Federation (Geneva, Switzerland). Osman Özdilek has over 20 years of professional experience as a lawyer and expert in IT law. He is multilingual and speaks Turkish, English, French, Italian, Azerbaijani, and German as well as various dialects.