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February 2006
Professor John Bennett
received a $100,000 grant as part of Microsoft Research's $1.2 million
Digital Inclusion Program.
The highly competitive program awarded 17 grants to teaching universities from
10 countries, including China, India, Pakistan, Uruguay and the United States.
Researchers will be tackling technological challenges to positively impact
health, education and socioeconomic conditions in underserved areas.
Research that winners of the Digital Inclusion RFP program will delve into
includes telemedicine and the use of the cell phone as a platform to provide
affordable, accessible and relevant technology services to underserved
communities. Other winning proposals will look at delivering an integrated
Internet-based healthcare information service targeting HIV/AIDS patients in
Botswana; finding out if using Wi-Fi-enabled phones can boost cognitive
development in children using Internet chat services in Santiago, Chile;
exploring long-distance learning at a village school in Tibet using networking
and audiovisual teaching equipment at Tibet University; and building a
prototype of an early-warning system for flooding using sensor networks on the
Rio Aguán in Honduras.
Bennett's proposal to develop bidirectional community radio -- or AIR
(Advancement through Interactive Radio) -- as a means to achieve social and
economic advancement was also among the winners. "Microsoft clearly sees
funding a project with technology at its core can have sociological
ramifications that can assist those in underserved communities. We are
exceptionally grateful for their generosity and their foresight," Bennett said.
Founded in 1991,
Microsoft Research
is dedicated to conducting both basic and applied research in computer science
and software engineering. Its goals are to enhance the user experience on
computing devices, reduce the cost of writing and maintaining software, and
invent novel computing technologies. Researchers focus on more than 55 areas of
computing and collaborate with leading academic, government and industry
researchers to advance the state of the art in such areas as graphics, speech
recognition, user-interface research, natural language processing, programming
tools and methodologies, operating systems and networking, and the mathematical
sciences.
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