Yochai Benkler is the Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School and a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. His work traverses a wide range of disciplines and sectors, and is taught in sundry professional schools and academic departments. He writes about the Internet and the emergence of networked economy and society, as well as the organization of infrastructure, such as wireless communications. His work can be freely accessed at benkler.org.
Robert Faris is the Research Director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where he manages research activities related to the impact of digital technologies on freedom of expression, media, development, and governance.
Jazem Halioui is a tech entrepreneur with nineteen years of experience in bootstrapping and managing companies in Tunisia, France, and the USA. He specializes in big data and machine learning. He is currently the CEO of Innova Tunisia (WebRadar, media monitoring and analytics) and a board member of Viamobile (mobile payments). He is also an active advocate of open governance (opengov).
Nagham El Houssamy pursued her undergraduate studies at The American University in Cairo (AUC) and graduated with a BA in political science, specializing in international law and international relations with a minor in economics. Upon graduating in 2009, she started work as an economic researcher in the Macro-Fiscal Policy Unit at the Egyptian Ministry of Finance. She completed her MA in Economics in International Development at AUC in 2012. She also interned at the ICT Policies Unit of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for West Asia in Beirut. She joined the Access to Knowledge for Development Center in June 2012, serving as the network’s North Africa Hub coordinator for the Open African Innovation Research Project (Open A.I.R.). She was awarded an Open A.I.R. fellowship to spend three months at the Intellectual Property Unit at the University of Cape Town, South Africa from November 2013-February 2014. She is currently a Research Coordinator at the Access to Knowledge for Development Center at AUC.
Escander Nagazi is an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) specialist with five years of experience in the fields of international cooperation for development and academic research in the MENA region. He has served as an ICT expert at the German cooperation for development (GIZ) since 2011. He is also a researcher at the University of Tunis. His current research focuses on information and communication technologies in the context of local governance and digital activism with a special focus on digital learning and open data.
Helmi Noman is a Research Affiliate of the Berkman Center. His research focuses on Internet censorship in the Middle East and North Africa; exploring the impact of information and communication technologies on the Arab information societies; how the use of the Internet defies the social and political structures; and the potential systemic changes cyberspace can bring to real space in the Arab region.
Fares Mabrouk is the Director of the Arab Policy Institute, a Tunis-based think tank. He also leads Yunus Social Business (YSB) global acceleration programs.
Dalia Othman is a Research Fellow at the Berkman Center and a Visiting Scholar at MIT’s Center for Civic Media. Her research focuses on online communities and civic engagement in the Arab World. Dalia’s work also focuses on forms of digital storytelling through data that promote civic engagement and socio-political change. Her project NetStories.org aims to help communities and journalists find the best online tools to tell their stories. Prior to Berkman, Dalia was an Associate Professor teaching New Media at Bard College- Abu Dis and Birzeit University. She was a Fulbright Scholar from 2009-2011, where she completed her MA in Media, Culture and Communication at New York University.
Nagla Rizk is a Professor of Economics at the School of Business, the American University in Cairo (AUC). She is the founding director of the Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) at AUC and an affiliated fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Her area of research is the economics of knowledge, information technology, and development, with a focus on business models in the digital economy, intellectual property, and human development in Egypt and the Arab region. Rizk is the co-author of the first Arab Knowledge Report (2009) and co-editor and contributor to Access to Knowledge in Egypt, New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development (2010). She served as Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research at AUC’s School of Business and Chair of the economics department at AUC. She also taught at Yale Law School and at the University of Toronto. She has a PhD in Economics from McMaster University.
Nadine Weheba is a Research Officer at the Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) at the American University in Cairo, where she is engaged in a number of projects including research on digital activism and mobilization in MENA as well digital entrepreneurship and access to knowledge in the region. Nadine received her MSc in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London in 2013. She holds a BA in economics from The American University in Cairo.