Samer Hassan facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Samer Hassan
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| Born |
Samer Hassan Collado
1982 (age 42–43) Madrid, Spain
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| Nationality | Spanish / Lebanese |
| Other names | Samer Hassan Collado |
| Alma mater | Universidad Complutense de Madrid, University of Surrey |
| Awards | Triple Canopy, ERC Grant |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Blockchain, Commons, Peer-to-peer, Agent-based modelling, Social simulation |
| Institutions | Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (Harvard University) |
| Thesis | Towards a Data-driven Approach for Agent-Based Modelling: Simulating Spanish Postmodernisation (2010) |
| Doctoral advisor | Juan Pavón, Millán Arroyo Mendéndez |
Samer Hassan is a computer scientist and social scientist. He is also a researcher and an activist. He studies how people work together online. This includes looking at online communities and new technologies that are decentralized.
He is a professor at Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain. He also works at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Samer Hassan received a special grant called an ERC Grant. This grant, worth 1.5 million euros, helps him research blockchain technology. He uses it to study how decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) can help people share things in new ways.
Contents
Learning and Career Path
Samer Hassan has a unique background. He combines computer science with social science and activism. He earned a degree in Computer Science from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) in Spain. He also got a master's degree in Artificial Intelligence from the same university.
He also studied Political Science for three years. This was at a distance learning university called UNED. Later, he earned his PhD in Social Simulation from UCM. His PhD looked at how to use computers to understand social changes.
Research Around the World
Samer Hassan has done research at many different places. He received several scholarships and awards for his work. One important award was from Harvard's Real Colegio Complutense. He also received Spanish postdoctoral grants.
He was a visiting researcher at the University of Surrey in the UK. There, he worked on social simulations from 2007 to 2008. He also taught at the American University of Science and Technology in Lebanon. From 2015 to 2017, he was a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He is now a Faculty Associate there.
Making a Difference: Activism and Community Work
Samer Hassan is very involved in helping communities. He has worked with both real-world groups and online projects. Some of his offline projects include La Tabacalera de Lavapiés and Medialab-Prado. Online, he has been part of Ourproject.org, Barrapunto, and Wikipedia.
He helped start the Comunes Nonprofit in 2009. He also co-created the Move Commons web tool in 2010. He has helped organize workshops about platform co-ops. These workshops teach people how to use free and open-source tools. These tools help communities work together in a decentralized way.
He has shared his work at non-academic conferences. These include events by Mozilla and the Internet Archive. Samer Hassan also cares about online privacy. Since 2013, he has taught a course on cyber-ethics. This course helps people understand how to be safe and responsible online. He also helped start Sci-Fdi, a Spanish science-fiction magazine.
His Research and Projects
Samer Hassan's research covers many areas. He studies online communities and how they are governed. He also looks at how people collaborate online. A big part of his work involves blockchain technology. He researches how decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) use blockchain.
He also studies free and open-source software. He looks at how people create things together, like in Commons-based peer production. His work includes using computers to simulate social situations. He also studies social movements and cyberethics, which is about online behavior. He has published over 60 works on these topics.
Understanding Social Change with Computers
Samer Hassan's PhD research focused on how to build computer models. These models use real-world information to simulate social changes. His main model showed how values changed in Spain. He also explored combining different Artificial Intelligence technologies. These included software agents, fuzzy logic, data mining, and natural language processing.
Building Tools for Collaboration
After his PhD, he worked on software systems. These systems help people collaborate and share things online. For example, he worked on ways to label shared initiatives on the web. He also studied how to share value in online communities. He explored using software agents to support online meetings. He also looked into decentralized software for real-time collaboration.
Samer Hassan was a main researcher for the P2Pvalue project. This project, funded by the EU, built decentralized web tools. His team created SwellRT. This is a special tool that helps developers create apps. These apps allow people to collaborate in real-time. The rights to this project were given to the Apache Software Foundation in 2017.
His team also developed two apps using SwellRT. "Teem" helps manage social groups. "Jetpad" is a real-time editor that works across different systems. He presented these new software tools at Harvard.
Other Cool Projects
Samer Hassan's research has led to more than just publications. One project is "Wikichron," which he co-led. It's a web tool that shows information about MediaWiki communities. It's currently being used by others.
Another project is "Decentralized Science." This project helps create decentralized ways for scientists to share their work. It also helps with open peer review. The European Commission chose this project for funding. It will become a social enterprise.
His research on blockchain and crowdfunding models earned him a special project with Triple Canopy. His team also mapped out how blockchain is used for social good. This map was published by the European Commission.
Blockchain and Community Governance
As part of his ERC project called P2P Models, Samer Hassan and his team are exploring blockchain technology. They are looking at how Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) can improve how communities are run. This applies to both online and offline groups.
Their work has shown how blockchain can affect governance. They propose new ways of sharing resources, different from the current sharing economy. They also look at new techno-social systems like NFTs. His team also makes sure to consider gender issues in their field.
Samer Hassan has been invited to present his project's achievements at many places. These include Harvard Kennedy School, MIT Media Lab, and Harvard's Data Privacy Lab. The project has also shared how it organizes itself and its core values. It is committed to diversity when hiring and choosing case studies.
See also
- P2Pvalue project at WikiMedia Meta
- SwellRT
- Decentralized autonomous organization
- Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society
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