Author: Samer Hassan (Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University; Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
I'm Samer Hassan (PhD), an activist and researcher, Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society (Harvard University) and Assistant Professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). I have carried out research in decentralized systems, social simulation and artificial intelligence from positions in the University of Surrey (UK) and the American University of Science & Technology (Lebanon). Coming from a multidisciplinary background in Computer Science and Social Sciences, I have more than 45 publications in those fields (H-index=11). Engaged in free/open source projects, I co-founded the Comunes Nonprofit and the Move Commons webtool project, and have experience in multiple communities and grassroots initiatives. I'm involved as UCM Principal Investigator in the EU-funded P2Pvalue project on building decentralized webtools for Commons-based peer production.
I have experience working with federated social networks and federated collaborative systems since 2009. I have been researching and experimenting with Blockchain since 2014, and I co-host the Berkman Center blockchain working group. I'm especially interested in smart contracts and the potentials of blockchain technologies for social good or large-scale cooperation, and would be happy to facilitate a discussion to understand the technical challenges to make that possible.
Samer Hassan