On Friday, April 25, 2008, Bill Thies, a final-year graduate student from Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave a talk to the Carnegie Mellon Community on "Extending the Capabilities of the Internet to the Rural Developing World."

In many rural areas, email is the only viable technology. Bill described the TEK system ("Time Equals Knowledge"), which provides a full Internet experience using only an email account. Bill further described ongoing research on new infrastructures to foster grassroots content creation.

Examples include an Audio Wiki accessible from a phone that contains purely spoken content and a lightweight medical data collection system that is being deployed in a tuberculosis treatment program in rural India.

Two New Research Grants Awarded to TechBridgeWorld!

TechBridgeWorld was awarded two three-year grants from the Qatar National Research Fund! The grants will support projects related to assistive technology and disaster response.

The QNRF was established in 2006 by the Qatar Foundation to administer funding for original, competitively selected research in engineering and technology, physical and life sciences, medicine, humanities, social sciences and the arts. More information on the QNRF can be found at their home page.

M. Bernardine Dias is pictured above (front row, third person from the left) with other grant recipients at the QNRF ceremony in Doha, Qatar.

TechBridgeWorld’s newest course, Understanding and Challenging the Images of Computing, debuted in the second mini of Spring 2008. At first, Professor Carol Frieze anticipated 10-12 students for her course but received much more interest than expected. She is currently teaching a diverse class of 20 students coming from four out of the six undergraduate colleges at Carnegie Mellon University. The goal of Frieze’s course is to offer students a chance to step back and think about some of the issues surrounding computing and computer science:

Students have already participated in challenging discussions and have been assigned action-oriented assignments. However, the “grand challenge” for students is telling the story of Computer Science “to the outside world (especially high school students and their parents and teachers, as well as policy makers and the popular media) in a way that keeps the science and the ideas center stage.” More information is available on the course information page.

Carol Frieze is the web coordinator and web team supervisor for the School of Computer Science. She is the director of Women@SCS and co-director of Women@IT.

Congratulations to Katie Menzies whose submission to the Study Abroad Photo Contest at Carnegie Mellon University was selected by judges for an honorable mention. Katie was a TCinGC student consultant for the Ministry of Health in Palau in Summer 2007. Her picture was selected from over 200 submissions.

Katie's photo was featured in the University Center Art Gallery - Study Abroad Show from March 24th - 29th. It will also be featured on Carnegie Mellon's newest set of Study Abroad Note Cards. For more information on the TCinGC program, click here.

"Palau: The definition of a tropical paradise."
Category: Landscape     City: Rock Islands

ICTD 2009 Conference Update: We are pleased to announce that Bill Gates, Founder of the Microsoft Corporation and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has agreed to participate at one of our keynote speakers at the third IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2009) to be held April 17-19, 2009 in Doha, Qatar.

TechBridgeWorld Associate Director Rahul Tongia and Student Representative G. Ayorkor Mills-Tettey recently participated with a symposium entitled “Information, Computing, and Communications: Keys to Sustainable Global Development” at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) held in Boston February 14-18. Rahul organized the panel and gave a presentation on “Information and Communications Technology for Sustainable Development,” and Ayorkor gave a presentation on “TechBridgeWorld: Innovative Education Platform for Technology and Global Development.” The theme of this year’s AAAS Annual Meeting was “Science and Technology from a Global Perspective.”

TechBridgeWorld Winter Newsletter

Find out about what’s going on in Doha, new research grants, ICTD 2009, conference participation, continued research, and past event successes.

Click here to view our newsletter.

Microsoft Founder Bill Gates met with TechBridgeWorld Student Representative Ayorkor Mills-Tettey and two other graduate students during his February 21st visit to Carnegie Mellon University’s Pittsburgh campus. During his presentation to hundreds of students, faculty, staff, and guests, Gates mentioned TechBridgeWorld as an example of how technologists can explore innovations to impact the lives of people living at the base of the world economy. His visit to Carnegie Mellon was the last stop on his “farewell tour” as he transitions from the Microsoft Corporation to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates’ comment was included in an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Click here to learn more about Gates’ visit and see the video of his presentation.

Click here to read Ayorkor's brief article about meeting Bill Gates.

TechBridgeWorld is happy to announce that Carnegie Mellon University will host the third IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2009) in Doha, Qatar in Spring 2009! ICTD is the premiere conference for the subject area of innovating technology accessible and relevant to developing communities. We hope to see as many of you as possible at ICTD 2009! Conference details will be posted online soon. Click here to view last year's conference website and proceedings.

Faculty M. Bernardine Dias and Joe Mertz are based in Doha, Qatar for Spring 2008. In addition to their research work, they are co-teaching our Technology Consulting in the Community course for the first time at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar. The list of TCinC partners for this semester includes Reach Out to Asia (ROTA), Qatar Charity, The American School of Doha, The Sri Lankan School - Stafford International, Qatar Natural History Group, The Al-Noor Institute for the Blind, and NeoMotion.

TechBridgeWorld started off the new year by participating with the Pacific Telecommunications Council 2008 Conference from January 13-15 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Associate Director Joe Mertz and Project Assistant Sarah Belousov ’s paper on “Building Human Technical Capacity in Government Ministries” was part of the panel on ICT for Development: New Applications for Inclusion.

Congratulations to Cherie Clark-Moore and Aysha Siddique who have been awarded a grant through the Qatar National Research Fund’s Undergraduate Research Experience Program. Cherie and Aysha were students in TechBridgeWorld’s Technology and Global Development course which was taught at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar this past fall semester. This year-long project will create a needs assessment plan and recommend computing-enhanced education solutions related to the Reach Out To Asia (ROTA) Foundation’s school programs in Cambodia. The students will be advised by faculty members M. Bernardine Dias and Yonina Cooper.

TechBridgeWorld Founder and Director M. Bernardine Dias is also featured in the online publication Pop City in an article by Abby Mendelson entitled “Bridging the Gap.” Click here to read the article.