Core Researchers

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Jinzhou Wu

I am a high school student from China studying in the U.S. With first-hand experience of the world's polarization, I strive to find a solution by providing multiple perspectives. I am working on a democratic forum for voting, discussion, and debate. By exploring both technical and social protocols, I hope to build a modern version of democracy, with accountable votes and autonomous decision-making thanks to blockchain and smart contracts. It's time for a change in democracy- a technical one.

https://schoolofathens.world/about/jinzhou

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Mashal Waqar

Mashal Waqar is an entrepreneur by experience, writer by passion, and techie by education. She's helped grow startups in media, D2C, and femtech. Her recent projects including building a revenue-focused business accelerator for female founders, a consultancy focused on community building, and heading operations at a web3 product studio. She's passionate about learning/unlearning, LOTR, and specialty coffee.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mashalwaqar/


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Saffron Huang

Saffron Huang is the co-founder and co-director of the Collective Intelligence Project, and a Winter Fellow at the Center for the Governance of AI. Before she was a research engineer at DeepMind working on topics such as multi-agent RL and language models, and has worked on technology governance with organizations including the Ethereum Foundation, 0xPARC, Reboot, the Berkman Klein Center and the British Foreign Office. She co-founded Kernel Magazine.

saffronhuang.com

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Spencer Chang

Spencer Chang is a technologist, new media artist, and designer stewarding the internet towards a medium for intimacy, creation, and solidarity. Their interdependent practice spans open-source libraries, internet environments, local-first apps, and multimedia installations. Before, they designed and built tools to democratize programming for several years at Coda and Verses. Their work has been featured and supported by the de Young Museum, CultureHub, MIT Technology Review, Frieze, and Gray Area.

https://www.spencerchang.me/


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Feven Mekonenn

I have a background in radio production at NPR and several small FM stations. Through my audio work I was able to become a recipient of Adobe’s Creativity Scholarship and served as a Scholar in Residence at Town Hall Seattle. In college, I first pursued studies in forestry, but later shifted my focus to economics and math. Now all in on crypto/decentralized tech, I currently work at SheFi, a leading crypto educational initiative, where I lead program management, community, strategy and ops.

https://twitter.com/feven206

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Alice Noujaim

Alice is an anthropologist who works with various non-profit organizations in the areas of education and culture. She holds a Master’s in Museum Anthropology from Columbia University and researches institutional dynamics of archiving, digital preservation of open-ended objects and places, and infrastructural dependencies in art. Based in São Paulo, she is an assistant researcher at Plataforma Democrática and a member of research collectives micro-histórias and Infrastructural Dispositions.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alice-noujaim-teixeira-767914140/


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Shreeda Segan

Shreeda is currently an editorial writer at Meridian (meridian.mercury.com) where she covers web3, entrepreneurship, and generally what it means to be a founder. She also participates in weekly Governance Studies calls at Yak Collective.

https://shreedasegan.com/

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Aaron Z Lewis

DC-based media ecologist, time designer, and educator-architect. I'm building learning landscapes across digital & physical space. The Other Internet Research Institute is where I make art that explores how networks are reshaping our economies, psychologies, and religiosities. The U Street Neighborhood Association is where I design convivial gatherings, workshops, and programs that help neighbors find common ground and grow together.

aaronzlewis.com


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Nahee Kim

Nahee Kim, an artist and web programmer, has developed a speculative application, nahee.app, that utilizes their sexual identity and experiences to create sex code, documentation, and partner matching algorithms. By adapting programming languages and network protocols, nahee.app creates provocative interactions and explores new forms of intimacy, including human reproduction through the project "Daddy Residency". Nahee is a member of the South Korean artist collective 업체eobchae.

https://nahee.app/

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Steve Powers

Hi, my name is Steve Powers. I am a research economist with a passion for exploring the intersection of protocols, economics, and philosophy. While working in connection with the Montreal Protocol Scientific Assessment Panel I developed insight into how systems of protocols and their caretakers can accomplish impressive cooperation between peers. My experience in environmental and developmental economics informs my goal of organizing complex decision spaces to improve policy decisions.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-powers-b8356913a/


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Fangting

Fangting is a writer and researcher primarily focused on crypto, tech narratives, and science fiction. Her science fiction works will be exhibited at ACM SIGGRAPH DAC and Bazaar Art, and she also serves as a reviewer for the Chinese Nebula Awards. Her work is supported by Lulu Derivation, the Ethereum Foundation, and GCC. She holds a bachelor's degree in Chinese Language and Literature from Peking University and has one year of RA experience in the Department of Communication at Stanford.

https://fangting.me

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Laura Cristina Sinisterra Ciro

I'm a visual designer, artist, and philosophy student. Formally trained as an architect, I have a multidisciplinary approach to everything I do. I am particularly interested in diagrams, art theory and time management, both from the perspective of the theory and the practice. I also enjoy experimenting intentionally with analog and digital illustrations, drafting structures for personal project management and learning new things.

https://laurasinisterra.github.io/portfolio-site/


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Janna Tay

Janna is a tech / corporate lawyer, and occasional essayist and poet. Her legal practice is in M&A, tech transformations, governance, IP, privacy, and new technologies. Her research interests lie at the intersection of law, tech, and philosophy, and in understanding law as a force for human flourishing that shapes and is shaped by the technologies through which it is mediated (writing, code, AI, blockchain). She also loves literature that explores time, memory, consciousness, and the sacred.

https://janna.netlify.app/

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Brett Jiro Fujioka

I hail from Los Angeles, California, but currently work in Chicago, Illinois as an IT Business Analyst. My writing has been featured in Tablet Magazine, Gamasutra, Noema Magazine, The Rafu Shimpo, Giant Robot Magazine, and various academic journals. My interests and writing focus on the intersection between theory, criticism, literature, technology, and the reception of Postmodernism in Japan.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-fujioka/


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Olivia Steiert

Olivia is a Ph.D. student in sociology at The New School for Social Research in New York City. From a cultural sociological perspective, she studies how visual and textual discourses of climate change reverberate in society at the intersections of politics, science, and media. Her research aims at tracing the uptake of future imaginations contained in concepts, models, projections, and plans.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivia-steiert

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Seth Killian

Seth Killian is an American game designer best known for his work on competitive games such as Street Fighter and Fortnite. He is a cofounder of the Evo Championship Series, one of largest and longest-running gaming competitions in the world. The size and dedication of gaming audiences offer practical insights into the function of cooperative and competitive protocols (from hardcoded win conditions to more nebulous social expectations between players) at scale, over time, and under duress.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/seth-killian-8858ba3/


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Shuya Gong

Shuya Gong is an interaction designer with a background in mechanical engineering and ventures, focused on the emotional ergonomics of cyberphysical systems. Her work in emerging technology started in 2015, building proof of concepts for blockchain applications. Shuya is an innovation fellow and lecturer at Harvard School of Engineering, an investor at IDEO CoLab Ventures, and a partner at Maybe Ventures. You can find her on the internet @ohmygong

www.shuyagong.com

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Eric Alston

Eric Alston is a Scholar in Residence in the Finance Division at University of Colorado Boulder. Eric’s research is grounded in the fields of institutional and organizational analysis & law and economics, and explores constitutions, economic rights on frontiers, and digital governance specifically. Eric is also currently engaged in governance design for several distributed network projects.

https://www.colorado.edu/business/leeds-directory/faculty/eric-c-alston


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Garrette

Interested in crypto market physics on a standalone and macro basis. Seven years in cryptoland across mining, capital markets, protocol launches and degeneracy. Former neuroscientist.

Www.notavailable.com