Ryan Calo is the Lane Powell and D. Wayne Gittinger Professor at the University of Washington School of Law. He is a founding co-director (with Batya Friedman and Tadayoshi Kohno) of the interdisciplinary UW Tech Policy Lab and a co-founder (with Chris Coward, Emma Spiro, Kate Starbird, and Jevin West) of the UW Center for an Informed Public. Professor Calo holds a joint appointment at the Information School and an adjunct appointment at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering.
Professor Calo's research on law and emerging technology appears in leading law reviews (California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Duke Law Journal, UCLA Law Review, and University of Chicago Law Review) and technical publications (MIT Press, Nature, Artificial Intelligence) and is frequently referenced by the national media. His work has been translated into at least four languages. Professor Calo has testified four times before the United States Senate, most recently providing witness testimony on July 11, 2024, before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation at a hearing titled “The Need to Protect Americans’ Privacy and the AI Accelerant.” Professor Calo stressed the importance of a comprehensive federal privacy law that both protects Americans’ personal privacy and sets guidelines for businesses developing and implementing AI technology.
He has organized events on behalf of the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Obama White House. He has been a speaker at President Obama's Frontiers Conference, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and NPR's Weekend in Washington.
Professor Calo is a board member of the R Street Institute and an affiliate scholar at the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society (CIS), where he was a research fellow, and the Yale Law School Information Society Project (ISP). He serves on numerous advisory boards and steering committees, including University of California's People and Robots Initiative, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Without My Consent, the Foundation for Responsible Robotics, and the Future of Privacy Forum. In 2011, Professor Calo co-founded the premiere North American annual robotics law and policy conference We Robot with Michael Froomkin and Ian Kerr.
Professor Calo worked as an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Covington & Burling LLP and clerked for the Honorable R. Guy Cole, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Prior to law school at the University of Michigan, Professor Calo investigated allegations of police misconduct in New York City. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Dartmouth College.
Professor Calo won the Phillip A. Trautman 1L Professor of the Year Award in 2014 and 2017 and was awarded the Washington Law Review Faculty Award in 2019.