My research group studies how information and communication technologies can empower communities to address shared challenges and determine their collective futures. To do this, we develop, deploy and evaluate the impact of new community information platforms for agriculture, education, finance, health, governance and other areas, both locally, and around the world.
I am currently an associate professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell Tech. I share some of my periodic thoughts and musings here.
Projects
| 2022- |  |
MVC: Participatory and Qualitative GIS |
| 2020- |  |
Virtual Farm: VR for Agricultural Extension |
| 2014- |  |
Represent Bihar: Traditional and Folk Stories of Bihar |
| 2010- |  |
Local Ground: Using Digital Maps to Engage Youth in Civic Advocacy |
| 2010- |  |
Awaaz.De: Giving Communities a Voice using Voice Social Media |
| 2018-20 |  |
Word2RI: Community Oral History on Roosevelt Island |
| 2010-19 |  |
Captricity: Turning Paper Forms into Data using the Cloud and Crowd |
| 2015-16 |  |
FarmView: Land Access for New and Aspiring Farmers |
| 2014-16 |  |
Code 510: Creative Coding for Middle and High School Youth |
| 2012-15 |  |
Endaga: Small-scale Community Cellular Networks |
| 2011-12 |  |
Umati: Grading CS Exams with a Crowd-sourcing Vending Machine |
| 2009-11 |  |
Metamouse: Equitably Sharing Multiple Mice for Collaborative Learning |
| 2008-11 |  |
Usher: Adaptive Forms for Improving Data Entry Accuracy and Efficiency |
| 2007-11 |  |
OpenRosa: Open Source Standards and Tools for Mobile Data Collection (with UW, Dimagi, and others) |
| 2007-11 |  |
CommCare: Mobile Tools for Community Health Workers (with UW, Dimagi and D-Tree) |
| 2007-11 |  |
e-IMCI: Automated Mobile Phone Protocols for Diagnosis of Childhood Illnesses (with UW, Dimagi, D-Tree and IHRDC) |
| 2006-11 |  |
Digital ICS: Inspection, Monitoring and Quality Control for Rural Coffee Cooperatives (with CEPCO and Asobagri) video |
| 2003-11 |  |
Self-Help MIS: Management Information System for Self-Help Groups (SHGs) (with ekgaon and CCD) video |
| 2003-7 |  |
CAM: Mobile Data Collection using a Camera-equipped Mobile Phone (Ph.D. Thesis) video |
| 2002-3 |  |
Hisaab: User Interface Design for Rural, Less-educated Users (with Media Lab Asia, Human Factors International and CCD) |
| 2002-3 |  |
Indic Computing: Open Source Standards and Tools for Indic-language Computing |
| 2000-2 |  |
Knownet-Grin: Knowledge Network for Grassroots Innovators (with SRISTI and IIM-Ahmedabad) |
| 1997-9 |  |
WIL: A Compiler Intermediate Language with Explicit Support for Representations (Master's Thesis) |
| 1994-6 |  |
Cation Binding Selectivity of EF-Hand Sites: Perturbation Dynamics of Galactose Binding Protein (Undergraduate Honors Thesis) |
Teaching
| 2017- |
|
Remaking the City: Graduate course at Cornell Tech |
| 2017- |
|
Revolutionary Technologies: Graduate course at Cornell Tech |
| 2009-15 |
|
ICT for Social Enterprise: Graduate course at the UC Berkeley School of Information |
| 2008-15 |
|
User Interface Design and Development: Graduate course at the UC Berkeley School of Information |
| 2008-15 |
|
ICTD Research Seminar: Graduate seminar at the UC Berkeley School of Information |
| 2013 |
|
Alternative Visions of Technology: Graduate seminar at the UC Berkeley School of Information |
| 2013 |
|
Distributed Computing Applications and Infrastructure: Graduate course at the UC Berkeley School of Information |
| 2003-7 |
 |
Computing in the Developing World: Graduate seminar at UW CSE (occasionally with Intel Research Seattle and Microsoft Research) |
| 2000-1 |
 |
Gujarat Vidyapith: Lecturer in Master's program in Computer Applications |