• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
1
“Young” Researchers’ Workshop at ICTD2009
 
Friday 17 April 2009
 in conjunction with3rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologiesand Development (ICTD2009)17 – 19 April 2009Doha, Qatar http://www.ictd2009.org
 
This document includes the 12 papers for the morning session together with a shortintroduction of each presenter.
Presenters:
 Yaw
Anokwa
[yanokwa@gmail.com]Paolo
Brunello
[ pbrunello@gmail.com
 
]Brian
DeRenzi
[ bderenzi@gmail.com]Kathleen
Diga
[kathleen.diga@gmail.com]Fanni
Francesca
[francesca.fanni@lu.unisi.ch]Scot
Frank 
[scot@mit.edu]Marije
Geldof 
[M.Geldof@rhul.ac.uk ]Sokol
Haxhiu
[shaxhiu@yahoo.com]Aditi
Sharma
[asharma1@csir.co.za]Thomas
Smyth
[thomas.smyth@gatech.edu]Dhanaraj
Thakur
[dthakur@gatech.edu]Ugo
Vallauri
[U.Vallauri@rhul.ac.uk ]
 
 
2
Yaw
Anokwa
 [yanokwa@gmail.com
 
]
What is your name?
yaw anokwa
 Where do you currently live?
seattle, washington
 What institution(s) are you associated with?
university of washington, google
 What is the basic domain/field/department you associate yourself with?
computerscience
 In which countries/states have you worked on project(s)?
rwanda, tanzania, uganda
Describe your current project(s) in less than 10 words each.
a suite of open source datacollection tools
 Name one thing you have learned about yourself through field experience in less than 10words.
optimistic workaholic with dictatorial tendencies
 Attach one photo that represents you, something you like, your work, your fieldexperience, or your thoughts about ICTD, etc. Describe it in less than 10 words.
thischild has seen something deeply terrifying. any guesses what?
 What are you looking forward to getting out of this workshop, in less than 10 words (or afew more)?
a sense of what others feel are the big challenges
 
************************************************************************A Young Researcher's Thoughts on ICTD Research
Yaw Anokwa, Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washingtonyanokwa@cs.washington.edu
1 Introduction
Despite having lived abroad most of my life, my child-hood memories of Ghana instilleda sense of responsibility for those whom I witnessed struggling with poverty, education,and health. For me, ICTD is a way to bring the transformative power of technology to bear on these problems.
2 Research Experience
My ICTD research began during a six month stay in rural Rwanda deploying OpenMRS[1], an open source, electronic medical record system. I was responsible for implementing features, managing data entry, and upgrading infrastructure. The deployedsystem serves a catchment area of 425k people and is a model for a national medicalrecord system. O_- shoots of this work include SMS-based tools for checking theaccuracy of dosing data, research on how to optimize high latency links using o_ the shelf hardware [3], and work on how virtual machines can simplify deployment of complexsystems.I am now working on a mobile data collection called UReport [2]. The most recentdeployment of UReport gathered 600+ surveys from Ugandan farmers about a number of SMS-based services. UReport is built entirely on Google infrastructure as an explorationof the future of scalable data collection systems. The client runs on an Android G1 phoneand submits text, image and location data to an GoogleApp Engine server.
 
3
3 Research Challenges
To do great research, one must spend much more than a quarter, a semester or a summer in the field. This time is needed to understand the context of the problem, and academiadoes not support (… and otherwise) such long timescales. If context gained through timereally is necessary, we need to discover which models of research can be mirrored toaccomplish these goals.Once a problem is identified, solving it is often more than building technology. The skillsneeded in ICTD can range from training the illiterate to negotiating with governments. Incomputer science, we are generally only rewarded for a small subset of those skills{while we may spend 10% of our time doing `real' computer science, 100% of our rewardis based on that 10%. Is this balance fair, and if not, how do we realign those rewards?Finally, the evaluation metrics for the projects we work on vary across variousstakeholders. What then is ICTD research success? Is it a transferable conclusion? Is it a proof of concept? Is it a sustainable product? More importantly, how do we really knowwe are making a difference?
4 Conclusion
As an ICTD researcher, my goals are to better understand what tradeo_s developingsocieties must make when presented with a technology. While the challenges describedabove are often difficult to resolve, the assumption I operate under is that technology,when used thoughtfully, can help.References[1] Y. Anokwa et al., Deploying a Medical Record System in Rural Rwanda, HCI4CID,2008[2] Y. Anokwa et al., A New Generation of Open Source Data Collection Tools, ICTD,2009[3] Y. Anokwa et al., Optimizing Links in the Developing World, WINS-DR, 2008
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...