Levin College of Law
Welcome to UF LAW

Barbara J. Evans

Stephen C. O'Connell Chair
Professor of Law
Professor of Engineering, University of Florida Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering

CV

SSRN

Phone:
352-273-0915

Expertise

Artificial Intelligence  • Biotechnology Law  • Data Privacy & Access  • Ethics and Regulation of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Medical Software  • Food & Drug Law  • Health Law  • Regulation of Clinical Laboratories  • Regulation of Genomic and Gene-editing Technologies  • 

About

Barbara J. Evans is Professor of Law and Stephen C. O’Connell Chair at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and holds a joint appointment as Professor of Engineering and Glenn and Deborah Renwick Faculty Fellow in AI and Ethics at UF’s Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering.

Her work focuses on data privacy and the regulation of AI/ML medical software, genomic technologies, and diagnostic testing. Currently she is part of the ethics and legal studies team for the NIH Bridge to Artificial Intelligence (Bridge2AI) Patient-Focused CHoRUS for Equitable AI project to develop a national data infrastructure for AI in critical care.

She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and was named a Greenwall Foundation Faculty Scholar in Bioethics for 2010-2013. She is admitted to the practice of law in New York and Texas.

Before coming to University of Florida, she worked as an engineer in the energy industry, as an infrastructure economist at the World Bank, and was a Moscow-based partner in the international regulatory practice of a large New York law firm. She held previous academic positions at the Indiana University Center for Bioethics and at the University of Houston, where she was Co-director of their Health Law & Policy Institute and Director of their Center for Biotechnology & Law.

Education

J.D., Yale Law School
LL.M. Health Law, University of Houston
Post-doctoral Fellow, Clinical Ethics, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
B.S., Electrical Engineering, with Honors, University of Texas at Austin
M.S., Applied Earth Sciences, Stanford University
Ph.D., Earth Sciences, Stanford University

Teaching and Scholarship

Health Law, Food and Drug law, Regulation of Novel Biotechnologies under the U.S. Coordinated Framework, Data Privacy, Regulation of Biomedical Research, Regulation of Genomic and Other Diagnostic Testing, and Torts.

Courses

  • Biotechnology & Medical AI Policy
  • Health Law Survey
  • Torts

Publications

Selected Legal Writing

  • Barbara J. Evans & Frank Pasquale, Product Liability Suits for FDA-Regulated AI/ML Software, in Innovation and Protection: The Future of Medical Device Regulation 22-35 (I. Glenn Cohen et al. eds., Cambridge University Press, 2022)
  • Barbara J. Evans, Programming Our Genomes, Programming Ourselves: The Moral and Regulatory Limits of Self-Harm in Do-It-Yourself Gene Editing, in Consumer Genetic Technologies: Ethical and Legal Considerations  129-144 (I. Glenn Cohen et al., eds., Cambridge University Press, 2021)
  • Barbara J. Evans & Ellen Wright Clayton, Deadly Delay: The FDA’s Role in America’s COVID-Testing Debacle, 130 YALE LAW JOURNAL FORUM 78-100 (2020)
  • Barbara J. Evans, The Streetlight Effect: Regulating Genomics Where the Light Is, 48 (Supp. 1) Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics 105-118 (2020) (Supplement entitled, “Building a Sound Legal Foundation for Translating Genomics into Clinical Application,” reporting results from the NIH-funded LawSeqSM project)
  • Barbara J. Evans, Minding the Gaps in Regulation of Do-it-Yourself Biotechnology, in Symposium: Democratizing Health Care, 21 DePaul Journal of Health Care Law 1 – 18 (2020) [Link]
  • Barbara J. Evans, Gail Javitt, Ralph Hall, Megan Robertson, Pilar Ossorio, Susan M. Wolf, Thomas Morgan, and Ellen Wright Clayton, for the LawSeq Quality Working Group, How Can Law and Policy Advance Genomic Analysis and Interpretation for Clinical Care?, 48 (Supp.1) Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics 44-68 (2020) (Supplement entitled, “Building a Sound Legal Foundation for Translating Genomics into Clinical Application,” reporting results from the NIH-funded LawSeqSM project)
  • Barbara J. Evans, The Perils of Parity: Should Citizen Science and Traditional Research Follow the Same Ethical and Privacy Principles?, 48(Supp. 1) Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics 74-81 (2020) (reporting results from the NIH-funded project, Addressing ELSI Issues in Unregulated Health Research Using Mobile Devices Mobile Health Research)
  • Barbara J. Evans & Susan M. Wolf, A Faustian Bargain That Imperils People’s Privacy Rights and Return of Results, 71 Florida L. Rev 1281-1345 (2019)
  • Barbara J. Evans, The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act at Age 10: GINA’s Controversial Assertion that Data Transparency Protects Privacy and Civil Rights, 60 William & Mary Law Review 2017-2109 (2019)
  • Barbara J. Evans, Ethical Standards for Unconsented Data Use in Genomic Data Commons, in Routledge Handbook of the Study of the Commons 294-307 (Blake Hudson, Jonathan Rosenblum & Dan Cole, eds., 2019)
  • Jim Hawkins, Barbara J. Evans & Harlan Krumholz, Nontransparency in Electronic Health Record Systems, in Transparency in Health and Health Care in the United States: Law and Ethics 273-286 (Cambridge University Press, 2019)
  • Ellen Wright Clayton, Barbara J. Evans, James W. Hazel & Mark A. Rothstein, The Law of Genetic Privacy: Applications, Implications, and Limitations, 6 J. Law and the Biosciences 1-36 (2019) (open access to full text via pdf link)

Selected Scientific and Medical Writings

  • Marwan K. Tayeh, Margaret Chen, Stephanie M. Fullerton, Patrick R. Gonzales, Samuel J. Huang, Lauren J. Massingham, Julianne M. O’Daniel, Douglas R. Stewart,  Ashlee R. Stiles, Barbara J Evans, on behalf of the ACMG Laboratory Quality Assurance Committee and the ACMG Social, Ethical and Legal Issues Committee, The Designated Record Set for Clinical Genetics and Genomics Testing: A Points to Consider Statement of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) (Genetics in Medicine, 2022 forthcoming)
  • Sara H. Katsanis, Peter Claes, Megan Doerr, Robert Cook-Deegan, Jessica D. Tenenbaum, Barbara J. Evans, Myoung Keun Lee, Joel Anderton, Seth M. Weinberg, Jennifer K. Wagner, A Survey of U.S. Public Perspectives on Facial Recognition Technology and Facial Imaging Data Practices in Health and Research Contexts, PLoS ONE 16(10): e0257923 at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257923 (October 14, 2021)
  • Sara H. Katsanis, Peter Claes, Megan Doerr, Robert Cook-Deegan, Jessica D. Tenenbaum, Barbara J. Evans, Myoung Keun Lee, Joel Anderton, Seth M. Weinberg, and Jennifer K. Wagner, U.S. Adult Perspectives on Facial Images, DNA, and Other Biometrics, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Transactions on Technology And Society, DOI: 10.1109/TTS.2021.3120317 available at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9576819 (October 18, 2021)
  • Ellen Wright Clayton , Paul S. Appelbaum , Wendy K. Chung , Gary E. Marchant , Jessica L. 14 Roberts, Barbara J. Evans, Does the Law Require Reinterpretation and Return of Revised Genomic Results?,  Genetics in Medicine (January 8, 2021) doi:10.1038/s41436-020-01065- x. Online ahead of print, available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33420344/
  • Andrew Paek, Justin A. Brantley, Barbara J. Evans, and Jose L. Contreras-Vidal, Concerns in the Blurred Divisions between Medical and Consumer Neurotechnology, 15(2) IEEE Systems Journal 3069-3080 (2021)
  • Wylie Burke, Ellen Wright Clayton, Susan M. Wolf, Susan A. Berry, Barbara J. Evans, James P. Evans, Diane Korgiebel, Anne-Marie Laberge, Bonnie S. LeRoy, Amy L. McGuire, Improving Recommendations for Genomic Medicine:  Building an Evolutionary Process from Clinical Practice Advisory Documents to Guidelines, 21 Genetics in Medicine 1-8 (June 4, 2019) available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41436-019-0549-3
  • Barbara J. Evans, Parsing the Line Between Professional and Citizen Science Open Peer Commentary on Andrea Wiggins & John Wilbanks, The Rise of Citizen Science in Health and Biomedical Research, 19 American Journal of Bioethics 15-17 (2019)
  • Susan M. Wolf & Barbara J. Evans, Defending return of results and data, 362 Science 1255-56 (December 14, 2018)
  • Barbara J. Evans & Harlan M. Krumholz, People-powered data collaboratives: fueling data science with health-related experience of individuals, 26 Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 159-161 (December 20, 2018)

University of Florida Levin College of Law
309 Village Drive
PO Box 117620
Gainesville, FL 32611
(352) 273-0804
Text-Only Version

Tools

Website

Quick Links

The Florida Constitutional Law Endowment in memory of Justice Ben F. Overton was created by Judge Karen Miller in 2013. This fund supports lectures and presentations by Justices of the Florida Supreme Court at the Fredric G. Levin College of Law.

HISTORY

Justice Overton, who earned his B.S. in 1951 and his Juris Doctor in 1952 from the University of Florida, was the first merit appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Throughout his career he was active in legal education and served as an Adjunct Professor at the Levin College of Law through December 2012, the month of his death. Although he resided at Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, a continuing care retirement community developed in cooperation with UF, he also considered the Florida Supreme Court “home.” Among the high points of his later years was hosting Justices of the Florida Supreme Court in Gainesville and taking his class to Tallahassee to hear oral arguments at the Florida Supreme Court.
Judge Miller, who earned her B.S. cum laude from New York University in 1974 and her Juris Doctor from New York Law School in 1977, served as Chief Administrative Law Judge of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, New York City’s business regulatory agency, before she retired to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida. Having accompanied Justice Overton on his excursions to Tallahassee and joined him in welcoming guests to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, she created the endowment in memory of Justice Overton to ensure that the Levin College of Law continues to have the funding necessary to continue and enhance the interaction between its students and the Florida Supreme Court.

 

Judge Miller remembered the event that motivated the endowment.

 

Prior to a dinner at the home of Dean Robert Jerry and Lisa Jerry shortly after Justice Overton’s death, Justice Barbara Pariente and I were discussing a suitable memorial. Justice Pariente, who had been Justice Overton’s colleague on the Florida Supreme Court and who understood the importance to him of the interaction between his students and the Court, suggested the outline of what has become the Overton lectures. Dean Jerry, who has since retired, as has Dean Emeritus Jon Mills, who assumed responsibility for implementing the Overton lectures, were very supportive from the beginning. Since Dean Mills’ retirement, Professor Timothy McClendon, who assisted both Justice Overton and Dean Mills teaching Florida Constitutional Law and who co-authored the recent Florida Constitutional Law casebook, has continued the Overton lectures with the support of Interim Dean Merritt McAlister and CGR director, Professor Danaya Wright.

Justice Overton was a devoted jurist, educator, and ethical leader of the Florida legal profession. The Overton Lecture Series brings Florida Supreme Court Justices to the University of Florida, Levin College of Law, and serves to introduce students to the inner workings of the Court. CGR and the students of the College of Law extend our deepest gratitude to Judge Karen Miller for making the Overton Lectures possible in perpetuity.

You can watch an interview for the Florida Historical Society by Mary Adkins, professor emeritus of the UF Levin College of Law, with Justice Overton here.

Justice Overton was also interviewed for the Samuel Proctor Oral History Project and a transcript of his interview is available at the Smathers Library, and here.
Justice Overton sat on the Constitution Revision Commission of 1977-78 that proposed a right to privacy in the Florida Constitution. Although it failed as part of the Constitution Revision Commission recommendations, it passed in 1980 when proposed by the legislature. The bill was co-sponsored by our very own Jon Mills. The privacy provision prevailed by greater than 60%. Justice Overton then wrote a concurrence in a critical reproductive rights case in 1989 affirming that the privacy provision of the Florida Constitution included the right to obtain an abortion. That decision was overruled in Planned Parenthood of SW and Central Florida v. Florida. You can read about the role of Justice Overton, Jon Mills – director emeritus of CGR, and the history of the 1989 case here.