Microsoft Research
Faculty Summit 2007
Tom Healy
Lead Program Manager
Microsoft Research
Technology must to be
affordable, accessible, and
relevant for the “bottom of the
pyramid”
Top of Pyramid
H/H Income >$20,000
10% of the world
Middle of Pyramid
H/H Income $1,500-$20,000
Solutions need to be considered
from
“first principles” for that
75-100
specific segment.
Social and cultural relevance is
key.
1,500 – 1,750
30% of the world
Underserved
markets in developed
countries
Bottom of Pyramid
H/H Income <$1,500
60% of the world
4,000
Quest for
Fundamental
Understanding?
Basic
Research
Use-Inspired
Research
Yes
“Pasteur’s Quadrant”
No
Applied
Research
Consideration
of Use?
No
Yes
Donald Stokes
Brookings Institution, 1997
Social and Cultural Relevance
Applications
Relevant, Integrated Systems
Devices & UI
Cell Phones, Mobile Devices,
Shared Computing, Kiosks
Networks
Protocols, Non-Persistent Connections,
Mesh Networks, Sensor Networks
Data
Data Aggregation, Data Models
$1.2M worldwide RFP in early 2006.
• 163 submissions from 34 countries.
• 17 projects were selected
• Non-Governmental Organization (NGO)
partnerships.
Pursue “proof-of-concept” field experiments.
Title
Country
Institution Name:
Mesh Networking: a test bed for security issues and community actions
Argentina
Cequinor/Lanais EFO, CONICET-UNLP
Digital Inclusion Kit in Health and Higher Education
Argentina
University of Buenos Aires
Integrated Healthcare Information Services through Mobile telephony in Botswana
Botswana
University of Botswana
Robust and low cost networking for rural kiosks
Canada
University of Waterloo
Wi-Fi Enabled Phones for bridging the Cognitive Divide and Transforming the Classroom
Experience
Chile
Universidad Catolica de Chile
Project of Modern Long-distance Education for Agricultural and Pastoral Area in Tibet
China
Modern Educational Technology Center
Design and Development of a Low-Cost Low-Power Portable Medical Device
India
International Institute of Information Technology
Appropriate technology interaction for facilitating peer to peer internet microfinance in
Uganda
Netherlands
Delft University of Technology
Poor Man’s Broadband: Peer-to-Peer Dialup Networking
Pakistan
Lahore University of Management Sciences
Deployment wireless ambient networks on heterogeneous rural environments
Uruguay
Universidad de la República,
Early Warning Flood Systems Based on Sensor Networks
USA
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Speech Interfaces for Health Information-access in Underserved Communities
USA
Carnegie Mellon University
AIR: Advancement through Interactive Radio
USA
University of Colorado at Boulder
Smartphone Health Information and Epidemiology Network (SHIEN) – Vietnam
USA
Dartmouth College
Immersive Language Learning Using Smart Phones
USA
University of California, Berkeley
DSH and CAM: Leveraging Low Cost Technology for Rural India
USA
University of Washington
Wireless Grids: A Technology for Rural Networking
USA
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Digital Inclusion Kit in Health
and Higher Education
Our goal is to promote research and
development in Latin America. In
Telemedicine (TM), we aim to reach
underserved zones, rural and urban,
with mobile technology (DITRK), which
allows data acquisition from patients
unable to visit medical centers. Mobile
devices with portable acquisition
systems, such as ECG or arterial blood
pressure, enable the building of a clinic
database for use in preventive medicine
for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes
and cancer among others. As a
backbone, a Virtual Cluster (VC) is
constructed, sharing all patient data
among educational and research
communities.
Guillermo Marshall
University of
Buenos Aires
Sensor data
transmitted to
cell phone
Local clinician
enters
additional data
Transmitted
to centralized
site
Skilled
doctor
analyzes
Clinical
database
Database
Data mining
Guidance to remote site
Bluetooth peripheral device
that communicates patient
data to the phone
Robust and Low Cost
Networking for Rural Kiosks
Rural internet kiosks provide services
including birth, marriage, and death
certificates, land records, and
consulting on medical and agricultural
problems, however network connectivity
for these kiosks is both expensive and
failure prone. We are investigating the
use of cars, buses and even bullock
carts that pass by a kiosk carrying a
small computer with 20-40GB of
storage and a WiFi card as mechanical
backhaul devices to opportunistically
communicate with kiosk controllers to
carry data to and from a village and an
internet gateway.
Srinivasan Keshav
University of Waterloo, Canada
Srinivasan Keshav, University of
Waterloo; Sanijiva Prasad, IIT, Delhi
http://blizzard.cs.uwaterloo.ca/tetherless/index.php/KioskNet
Collaborative project between U of
Waterloo and IIT, Delhi.
“Mechanical backhaul” and long-range
directional wireless mesh networking
technologies in the state of Andhra
Pradesh in India.
Government trucks visit the rural
kiosks. They send/receive data from
the kiosk when the trucks are in
transmission proximity and bring back
the data to headquarters.
Connectivity to 80 current rural kiosks,
project will expand to 4200 kiosks.
Deployment of Wireless Ambient
Networks on Heterogeneous
Rural Environments
Remote rural communities in Uruguay
frequently depend on unreliable,
expensive, low capacity physical links,
and some lack networking
infrastructure. Our solution to improve
connectivity uses Ambient Networks
(AN) concepts to enable the
cooperation of heterogeneous networks
to allow instant and dynamic user
access. RAN implementation will be
policy-based, evolving, and platform
independent and the architecture will be
applicable to end devices such as
PDAs or mobile phones, and flexible
enough to deal with central components
such as gateways and servers.
Eduardo Grampin
Universidad de la Republica
Uruguay
Bridge digital divide in a specific rural
communities
Wireless communication infrastructure
Software tools for production and
collaborative work
Academic research in
Wireless technologies
WiFi, WiMAX, 3G/4G
Network abstraction and composition:
ambient networks
Mobility management, handoff,
location-aware services
Routing, Ad-hoc / Mesh networking
Mobile devices, software tools and
middlewares
Policy Based Network Management
Collaborative workgroup frameworks
Appropriate Technology
Interaction for Facilitating Peer
to Peer Internet Microfinance in
Uganda
KIVA operates with local microfinance
institutions (MFI) to connect individual
entrepreneurs in developing countries,
through a direct peer-to-peer network
online, with sponsors in developed
countries who provide funding for their
business development proposals. The
goal of this research is to identify which
technology interaction forms are most
appropriate for integration into the
operational context of microfinance
institutions (MFI) working in Uganda,
Kenya and Tanzania in order to
facilitate entrepreneurs’ access to micro
credit through KIVA.
Jan Carel Diehl
Delft University of Technology,
Netherlands
During six months in 2006 design researchers worked directly with Kiva.org and four of its existing
microfinance partners in Uganda and Kenya to develop an appropriate technology solution to
facilitate the use of their online lending platform.
The solution is a cell phone-based application dubbed ‘The Miracle Mobile Solution’ or MiMoSo.
partner information including text and images, can now be sent via Multi-Media Message Service.
Users submit updates directly over the mobile network without the need for an internet
connection.“
Wi-Fi Enabled Phones for
Bridging the Cognitive Divide
and Transforming the
Classroom Experience
eduinn va
®
Experts stress the need to change the
traditional classroom dynamic to one in
which the teacher guides students as
they actively learn by themselves.
Handheld devices with wireless
networks (WiFi) enable Computer
Supported Collaborative Learning, but
the cost of equipment for a classroom is
beyond a poor country’s budget. This
project will enable teachers to connect
through GPRS/EDGE networks using
his/her phone to guide students through
online resources, with students
following on their Wi-Fi enabled
phones.
Miguel Nussbaum
Universidad Catolica
de Chile
Handheld devices with wireless networks
(WiFi) allow face-to-face Computer
Supported Collaborative Learning.
Wi-Fi enabled phones can make a great
impact in transforming classrooms.
The project aims to bring the Internet to
the classroom without any other
hardware.
Demonstrate that with WiFi enabled
phones the cognitive development of
children improves in a one semester
experience.
Cell phone is the platform.
Healthcare, Education, and Microeconomy support are the killer apps.
Multi-discipline approaches work; and,
are needed.
NGO participation is key to success in
social relevance.
http://research.microsoft.com
http://research.microsoft.com/erp
http://research.microsoft.com/erp/digincl/
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