David Henry Francis Wicker

Profile

Research assistant and full-stack developer working across legal technology, research software, language infrastructure, climate and documentary systems, and educational access.

Research and work experience

Law & Tech Lab, Maastricht University

Research assistant · 2024–present

Combines law and computer-science methods in research on digital transformation and legal technology, including citation-network analysis and research tooling for European case law.

Brightlands Institute for Smart Society, Maastricht University

Full-stack developer and researcher · current

Builds research software for European case law, including Case Law Explorer search interfaces, source extraction and normalization, legal-data APIs, shared product infrastructure, authentication, scoped access, rate enforcement, and Dockerized deployment.

Research applies citation analysis, network methods, semantic search, and retrieval-augmented systems to large legal corpora. Why Some Judgments Matter More Than Others: Advancing Network Centrality Analysis, with Gijs van Dijck, is accepted for ICAIL 2026; final proceedings publication is pending and no DOI has been assigned.

Faculty of Science and Engineering, Maastricht University

Student ambassador · 2024–present

Represents the faculty to prospective students and external stakeholders, supports events, and contributes to student engagement.

Tap2

Full-stack developer · 2024

Developed and maintained a platform for streamlined digital interactions and user engagement in hospitality.

Mediamente Consulting

Intern · 2022

Designed and programmed an internal company-car booking system.

Independent products and practice

Product architecture and engineering · current

Hayeren language-learning infrastructure; Commonfold private knowledge tooling; documentary atlases; and multilingual client publishing systems.

Volunteering

Code.X Mentorship Program

Lead coordinator · 2025–present

Designs and evaluates the mentorship programme, recruits and matches participants, and coordinates training, support, and communication.

NewsCord

Volunteer full-stack developer · 2025–present

Contributes to platform development and maintenance, with a focus on access to news content and user experience.

Code.X

English and coding tutor · 2025–present

Plans and delivers English-language and introductory coding lessons for children in Gaza, adapting material to learner needs.

University pathway coordination

Institutional and student support · 2024–present

Supports universities establishing scholarship initiatives for students from conflict-affected regions and assists students navigating applications and educational pathways in Europe. Individual case material remains private.

Education

• BSc Computer Science, Maastricht University · 2023–2026
• Applied Sciences, I.I.S. “Blaise Pascal”, Giaveno · 2018–2023
• International Baccalaureate DP1, United World College Dilijan · 2021–2022

Languages

Italian · English, Cambridge C2 (2022) · German, Goethe B1 (2019) · Arabic, A2 (2025)

Awards and scholarships

• Partial scholarship to UWC Dilijan through the Italian UWC committee · 2020
• Merit academic scholarships at I.I.S. “Blaise Pascal” · 2018–2019 and 2019–2020
• Honorable Mention and Best Delegate, Turin Model United Nations · 2019

Systems

• Case Law Explorer: a federated legal-data estate spanning ingestion, normalized storage, bounded APIs, identity, access control, and deployment.
• Hayeren: an Eastern Armenian learning studio across web, native mobile, language data, reading, review, and classrooms.
• Commonfold: a private, auditable knowledge archive with portable Markdown and source-aware retrieval.
• Mobility in Change: a four-locale public and editorial publishing platform.
• Documentary fieldwork: spatial and historical mapping supported by rights-aware visual records.

Technical range

Python, TypeScript, SQL and PostgreSQL; Vue, Svelte, React and Astro interfaces; data extraction and normalization; citation and graph analysis; authentication and authorization services; Dockerized deployment and server operations.

Activities and additional study

• Organizer and speaker, Project Armenia at I.I.S. “Blaise Pascal” · 2022
• Photographer and Sustainability Committee member, UWC Dilijan · 2021–2022
• Organizer, TEDx Youth at UWC Dilijan · 2022; invitee, TED Countdown Summit · 2021
• Fridays For Future local, national, and international organizing committees · 2019–2021
• Computer Science tutor, I.I.S. “Blaise Pascal” · 2019–2021
• Junior Academy, New York Academy of Sciences · 2019–2020
• Bocconi Summer School: International Politics Lab and EU for Sustainable Globalization Lab · 2020
• Neuromatch Deep Learning; HarvardX CS50 AI; MITx Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python; Oxford School of Climate Change

Links

Case Law Explorer · Citation-centrality research · Hayeren · BISS profile