Ido Sivan-Sevilla is a political scientist and postdoctoral fellow at Cornell Tech’s Digital Life Initiative (DLI). He is interested in governance arrangements for digital technology risks and studies drivers for and implications of risk governance frameworks by the state, using qualitative and quantitative research methods. In his postdoc research projects, Ido studies the Ad-Tech and Fin-Tech ecosystems, cybersecurity insurers, and the community of tech abusers.


His past research investigated the role of U.S. public policies as governing instruments and comparatively analyzed institutional frameworks across nations, sectors, and contexts, to highlight historical institutionalism and political patterns in coping with cyber insecurity and the erosion of privacy. His work also emphasized the disconnection between cyber risk framings and policy outputs by US federal policymakers as well as the instrumental distribution of authority between public and private actors through cybersecurity standardization and certification in the European Union. His work has been published in The Journal of Risk Research, Policy & Internet, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, The Columbia Science and Technology Law Review, and NATO’s International Conference on Cyber Conflict (CyCon).

Ido completed his PhD at the Federmann School of Public Policy & Government at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, served as a Cybersecurity Research Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University, and worked with the Israeli National Cyber Authority on stimulating the market for cyber insurance. He was a MA Fulbright Fellow at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, and served as a legislative assistant at the U.S. Congress in Washington DC. He had completed his BA with honors in Computer Science at the Technion – Israel’s Institute of Technology.

Ido also holds a vast background in network and computer security, with eight years of experience in leading technical cybersecurity positions from the private sector, Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office, and the Israeli Air-Force [Captain].