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The University of Maryland’s Tech Policy Hub studies tech policy from a socio-technical perspective, building the bridge between computer science & public policy to understand how policy is designed and implemented for, by, and with tech. Our hub spans across the forefront of tech policy domains, including cybersecurity, consumer privacy, misinformation, and trustworthy machine learning (ML). We bring together DMV-based issue networks of practitioners, scholars, industry leaders, and civil activists to inform, impact, and shape the future of technology in society, applying a mix of comparative, qualitative, and computational research methods to advance our understanding and craft socially desired future paths for tech policy development.

Our questions of interest include:

1 – How do we deal with the social problems of computing through top-down and bottom-up policymaking & implementation?

2 – What can we learn from the history of policymaking across technology issues?

3 – What can we learn about tech policy from a comparative perspective? Across sectors? Across jurisdictions?

4 – How and by whom tech policy issues enter the political agenda?

5 – How does the efficacy of tech policies can be assessed and evaluated?

6 – What are the politics of tech policy design?

7 – How can we use crowdsourcing to improve tech policies?

8 – How can we teach tech policy through an experiential learning perspective?

If all this sounds relevant and interesting for you – feel free to join our hub! We are bringing together a network of students, scholars, practitioners, civil activists, and industry leaders to discuss tech policy on a regular basis. Feel free to subscribe and join our mailing list and be up-to-date with our research outputs & events. Interested in becoming affiliated with us? Please email our founder, Dr. Sivan-Sevilla, to discuss further.

Recent News

June 6th, 2025 [upcoming]: Join us in-person for the Tech Policy Hub Annual Event. First details are available here. Registration and full agenda will be published soon. Subscribe to our mailing list to stay informed.

Mar 12th, 2025: Join us online for our Spring 2025 Speaker Series event on how privacy research can inform privacy regulation.

Mar 2nd, 2025: New work from Hub researchers on applying contextual integrity to measure Web privacy has been uploaded to arXiv.

Mar 2nd, 2025: Work by the Cybersecurity group of the Hub was highlighted by Newsweek.

Feb 26th, 2025 : Join us online for the first event in our Spring 2025 Speaker Series. We will host an academic and a practitioner to discuss DeepSeek and what it means for AI governance.

Feb 24, 2025: Work by the Hub's researchers on the accountability powers of formal and informal U.S. privacy watchdogs has been accepted for the Privacy Law Scholars Conference (PLSC).

Feb 4, 2025: The work by the Hub on assessing attack surface of U.S. counties has been highlighted by Maryland Today.

Jan 17, 2025: The work by researchers from the Hub on the size, diversity, and severity of exposed attack surface across U.S. county governments is officially published by the Journal of Cybersecurity.

Dec 6, 2024: Research from the Hub on measuring the integrated attack surface exposed across U.S. county governments was recently highlighted by the department. The project has been accepted for publication at the Journal of Cybersecurity and a link will be available soon.

Nov 21, 2024: Tech Policy Hub & VCAI round-table on AI policy took place at the CS Department. Other AI-related round-tables from the Hub will follow. Stay tuned.