Dean Chris Guthrie announced that David Stein has been appointed Assistant Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, effective summer 2025. Professor Stein comes to Vanderbilt from Northeastern University, where he was an Assistant Professor of Law and Assistant Professor of Computer Sciences.
At Vanderbilt, he will teach courses related to law and technology.
“In an age where technology is rapidly changing every corner of our world, David Stein’s tech industry experience and scholarly focus offers unique value,” said Dean Guthrie. “We are thrilled to welcome him to Vanderbilt Law.”
Professor Stein studies the interplay between legal institutions and technical infrastructures, using moments of transformative innovation as natural experiments that provide insight into the relationship between institutions and infrastructures. His research spans multiple disciplines; in addition to his law review articles, he has published peer-reviewed work in robotics, rocket science, and computational linguistics and is the named inventor on seven patented digital identity and database management technologies.
Prior to entering the academy, Professor Stein spent a decade in the tech industry, serving in engineering roles at Dropbox and Foursquare labs, as Director of Engineering at Braze, and as a cybersecurity lead at Sidewalk Labs, Google’s smart city initiative.
Professor Stein was a Postdoctoral Fellow and a Frank Guarini Scholar of Global Law and Technology at NYU School of Law. He earned an S.B. and M.Eng. (Sigma Xi) at MIT and a J.D. (Cum Laude) at NYU School of Law.
