Ana Santos Rutschman

Professor of Law
Faculty Director of the Health Innovation Lab

Biography

Ana Santos Rutschman, professor of law, teaches and researches topics related to health law, intellectual property, innovation in the life sciences and law and technology. She is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on vaccine law and policy, the regulation of emerging health technologies and access to medicines. At Villanova, Rutschman is the founder and director of the Health Innovation Lab, an interdisciplinary platform that brings together academic researchers, students, policymakers, practitioners, industry and the Philadelphia and Northeast Corridor communities.

Rutschman’s work has been recognized by numerous institutions, including the American Society of Law Medicine & Ethics, which named her a Health Law Scholar in 2018 and Bio Intellectual Property Scholar in 2017. In 2018, she was also named a Wiet Life Sciences Law Scholar by the Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy at Loyola University Chicago. In 2022, the Boston Congress of Public Health selected her as one of the inaugural recipients of a 40 Under 40 Public Health Catalyst Award for her work on vaccine law and policy.

Rutschman’s book, Vaccines as Technology: Innovation, Barriers and the Public Health, was published in 2022 by Cambridge University Press. Her legal scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in UCLA Law Review, Emory Law Journal, Indiana Law Journal, UC Davis Law Review, Arizona Law Review, Yale Law Journal Forum, Harvard Public Health Review and Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, among several others. Her peer-reviewed work has appeared in Nature Biotechnology, Vaccine, Emerging Infectious Diseases and American Journal of Infection Control, among others. Her commentary pieces have been published by Health Affairs Blog, Bill of Health, Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, the Huffington Post and The Conversation, and republished in Scientific American, Newsweek Japan and numerous US newspapers.

Before joining Villanova Law in 2022, Rutschman taught in the health law program at Saint Louis University School of Law (2018-2022) and served as the inaugural Jaharis Fellow in Health Law and Intellectual Property at DePaul University College of Law in Chicago (2016-2018). Rutschman has also consulted for the World Health Organization in (2022 and 2015-2016) on matters related to the development of drugs and vaccines against COVID-19, Zika and Ebola. 

Practice Experience:

• Consultant, World Health Organization (2022; 2015-2016)
• Joined the faculty in 2022