Over the past two years, ten new members of Berkeley Law’s J.S.D. program have received the Robbins Collection Fellowship, which provides partial to full tuition waivers. The J.S.D. is a three year degree program during which students must conduct independent research and write a dissertation. As a condition of the Robbins Fellowship, recipients must also conduct original research on civil or religious law topics.

Four incoming J.S.D students in the class of 2023 received the Robbins Fellowship: Ella Padon-Corren, Sylvia Lu, Silvia Fregoni, and Alex Huang. Six J.S.D students who entered the program this year received the fellowship: Luis Barroso da Graca, Shih-wei Chao, Gal Forer, Mahwish Moazzam, Eric Winkofsky, and Sharaban Tahura Zaman. Each Robbins Collection J.S.D Fellow arrived at Berkeley Law with impressive professional and educational accomplishments.
Zaman, an environmental lawyer and academic, serves as a legal advisor to the LDC (Least Developed Countries) Group to the Paris Agreement, and is a senior lecturer at North South University in Bangladesh. About the fellowship, she said, “In my J.S.D. dissertation I am assessing how climate laws under the Paris Agreement can be adapted and applied in a way that provides relevant guidance to facilitate the global energy transition.The Robbins Fellowship and comparative law study provide immense support in my J.S.D studies, the research that has the potential to change the world and its dire crisis, like climate change.”
Other areas of research being pursued by J.S.D. Robbins Fellows include privacy, intellectual property, technology, and human rights.
As a part of her fellowship, Sylvia Lu is participating in a study of comparative legal responses to COVID-19. “I researched the role of Taiwan’s COVID-19 regulations and compliance systems in guiding people’s behaviors, integrating available resources, and motivating the development of artificial intelligence technologies to fight the novel disease,” she said. After graduation Lu plans to “seek a faculty position at a university to teach, research, and write on issues concerning law and technology.”
Director of the Robbins Collection and Research Center, Laurent Mayali, said, “Lloyd Robbins’ idea in establishing the collection was to create a place where scholars could solve the legal problems of today, and these students’ work will enhance the legacy of that vision.”