ECPC teaching staff (new)
Cosimo Monda
Cosimo Monda is the Director of the Maastricht European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity (ECPC), which has been established in 2016 at the Law Faculty, Maastricht University.
At ECPC his work has a strong European and international outlook in the field of privacy and cybersecurity, steering an interdisciplinary group of researchers, academics and professionals active in areas of fundamental rights, data privacy, transparency and confidentiality, IT, data security, and more. Cosimo Monda has a longstanding experience in designing executive education, certification courses and online learning modules for professionals who are required to deal with new regulations and on-going developments in the privacy and cybersecurity market. Before joining Maastricht University, he was working at the European Institute of Public Administration, as Senior Lecturer and Head of Information, Publications, and Marketing services. He holds a Law Degree obtained at the University of Bologna.
His fields of expertise include Data Protection and Cyber security, EU Information Management; Transparency and access to documents; EU Agencies; EU decision-making procedures and Institutions and EU law.
Paolo Balboni
Paolo Balboni (PhD) is a Professor of Privacy, Cybersecurity, and IT Contract Law at the European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity (ECPC) within the Maastricht University Faculty of Law. His main research focuses are cybersecurity, data management/sharing and data protection as a corporate social responsibility, which together can be used to help organisations responsibly further their economic targets and at the same time positively contribute to the development of a fair data-centric society.
Qualified lawyer specialized in ICT, Privacy & Cybersecurity admitted to the Milan Bar and registered to the Amsterdam Bar. He is a Founding Partner of ICT Legal Consulting (ICTLC), an international law firm, and ICT Cyber Consulting, a company specialized in information/data security. Prof. Dr. Balboni is a Recommended Lawyer ranked by The Legal 500 EMEA 2023 in the areas of Data Privacy and Data Protection and Industry Focus: TMT. He is the Chairman of the European Patent Office (EPO) Data Protection Board, Member of the EUMETSAT Data Protection Supervisory Authority, Member of the Europrivacy Board of Experts, Member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on B2B data sharing and cloud computing contracts, and of the Cloud Security Alliance’s AI Safety Expert Group. Prof. Dr. Balboni furthermore advises governments on national matters concerning cybersecurity and privacy and in 2018, he drafted the national Surinamese Privacy and Data Protection Law.
Herke Kranenborg
Herke Kranenborg is a member of the European Commission’s Legal Service specialising in the field of privacy and data protection. In addition to advising client directorates-general in these areas, he represents the Commission in litigation before the EU Courts.
Previously, he worked at the Office of the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS). Herke is visiting fellow at the ECPC and, since 2010, affiliated senior researcher at the Institute for European Law of the K.U. Leuven. He has numerous national and international academic publications on EU law, in particular on data protection, privacy and fundamental rights in general. His PhD thesis, on the subject of EU data protection and public access to documents, was awarded by the Europa Institute of the University of Leiden (2007). In August 2018, together with prof. Luc Verhey, Herke published a monograph on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): De Algemene Verordening Gegevensbescherming in Europees en Nederlands perspectief.
Maja Brkan
Dr. Maja Brkan serves as Judge at the General Court of the European Union. She is a Visiting Fellow of the European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity and Distinguished Fellow of Maastricht Centre for European Law. She was Associate Professor of European Union Law at Maastricht University (2018-2021) and Assistant Professor at the same university (2013-2018), as well as Associate Director of the Maastricht Centre for European Law (2017-2020). Prior to her academic appointment, she served as a legal advisor (référéndaire) at the Court of Justice of the EU (2007-2013).
She holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Ljubljana (2003), a Master of Laws from the University of New York (2004) and a PhD from the University of Ljubljana (2007). She is also a holder of a prestigious Diploma of the Academy of European Law from the European University Institute in Florence and was awarded the prize “Young Lawyer of the Year 2007” from the Union of Lawyers’ Associations in Slovenia.
Dr. Brkan has published widely in numerous areas of European law. Her recent research focuses on EU fundamental rights, particularly on privacy and data protection, on legal questions of artificial intelligence, as well as on the impact of new technologies on society. Her research approach seeks to analyse these fields from the perspective of theoretical underpinnings of EU fundamental rights and from the viewpoint of the interplay with other fields, such as private international law and consumer protection law in the EU. On these topics, she lectured at various conferences and universities across Europe and beyond, including Yale University, Oxford University and Beijing Normal University. She has also been a visiting researcher at the European University Institute, at the University of California – Berkeley and at the University of Ljubljana. Her notable public
Karolina Podstawa
Karolina Podstawa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of European and International Law of the University of Maastricht. Since September 2019 she has also joined Maastricht European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity.
She represented the UM in the project TRIIAL: TRust, Independence, Impartiality and Accountability of judges focused on the identification of best practices in cooperation between judges across the European Union geared towards safeguarding judicial independence, impartiality and accountability.
Prior to the appointment at UM, she acted as a part-time Assistant Professor at the University of Łódź (Poland) as well as the Senior Researcher at the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC, Venice). Karolina holds a PhD from the European University Institute and MAs in Law and Administration (2008), English Language and Literature (2009) from the University of Łódź, Poland as well as the LLM from the EUI (2009).
Within ECPC, Karolina is co-coordinating the Advanced Master in Privacy, Cybersecurity and Data Management. She also teaches a master course.
Sunil Chaudhary
Dr. Sunil Chaudhary is a senior lecturer of privacy and cybersecurity at the European Center on Privacy and Cybersecurity (ECPC), Faculty of Law. He is coordinating and teaching the cybersecurity modules of the Advanced Master in Privacy, Cybersecurity and Data Management. In addition, Sunil is involved as a cybersecurity expert in the wide range of executive courses offered by ECPC.
Before joining the Maastricht team, Sunil worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), where he worked on various facets of cybersecurity competency development and produced results in the form of cybersecurity research roadmaps, policies, guidelines, and frameworks. In his home country, Nepal, Sunil has worked in various positions, both in academia and the private sector.
Dr. Sunil Chaudhary graduated from Tampere University, Finland, with a Ph.D. in cybersecurity in December 2016.
Christopher Mondschein
Christopher Mondschein is a Researcher at the European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity within the Maastricht University Faculty of Law. He engages in professional education on Data Protection and conducts research in several projects. Moreover, he is the editor of the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law.
Valentina Zecchi
Valentina Zecchi is a Lecturer at the European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity (ECPC) and the Coordinator of Global Privacy Officer Certification (ECPC-G), positions she assumed in September 2023. Before joining the ECPC, Valentina worked as a Data Protection Officer for an Italian digital marketing company for several years, where she gained extensive expertise in resolving practical data protection challenges. Her background also includes valuable experience as an external legal counsel, specializing in commercial law, consumer law, and data protection law. In this capacity, she assisted various companies with the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Beyond her professional pursuits, Valentina is deeply committed to addressing gender disparities. She is the co-founder of 'Privacy She-Leaders,' an Italian association of professionals dedicated to promoting female leadership in technology and data protection.
Helena Bossini Castillo
Helena Bossini Castillo is a Lecturer at the European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity (ECPC), which she joined in September 2024. Before joining ECPC, Helena worked as a Privacy Officer at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences at Maastricht University, where she advised on the compliant use of health data for research and education. In this role, she gained extensive experience in the challenges that researchers and the healthcare sector face in improving the quality of life of patients while protecting their privacy. Her professional experience also includes working as a legal and privacy advisor for hospitals, start-ups and automotive companies.
In addition to her work at Maastricht University, Helena participated in the working groups for the implementation of the Code of Conduct for Scientific Research promoted by Health-RI and Coreon in the Netherlands. In addition, she contributed to the discussion on the secondary use of health data in the Netherlands carried out by Health –RI.