Karlyn first rode in a Google autonomous car in 2013, while researching the RAND report, Autonomous Vehicle Technology: A Guide for Policymakers. She realized that automated vehicles presented the perfect intersection of her long-term interests and experience: technology, law, and policy. The Policy Research Center of the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University has since published her report on data privacy issues concerning automated and connected vehicle technology, and she has spoken and published internationally on issues concerning the legal and policy dimensions of automated vehicles. Karlyn is also a Professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School.
Prior to joining RAND Corporation as an adjunct Senior Researcher in 2011, she lived and worked in New Delhi, India, as Director-Legal Services for a UK company. In India, she used advanced technology to supply legal services and daily observed how transportation—or lack of it--can impact people’s lives, as well as the economy and civil society.
As a partner in a Washington, D.C., law firm prior to her move to India, she represented emerging technology companies that provided new ways to use mobile communications services—for example, to transmit patient data to doctors. She became interested in the value of personally identifiable data and the ways to protect it. On behalf of clients, she worked on policy issues concerning new mobile communications technologies with the Federal Communications Commission.
As a Senior Attorney at AT&T, Karlyn gained expertise with complex telecommunications technology issues. A major aspect of her position was to explain complex technical and legal issues to state and federal regulators and policymakers. She learned to crystallize and address the policy concerns and legal questions that arose from new technology.
Karlyn’s legal career began as a law clerk to Chief Judge Fred B. Ugast of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, and continued as a Trial Attorney in the Fraud Section, Criminal Division, of the U.S. Department of Justice, which provided her with extensive litigation experience.
Karlyn received her J.D. from the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University in Washington, D.C, and her B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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