Samer Hassan is a

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

social scientist Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the ...

activist Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from mandate build ...

and researcher, focused on the study of the collaborative economy,

online communities An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members engage in computer-mediated communication primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, on ...

and decentralized technologies. He is

Associate Professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a position ...

Universidad Complutense de Madrid The Complutense University of Madrid (, UCM; ) is a public research university located in Madrid. Founded in Alcalá in 1293 (before relocating to Madrid in 1836), it is one of the oldest operating universities in the world, and one of Spain's ...

(Spain) and Faculty Associate at the

Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society is a research center at Harvard University that focuses on the study of cyberspace. Founded at Harvard Law School, the center traditionally focused on internet-related legal issues. On May 15, 2008, ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. He is the recipient of an ERC Grant of 1.5M€ with the P2P Models project, to research

blockchain The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...

-based

decentralized autonomous organization A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), sometimes called a decentralized autonomous corporation (DAC), is an organization managed in whole or in part by decentralized computer programs, with voting and finances handled through a decent ...

s for the collaborative economy.

Education & career

Samer Hassan is a scholar with an

interdisciplinary Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several fields such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, economi ...

background, which combines

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

s with

social science Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the ...

s and

activism Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make Social change, changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from ...

. He received a degree in Computer Science and MSc in

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

from the

(UCM) in Spain. He also studied 3 years of

Political Science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

at the distance learning university UNED. He has then undertaken a PhD in

Social Simulation Social simulation is a research field that applies computational methods to study issues in the social sciences. The issues explored include problems in computational law, psychology, organizational behavior, sociology, political science, econom ...

at the department of Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence of UCM, supervised by the computer scientist

Juan Pavón Juan Pavón (born 19 November 1962) is a Spanish computer scientist, full professor of the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). He is a pioneer researcher in the field of Software Agents, co-creator of the FIPA MESSAGE and INGENIAS methodolo ...

and the sociologist Millán Arroyo-Menéndez. He has been researching in several institutions, funded by several scholarships and awards, most notably Harvard's Real Colegio Complutense, and the Spanish postdoctoral grants

Juan de la Cierva Juan de la Cierva y Codorníu, 1st Count of la Cierva (; 21 September 1895 – 9 December 1936), was a Spanish civil engineer, pilot and a self-taught aeronautical engineer. His most famous accomplishment was the invention in 1920 of a rotorcr ...

and José Castillejo. Thus, he was a visiting researcher at the Centre for Research in Social Simulation, in the Department of

Sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...

at the

University of Surrey The University of Surrey is a public research university in Guildford, Surrey, England. The university received its Royal Charter, royal charter in 1966, along with a Plate glass university, number of other institutions following recommendations ...

in the UK, working under the supervision of

Nigel Gilbert Geoffrey Nigel Gilbert (born 21 March 1950) is a British sociologist and a pioneer in the use of agent-based models in the social sciences. He is the founder and director of the ''Centre for Research in Social Simulation'' (University of Surre ...

(2007-2008), and a lecturer at the

American University of Science and Technology The American University of Science and Technology (AUST; ) is a private, non-sectarian, and co-educational American university in Lebanon. It was established in 1989 in Beirut, under the name of the ''American Universal College'' through Decr ...

in Lebanon (2010–11). He was selected as Fellow at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society at

(2015-2017) and is presently a Faculty Associate at the same structure.

Activism & social engagement

As an activist, Samer Hassan has been engaged in both offline (

La Tabacalera de Lavapiés Tabacalera de Lavapiés (''Tabacalera of Lavapiés'') or Centro Social Autogestionado La Tabacalera de Lavapiés (''Self-managed Social Center Tabacalera of Lavapiés'') is a well-known cultural and social center in Madrid, Spain. It consists of a ...

Medialab-Prado The Medialab Matadero, formerly known as Medialab Prado, is a cultural space and citizen lab in Madrid (Spain). It was created by the Madrid City Council in 2000, growing since then into a leading center for citizen innovation. It follows a partici ...

) and online ( Ourproject.org,

Barrapunto Barrapunto was a Spanish-language Slashdot-like website, founded on 7 June 1999, which is part of a complex social network among Spanish-language websites. In 2006, it was the winner of a 20Blogs Award from the online newspaper ''20 minutos'', in ...

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

) initiatives. He was accredited as a grassroots facilitator by the Altekio Cooperative. He co-founded the

Comunes A (; : , ) is an administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions () and provinces (). The can also have the title of (). Formed ac ...

Nonprofit in 2009 and the Move Commons webtool project in 2010. He has co-organized practitioner-oriented workshops on platform co-ops and free/open source decentralized tools for communities, and has presented his work in non-academic conferences of

Mozilla Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institution ...

, the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

, and others. As a privacy advocate, he co-created a course on cyber-ethics which has been teaching since 2013 (as of 2021). He was co-founder of the Sci-Fdi Spanish

science-fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, sp ...

magazine.

Work

Hassan's interdisciplinary research spans multiple fields, including online communities, online governance, online collaboration, decentralized technologies,

-based

s, free/libre/open source software, Commons-based peer production,

agent-based social simulation Agent-based social simulation (or ABSS) consists of social simulations that are based on agent-based modeling, and implemented using artificial agent technologies. Agent-based social simulation is a scientific discipline concerned with simulation ...

social movements A social movement is either a loosely or carefully organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social or political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to resist or undo one. It is a type of ...

and

cyberethics Cyberethics is "a branch of ethics concerned with behavior in an online environment". In another definition, it is the "exploration of the entire range of ethical and moral issues that arise in cyberspace" while cyberspace is understood to be "th ...

. He has published more than 60 works in these fields. Samer Hassan's PhD thesis focused on the methodological challenges for building data-driven social simulation models. The main model built simulated the transition from modern values to postmodern values in Spain. His methodological work also explored the combination of different Artificial Intelligence technologies, i.e. software agents with

fuzzy logic Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic in which the truth value of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1. It is employed to handle the concept of partial truth, where the truth value may range between completely true and completely ...

data mining Data mining is the process of extracting and finding patterns in massive data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Data mining is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and ...

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...

, and

microsimulation Microsimulation is the use of computerized analytical tools to perform analysis of activities such as highway traffic flowing through an intersection, financial transactions, or pathogens spreading disease through a population on the granularity ...

. In his postdoctoral period, he focused on experimenting with multiple software systems to facilitate the collaborative economy, e.g. semantic-web labelling for commons-based initiatives, distribution of value in peer production communities, agent-supported online assemblies, decentralized real-time collaborative software, decentralized blockchain based reputation, or blockchain-enabled commons governance. Hassan was Principal Investigator of the UCM partner in the EU-funded P2Pvalue project on building decentralized web-tools for collaborative communities. As such, he led the team that created SwellRT, a federated backend-as-a-service focused to ease development of apps featuring real-time collaboration. Intellectual Property of this project was transferred to the

Apache Software Foundation The Apache Software Foundation ( ; ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) to support a number of open-source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the ...

in 2017. As part of this research line, Hassan's team also develop two SwellRT-based apps, "Teem" for management of social collectives and Jetpad, a federated real time editor. He presented the innovations concerning these software at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center and Harvard's Center for Research on Computation and Society. Other research lines offered outcomes beyond publications. "Wikichron", coled by Javier Arroyo, is a web tool to visualize MediaWiki community metrics, currently in production and available for third-parties. "Decentralized Science", led by Hassan's PhD student Ámbar Tenorio-Fornés, is a framework to facilitate decentralized infrastructure and open peer review in the scientific publication process, which has been selected by the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

to receive funding as a spin-off social enterprise. His research on blockchain and crowdfunding models awarded him with a commission from

Triple Canopy Triple Canopy, Inc., is an American private security company and private military company (PMC) that provides armed security, mission support, and risk management services to corporate and government clients. The firm was founded in May 2003 by ...

. His team pushed forward a mapping of the ecosystem of blockchain for social good, led by the

Joint Research Centre The Joint Research Centre (JRC) is the European Commission's science and knowledge service which employs scientists to carry out research in order to provide independent scientific advice and support to European Union (EU) policy. Leadersh ...

and published by the European Commission. As part of his ERC project P2P Models, Samer Hassan and his team –including Silvia Semenzin– are investigating whether blockchain technology and

Decentralized Autonomous Organization A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), sometimes called a decentralized autonomous corporation (DAC), is an organization managed in whole or in part by decentralized computer programs, with voting and finances handled through a decent ...

s could contribute to improving the governance of commons-oriented communities, both online and offline. Their work has been showcased for tackling the impact of blockchain on governance, proposing alternatives to the current sharing economy, emerging forms of techno-social systems like NFTs, or giving relevance to gender issues in the field. Hassan was invited to present the project achievements in

Harvard Kennedy School The John F. Kennedy School of Government, commonly referred to as Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), is the school of public policy of Harvard University, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard Kennedy School offers master's de ...

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...

, Harvard's Data Privacy Lab, Harvard's Center for Research on Computation and Society, and Harvard's

SEAS This is a list of seas of the World Ocean, including marginal seas, areas of water, various gulfs, bights, bays, and straits. In many cases it is a matter of tradition for a body of water to be named a sea or a bay, etc., therefore all these t ...

EconCS. British MP and Opposition Leader

Ed Miliband Edward Samuel Miliband (born 24 December 1969) is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero since July 2024. He has been Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) for D ...

showcased his research and its potential impact on policy. The project made public its way of organizing and its core values. In particular, it has shown a commitment to diversity as a core value in hiring, or choosing case studies. This may be related to Hassan being Spanish/Lebanese or using ''he/they'' as pronouns.

Selected works

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References

External links