Elizabeth Belding
Thursday, April 12th, 5:30-6:30pm
IV Theater 2
IV Theater 2
Access to communication plays a pivotal role in the socio-economic development of any nation. The past few decades have witnessed revolutionary changes in communication technology. With a growing range of new digital communication technologies, services and applications, information access has become a key component of people’s lives. While on one hand the Internet revolution has played a pivotal role in the development of economic, social, financial and educational sectors of the industrialized world, it has also created a “Digital Divide” that separates the affluent and developed nations from the developing and under-developed regions of the world.
Fortunately, there are a number of on-going efforts to bridge this digital divide, and the majority are using wireless networks to do so. In this talk, we will discuss some recent efforts to deploy wireless networks in developing regions. We will discuss our 2011 analysis of an operational wireless network in Macha, Zambia, focusing on the network's utilization and ability to meet user needs. Based on conclusions from this study and our analysis of the network's shortcomings, we will briefly describe key components of our VillageNet architecture, an on-going project designed to bring wireless connectivity into the homes of rural residents. As part of this work we will mention ImmuNet, a new project designed to improve uptake and coverage of childhood vaccinations in developing regions.
Elizabeth M. Belding is a Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Elizabeth's research focuses on mobile networking, specifically network analysis and solutions for developing and under-developed regions. She is the founder and director of the Mobility Management and Networking (MOMENT) Laboratory at UCSB. Elizabeth is the author of over 100 technical papers related to mobile networking and has served on over 60 program committees for networking conferences. Elizabeth served as the TPC Co-Chair of ACM MobiCom 2005 and ACM MobiHoc 2007, as is currently on the steering committee for ACM NSDR. She has served on the editorial board for the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing and currently is on the editorial board of IEEE Pervasive Magazine. Elizabeth is an ACM Distinguished Scientist. See http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~ebelding for further details.
