As an activist, Samer Hassan has been engaged in both offline (La Tabacalera de Lavapiés,[12]Medialab-Prado)[13] and online (Ourproject.org,[14]Barrapunto,[15]Wikipedia[16]) initiatives. He was accredited as a grassroots facilitator by the Altekio Cooperative.[6] He co-founded the Comunes Nonprofit in 2009[14] and the Move Commons webtool project in 2010.[17][18] He has co-organized practitioner-oriented workshops on platform co-ops[19] and free/open source decentralized tools for communities,[20] and has presented his work in non-academic conferences of Mozilla,[21] the Internet Archive,[22] and others.[9] As a privacy advocate, he co-created a course on cyber-ethics which has been teaching since 2013 (as of 2021).[23][24] He was co-founder of the Sci-Fdi Spanish science-fiction magazine.[25][26]
Samer Hassan's PhD thesis[5] 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, data mining, natural language processing, and microsimulation.[5][40]
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,[41] distribution of value in peer production communities,[42] agent-supported online assemblies,[43] decentralized real-time collaborative software,[44] decentralized blockchain based reputation,[45] or blockchain-enabled commons governance.[46]
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.[30] Intellectual Property of this project was transferred to the Apache Software Foundation in 2017.[47] As part of this research line, Hassan's team also develop two SwellRT-based apps, "Teem" for management of social collectives[48][49][50] and Jetpad, a federated real time editor.[51][52][53][54] He presented the innovations concerning these software at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center[12] and Harvard's Center for Research on Computation and Society.[55]
Other research lines offered outcomes beyond publications. "Wikichron",[56][57][58] coled by Javier Arroyo, is a web tool to visualize MediaWiki community metrics, currently in production and available for third-parties.[59] "Decentralized Science",[60][61][62] 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 to receive funding as a spin-off social enterprise.[63] His research on blockchain and crowdfunding models[64] awarded him with a commission from Triple Canopy.[65] His team pushed forward a mapping of the ecosystem of blockchain for social good, led by the Joint Research Centre and published by the European Commission.[66]
As part of his ERC project P2P Models, Samer Hassan and his team –including Silvia Semenzin– are investigating whether blockchain technology and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations could contribute to improving the governance of commons-oriented communities, both online and offline.[29] Their work has been showcased for tackling the impact of blockchain on governance,[67][68][69] proposing alternatives to the current sharing economy,[70][71][72][73][74] emerging forms of techno-social systems like NFTs,[75][76] or giving relevance to gender issues in the field.[77] Hassan was invited to present the project achievements in Harvard Kennedy School,[29]MIT Media Lab,[78] Harvard's Data Privacy Lab,[79] Harvard's Center for Research on Computation and Society,[80] and Harvard's SEAS EconCS.[81] British MP and Opposition Leader Ed Miliband showcased his research and its potential impact on policy.[82] The project made public its way of organizing[83] and its core values.[84] In particular, it has shown a commitment to diversity as a core value[84] in hiring,[85][86] or choosing case studies.[87] This may be related to Hassan being Spanish/Lebanese or using "he/they" as pronouns.[2][88]
^De Filippi, Primavera; Hassan, Samer (2015). "Measuring Value in Commons-Based Ecosystem: Bridging the Gap between the Commons and the Market". The MoneyLab Reader, Institute of Network Cultures.
^Tenorio-Fornés, Antonio; Jacynycz, Viktor; Llop-Vila, David; Sánchez-Ruiz, Antonio; Hassan, Samer (8 January 2019). Towards a Decentralized Process for Scientific Publication and Peer Review using Blockchain and IPFS. doi:10.24251/HICSS.2019.560. ISBN978-0-9981331-2-6. S2CID92988902.
^Jacynycz, Viktor; Calvo, Adrian; Hassan, Samer; Sánchez-Ruiz, Antonio A. (2016). "Betfunding: A Distributed Bounty-Based Crowdfunding Platform over Ethereum". In Omatu, Sigeru; Semalat, Ali; Bocewicz, Grzegorz; Sitek, Paweł; Nielsen, Izabela E.; García García, Julián A.; Bajo, Javier (eds.). Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence, 13th International Conference. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Vol. 474. Springer International Publishing. pp. 403–411. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-40162-1_44. ISBN978-3-319-40162-1.
^"Submissions". Triple Canopy. Retrieved 10 December 2019.
