Nathan Freitas

nathan@freitas.net - +1.718.569.7272 - http://nathan.freitas.net - @n8fr8 - pgp:0x69B37AA9

I have worked for fifteen years in the field of mobile communications and security software and systems, with a deep set of experience organizations, applications and platforms. In 1999, I founded ThinAirApps, a mobile enterprise software startup that developed a pioneering secure mobile email and business application platform. We were acquired by Palm, inc in 2001, where I led the mobile Java initiative in partnership with IBM, Sun and others. After a few years there, I left to apply my technical and security skills to humanitarian, human rights and civic applications, by working with human rights organizations and government initiatives, and teaching graduate students at New York University how to do the same. Since 2009, I have led the Guardian Project, an award-winning, open-source, mobile security effort with millions users worldwide, thanks to grant funding from Google, the Knight Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, HIVOS and Eric and Wendy Schmidt. I am also currently a Fellow, at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, at Harvard University.

ACADEMIA

• Advisor, NuLawLab, NorthEastern Univeristy - 2019 - Ongoing
• Fellow and Affiliate Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School - 2014 - Ongoing
• Adjunct Professor, NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program, Fall 2009 - Fall 2011: Graduate course “Social Activism through Mobile Technology”, a hands-on workshop leading the students through real world case studies and development with partners
• University of California, Santa Barbara, College of Creative Studies, Bachelor of Arts. High Honors, 1992 - 1996: Music Composition, Software Digital Synthesis and Signal Processing

INDUSTRY

• Founder, Development Lead, The Guardian Project - May 2010 - Ongoing Open-source mobile security apps and solutions - https://guardianproject.info
• Director of Technology, Rights Action Lab, May 2009 - Ongoing: rightsactionlab.org
• Open Data & Mobile Specialist, New York State Senate, New York, 2009-2011 The CIO office at the New York State Senate launched their Open Government initiative in the Spring of 2009, and recruited industry experts to advise and implement strategies to bring open-source technologies and best practices to the legislative process.
• Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer, Cruxy, Brooklyn, NY 2005-2008 Led the development of cloud-based media services used by independent artists, music labels, film studios and others to distribute and sell digital media in a variety of online venues, including mobile devices, social networks, and virtual worlds.
• Enterprise Software Architect / Senior Product Manager, Palm, Inc. Milpitas, CA 2001-2004 Led the technology strategy for alliances with IBM, Sun and BEA Systems, drove the licensing and development of a certified Java runtime for Palm devices, and helped build our developers community at events such as PalmSource and JavaOne.
• Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer, ThinAirApps New York, NY 1998-2001 ThinAirApps (TAA) was a venture-funded startup, based on technology assets I developed, including ThinAirMail, the featured email app for the first Palm wireless devices. Our patented mobile email and groupware software was deployed at corporate, government and academic institutions worldwide. TAA was acquired by Palm, Inc. in 2001.
• Researcher & Developer, Alexandria Digital Library Project, Dept of Computer Science / DARPA / NSF, UC SANTA BARBARA — 1996-1998 Led client development for early XML-based web services geospatial digital library repository. Five year project funded by DARPA, NSF, NASA.

RECOGNITION AND AWARDS

• 2018 "Wireless Innovation for a Networked Society (WINS) Challenge." - Mozilla & National Science Foundation Grand Prize Winner
• 2014 Eric & Wendy Schmidt: “New Age Digital” grant: The New Digital Age Grants were established to highlight organizations that use technology to counter the global challenges Schmidt and Google Ideas Director Jared Cohen write about in their book THE NEW DIGITAL AGE, including government-sponsored censorship, disaster relief and crime fighting. https://guardianproject.info/2014/03/10/eric-schmidt-awards-guardian-project-a-new-digital-age-grant/
• 2012 Pizzigati Prize: The Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest annually awards a cash grant to one individual who has created or led an effort to create an open source software product of significant value to the nonprofit sector and movements for social change.
• First Prize Grant, University of California, Berkeley Human Rights Center, Mobile Challenge, Spring 2009
: Proposal to develop a secure, open-source smartphone, based on Google Android, for use by political activists and human rights advocates around the globe working within surveillance states.
• Harvard Business School Business Plan Contest 2006 - 2nd Prize Winner - Team: Jonathan Oakes (HBS), Nathan Freitas: 
Open Network Television, LLC (ONTV) was founded in 2005 to reinvent the way ideas and inspirations are shared, experienced and commercialized in a digital world.
• PATENT (WO/2002/067114) METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR THE CREATION OF MOBILE SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS: The present inventio- +1.718.569.7272 -n provides a method and apparatus for the creation of software applications that enable the interaction between a mobile business user with a wireless device or handset to interact with functions and information stored in a remote networked server. http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2002067114 

(WO/2001/052016)
• PATENT SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE FOR WIRELESS DATA AND METHOD OF OPERATION THEREOF: A software architecture, data model, and access protocol to facilitate real time, session-based access to server-based (30) data from low bandwidth wireless computing devices (20, 22 and 24). http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?IA=WO2001052016

PUBLIC TALKS, PANELS AND CONFERENCES

• “The Great Firewall Inverts” Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society, January 2015
• Freebird Rio<->NYC: Open Mobile Workshop and RightsCon (Rio De Janeiro) 2012
• Personal Democracy Forum, NYC 2011-2014
• UC Berkeley - Human Rights Center “Advancing the New Machine” - April 2011
• Liberation Technology conference; Stanford University, October 2010
• New York Senate Open Legislation Service and Mobile Apps - Personal Democracy Forum, May 2010
• SCE US Helsinki Congressional Commission Hearing - "Twitter Against Tyrants: New Media in Authoritarian Regimes" - Fall 2009
• Columbia University - Computer Science Lecture - “Mobile User Experience” and “Advanced Android Development”
• Amazon’s Web Services The Start-Up Project - New York - 2007 - Cooper Union - “Cruxy.com and Amazon Web Services”
• Speaker, New York Law School “Amateur Hour” 2007 - “New Opportunities in Amateur Interactive Content”
• 2005: Mobile Active Convergence: Toronto: participated in the first-ever gathering of global activists and organizers using mobile phones in their campaign, human rights, and political work
• PalmSource Developer Conference - Munchen - 2003 - “Java on Palm”
• IBM WebSphere Developer Conference - 2003 - New Orleans, LA
• “Java on Palm”
- PalmSource Developer Conference - 1999
• ThinAirApps “Wireless Email on the PalmVII”
- Wireless World 2000 - New York
• "The Alexandria Digital Library: A Java Interface to Geospatial Information." (With Robert Nideffer). Getty Information Institute. Los Angeles, California. January 21, 1998.
• "Advanced Visualization Services: Collaborative Environments." (Software Application/Paper. With Robert Nideffer). Digital Library Initiative: All Projects Meeting. University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, California. January 5-6, 1998.
• "Research Across Disciplines Testbed Projects." (With Victoria Vesna and Robert Nideffer). Visual Research Lab. University of California, San Diego. San Diego, California. November 24, 1997.
• "The Alexandria Digital Library." (Software Application. With Robert Nideffer). Java Tools for Science Analysis and Visualization. Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Pasadena, California. November 19, 1997.

PUBLICATIONS AND EXHIBITIONS

• Harvard Berkman Center - 2014 Internet Monitor Report “Reflections on the Digital World”
• Contributor - “Watching Videoblogs”: Videoblogging By Jay Dedman, Joshua Kinberg, Joshua Paul. Published by John Wiley and Sons, 2006: http://books.google.com/books?id=2kMMrzbkTmMC
• James Frew, Michael Freeston, Nathan Freitas, Linda L. Hill, Greg Janee, Kevin Lovette, Robert Nideffer, Terence R. Smith, Qi Zheng: The Alexandria Digital Library Architecture. Int. J. on Digital Libraries 2(4): 259-268 (2000): http://www.springerlink.com/content/4k7d8f8m2vneyr2u/ “Since 1994, the Alexandria Digital Library Project has developed three prototype digital libraries for georeferenced information. This paper describes the most recent of these efforts, a three-tier client-server architecture that relies heavily on a middleware layer to present a single uniform set of interfaces to multiple heterogeneous servers. The work described herein has been supported by the NSF-DARPA-NASA Digital Libraries Initiative, under cooperative agreement NSF IR94-11330.”
• James Frew, Michael Freeston, Nathan Freitas, Linda L. Hill, Greg Janee, Kevin Lovette, Robert Nideffer, Terence R. Smith, Qi Zheng: The Alexandria Digital Library Architecture. ECDL 1998: 61-73. Special Issue on Educational digital libraries on the verge: http://www.springerlink.com/content/100475/
• With NIDEFFER, R., VESNA, V. (co-editor). "Online Public Spaces: Multidisciplinary Explorations in Multiuser Environments" (OPS:MEME). Special issue of American Behavioral Sciences. UCSB: Sage Publications. September.: http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/publications/publications/98-99/meme/index.html
• Bodies© INCorporated http://www.bodiesinc.ucla.edu/ with Victoria Vesna (UCLA, Chair, Department of Design | Media Arts), Robert Nideffer (UC Irvine - Director Game Culture & Technology Lab), Kenneth Fields.
Net Condition. Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM). Karlsruhe, Germany. Winter 2000-Present; Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. Barnsdall Art Park. September 9-November 9, 1998; Art House. Dublin, Ireland. June 15 - August 3, 1998; Club Media at the Venice Biennale. June 11-21, 1997; San Francisco Art Institute. January 22-March 9, 1997; ACM97 Exposition: 50 Years of Computing. San Jose, California. March 1-4, 1997; Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Santa Barbara, California. August 17-November 3, 1996; Contemporary Arts Center, SIGGRAPH 96. New Orleans, Louisiana. July 22-August 9, 1996.