
Doç. Dr. Murat YILMAZ
Gazi University
Title: The Lathe Of Heaven: Metaverse, Security and Privacy
Abstract: Metaverse, one of the most used words in the field of technology today, attracts great attention from the industry and the academic community. Metaverse promises to integrate the real world with the virtual world seamlessly. However, it is a three-dimensional metaphysical interaction medium planned to be experienced by many simultaneously in a virtual universe. In this new virtual landscape, individuals have three-dimensional experiences with the help of their virtual reflections (i.e., avatars), participate in concerts and similar activities, create a new generation social network, and perform economic activities such as trading with the use of cryptocurrencies. However, there is also the possibility that the Metaverse experiences could turn into "bad social science fiction." This fiction, together with the planned mechanical or physical technological development, can quickly turn into a delusional state that includes the effects of this technology on human relations, social destruction, and change that may deteriorate. In such a universe, it is a mystery how to deal with cybercrime or what measures to take for digital harassment cases. In this talk, firstly, I introduce the notion of the Metaverse and detail potential problems of security and privacy issues.
Bio: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Murat YILMAZ completed his doctorate in computer science at Dublin City University in Ireland and his master's degree in the use of games in software engineering and game theory and practical applications in software engineering at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Yilmaz has thirteen years of knowledge and experience in software development and ten years of work experience in the academic field. He worked as a software specialist, team leader, software architect, and project engineer in different institutions and organizations in Turkey and abroad. For the last nine years, he has been continuing his academic activities in parallel with software engineering issues, with his studies on game research and development, especially on virtual worlds. Assoc. Dr. Murat YILMAZ worked as a full-time faculty member at the Department of Computer Engineering at Çankaya University between 2013-2019 and part-time in the game technologies department at the Middle East Technical University Informatics Institute. Dr. Yilmaz continued his academic activities between 2019-2021 as an academic at Dublin City University and as a researcher at Lero Ireland Software Engineering Research Center. As of August 2021, he continues to work as a faculty member in the Computer Engineering Department of the Faculty of Engineering at Gazi University. His research interests include software process management, empirical software engineering, game theory and practice, virtual reality, serious games, and gamification. The researcher has active projects on Metaverse, NFT, virtual reality, and many academic studies published in conferences and journals scanned in international scientific indexes on research.