SANTOS ANDRES
GUTIERREZ FIGUEROA

Santos Andrés Gutiérrez Figueroa holds a PhD in Law, is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Economic, Business and Communication Sciences of Universidad Europea de Madrid, and a practising lawyer. He co-leads the research group La Empresa del Futuro ('The Business of the Future'), through which he brings together legal and technological perspectives on the regulatory challenges posed by artificial intelligence and crypto-assets within the European business environment. His career unfolds simultaneously across academia and industry: alongside his teaching and research work, he serves as Legal Counsel at Bit2Me, one of Spain's leading cryptocurrency exchanges, a role that grounds his research in a first-hand understanding of the sector's operational realities. He is Principal Investigator of the IADetect project (CPP2023-010572), a consortium with Bit2Me and Dekalabs developing AI-based systems for fraud and market abuse detection in crypto-asset markets, in line with the MiCA Regulation. He also drives Spain's first university laboratory dedicated to dark web analysis for cybersecurity purposes, inspired by specialised natural language processing architectures. His scholarly output focuses on artificial intelligence governance (the AI Act), algorithmic explainability, crypto-asset regulation, data protection in blockchain environments, and applied cybersecurity, with work directed towards journals indexed in Scopus and Web of Science. In teaching, he combines legal rigour with a practice-oriented approach to business management, lecturing in Business Administration and leading large-scale educational innovation initiatives such as the Google AI Challenge, which has engaged over 1,300 students in building real-world artificial intelligence projects. His work sits at the crossroads where law, technology and business converge, driven by a constant aim: to anticipate the challenges that will govern the business of the future.