Mathias Vermeulen is the co-founder and Public Policy Director at AWO, a new data rights agency, and an affiliated researcher at the Centre for Law, Science, Technology and Society at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Earlier he served for four years as a digital policy advisor to MEP Marietje Schaake in the European Parliament and as the main advisor to the UN special Rapporteur on the protection of human rights while countering terrorism. Mathias started his professional career at the Special Procedures Unit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and at the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva. He holds a Ph.D. in European privacy and data protection law from the VUB.