Dr. Melissa Omino is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya and a leading expert on intellectual property, artificial intelligence governance, and data policy, with a sustained focus on African legal and institutional contexts. She directs the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) at Strathmore University, where she leads research and advisory work spanning AI policy, data governance, language data, and IP frameworks for Africa and the Global South. Her doctoral training in mercantile law (LLD, University of Fort Hare; LLM, Stellenbosch) underpins more than a decade of policy and academic engagement on the legal architecture for digital economies in Kenya and East Africa. She co-developed the Nwulite Obodo Open Data Licence (NOODL) for equitable sharing of African datasets, work recognised by the LSGL Research Award (2025) and published in Law, Technology and Humans.