Dr Rachel Finn

Rachel leads Trilateral’s Data Protection and Cyber-risk services (DCS) for the public and private sector. These include data protection compliance support, cyber-security management and data governance support, such as Outsourced DPO-as-a-service, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and developing data sharing arrangements between organisations. Alongside DCS, Rachel also represents Trilateral’s full suite of solutions in Ireland, including ethical AI, sociotech insights and research.

Working with technology developers to identify legal requirements, privacy and data protection risks and workable solutions has been a particular theme throughout her work. Rachel has implemented this through commercial projects on data protection and privacy-by-design requirements, as well as coordinating multi-million Euro EU-funded research projects on large-scale predictive analytics, eGovernment solutions and open access to research data. She has co-developed methods for translating privacy, data protection and ethical requirements into technical requirements to support responsible and ethical AI that have been used in many innovation projects, including Trilateral’s internal software development.

Rachel is widely published and has a number of often-cited publications, including “Unmanned aircraft systems: Surveillance, ethics and privacy in civil applications” and “Seven types of privacy“. Her latest book,  Open Data in the Knowledge Society, is available as an open access publication.

Prior to joining Trilateral Research, Rachel held postdoctoral positions at University of Manchester and University of Hull. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Manchester and a double BA in Sociology and Psychology from Johns Hopkins University.