Dr. Davide Clementi is a postdoctoral researcher at eLaw – Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University, where he works on the Horizon Europe AI:Liner project. He assesses the ethical, legal and societal implications of AI systems deployed in the inspection and maintenance of water and sewer networks, and examines how EU digital legislation bears on technologies operating in critical infrastructure. His wider research concerns the regulation of artificial intelligence, intellectual property and data governance, studied comparatively across European and Chinese legal orders.

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Dr. Davide Clementi is a postdoctoral researcher at eLaw – Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University. At eLaw he works on AI:Liner, a Horizon Europe project on AI and advanced digital technologies for the inspection, monitoring and rehabilitation of sewer networks. The consortium has developed six technological solutions, which he assesses against the Assessment List for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (ALTAI), working directly with the solution providers and other stakeholders.

Within the project, the question is how EU digital legislation applies to technologies that operate in critical infrastructure, where a missed defect reaches public health, environmental protection and workers' safety. This means the AI Act, but also the GDPR, the Data Act, and the security and resilience obligations imposed on essential entities by the NIS2 and CER Directives, which apply to water utilities regardless of whether the systems they deploy are classified as high-risk.

Beyond AI:Liner, his research covers intellectual property, data governance, contracting in digital environments and the legal treatment of cultural production, compared across European and Chinese legal orders.

Research on China has taken him to Beijing for roughly twelve months of fieldwork. In the autumn of 2025, he was a postdoctoral visiting researcher at the School of Law of the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), hosted by Prof. Wang Lebing, and in 2023 a visiting PhD researcher at Beijing Normal University, hosted by Prof. Hu Junhong. Further research stays took him to the Italian Cultural Institute of the Embassy of Italy in Beijing in 2023 and 2024, and to the Centre for Chinese and East Asian Studies of Roma Tre University, where he has been an affiliate researcher since 2022.

Davide earned his PhD in Law and Innovation at the University of Macerata, defending in 2025. A monograph in Italian based on the dissertation, on the regulation of cultural production in the digital age between Europe and the People's Republic of China, is forthcoming. Before joining eLaw and Leiden University he held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Palermo within the NewSEASON project, funded under the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan.

Alongside research, he holds several representative offices in Italian higher education: National Secretary of ADI, the sole association of PhD candidates and PhD holders in Italy, founded in 1998; elected member of the National University Council, the advisory body to the Ministry of University and Research; and President of the Commission on Education, University and Research of the National Youth Council. Between 2022 and 2025 he served as the sole doctoral representative on the CNSU, the national council of university students. These offices involve drafting positions on legislation and ministerial decrees affecting doctoral training, academic recruitment and research funding, and negotiating them with ministries, parliamentary committees and university representative bodies.