TechBridgeWorld faculty and staff Bernardine Dias, Freddie Dias, and Sarah Belousov are currently in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to explore new partnerships. We wish to thank Dr. Theresa Kaijage (second from right) for making this visit possible.

Dr. Kaijage is the founder of WAMATA, the first organization founded in Tanzania to work with HIV/AIDS victims and their families, and she is also a professor at the Institute of Social Work.

Technology Consulting in the Global Community (TCinGC) students Courtenay O'Connor and Nirav Patel are in Palau this summer working with the Ministry of Health. They recently visited the state of Kayangel with the Ministry's Division of Environmental Health.

Click here to learn more about the students and their work this summer.

TechBridgeWorld Spring Newsletter

Find out what's happening with the ICTD 2009 conference, student research, TCinGC students, TCinC classes in Doha and Pittsburgh, other TechBridgeWorld courses, and conference participation.

Click here to view our newsletter.

Kathryn Dickens and Adrienne White are working with Ashesi University in Ghana this summer as part of the TCinGC program. They recently attended the 3rd International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training in Accra, where 1,500 participants met with groups working on new developments in eLearning.

At this event, Kathryn and Adrienne mingled with many important people working in the intersection of technology and development on the African continent, kicking off their stay in Ghana in a truly unique way.

Carnegie Mellon students Aysha Siddique and Shakir Hussain, along with Reach Out To Asia (ROTA) staff member Cherie Clark-Moore, and faculty advisors Bernardine Dias and Yonina Cooper, recently prepared and presented a report on Cambodia with a focus on education and income generation. This work is part of the Qatar National Research Fund's (QNRF's) Undergraduate Research Experience Program (UREP).

Aysha lead this team effort to provide ROTA members with background information on Cambodia to enhance their preparations for a project in the Vihear Suork Commune. An undergraduate Computer Science student in Doha, Aysha is in India this summer as part of the TCinGC program.

May 5, 2008 marked the celebration of the commencement of the first undergraduate class at Carnegie Mellon's Doha, Qatar campus. In attendance was Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Emir of Qatar, whose daughter was part of the graduating class. Thirty-five degrees were conferred at the ceremony.

Among those graduating was Noura El-Moughny, a student who worked on her senior honors thesis with TechBridgeWorld Director Bernardine Dias. El-Moughny received the 2008 SCS Alumni Award for Undergraduate Excellence for her thesis, titled "Assistive Computing Technology for Learning to Write Braille."

Congratulations to Noura and all other graduates on their accomplishments!

TechBridgeWorld would like to express our sincere appreciation to Ermine Teves, who has worked as our Administrative Intern since Spring 2007. Ermine has just graduated from Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. Congratulations Ermine!

While a student at Carnegie Mellon, Ermine assisted us with many programs and events, expanded our marketing efforts, and reached out to new faculty and student contacts across campus. Ermine participated with TechBridgeWorld’s Technology and Global Development course and is one of eight students selected to participate in this summer’s Technology Consulting in the Global Community program where she will be working with Microsoft Research India and the Mathru School for the Blind in Bangalore, India.

TechBridgeWorld has just sent eight students to Ghana, India, and Palau this year for the Technology Consulting in the Global Community summer program. The students attended pre-departure sessions where they learned more about their locations, consulting assignments, and tips on how to blog, take video footage, and pictures.

They are now on site working with this summer's partners: Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana; Microsoft Research India and the Mathru School for the Blind in Bangalore, India; and the Ministry of Health in Koror, Palau.

The 13th annual Meeting of the Minds (MoM) took place in Doha on Tuesday, April 29th and in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, May 7th. MoM is Carnegie Mellon's annual research symposium, sponsored by the Undergraduate Research Office, where undergraduate and graduate students have the opportunity to present their work to the Carnegie Mellon community.

Students involved in TechBridgeWorld presented at both campuses. In Doha, Noura El Moughny gave an update on her work with the Adaptive Braille Writing Tutor and won Best Computer Science Project and Best Poster. Noura also did her senior thesis on her work on the Braille Tutor. In Pittsburgh, TCinGC Student Adrienne White presented a poster on her planned work this summer for Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana.

Congratulations to Noura and Adrienne for their hard work!

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.