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.

Projects

2022- Image Fotomap: Participatory Mapping and Qualitative GIS
2020- Image Pixels to Plants: Visualizing Urban Agriculture in New York
2014- Image Represent Bihar: Traditional and Folk Stories of Bihar
2010- Image Awaaz.De: Giving Communities a Voice using Voice Social Media
2010-22 Image Local Ground: Using Digital Maps to Engage Youth in Civic Advocacy
2018-20 Image Word2RI: Community Oral History on Roosevelt Island
2010-19 Image Captricity: Turning Paper Forms into Data using the Cloud and Crowd
2015-16 Image FarmView: Land Access for New and Aspiring Farmers
2014-16 Image Code 510: Creative Coding for Middle and High School Youth
2012-15 Image Endaga: Small-scale Community Cellular Networks
2011-12 Image Umati: Grading CS Exams with a Crowd-sourcing Vending Machine
2009-11 Image Metamouse: Equitably Sharing Multiple Mice for Collaborative Learning
2008-11 Image Usher: Adaptive Forms for Improving Data Entry Accuracy and Efficiency
2007-11 Image OpenRosa: Open Source Standards and Tools for Mobile Data Collection (with UW, Dimagi, and others)
2007-11 Image CommCare: Mobile Tools for Community Health Workers (with UW, Dimagi and D-Tree)
2007-11 Image e-IMCI: Automated Mobile Phone Protocols for Diagnosis of Childhood Illnesses (with UW, Dimagi, D-Tree and IHRDC)
2006-11 Image Digital ICS: Inspection, Monitoring and Quality Control for Rural Coffee Cooperatives (with CEPCO and Asobagri) video
2003-11 Image Self-Help MIS: Management Information System for Self-Help Groups (SHGs) (with ekgaon and CCD) video
2003-7 Image CAM: Mobile Data Collection using a Camera-equipped Mobile Phone (Ph.D. Thesis) video
2002-3 Image Hisaab: User Interface Design for Rural, Less-educated Users (with Media Lab Asia, Human Factors International and CCD)
2002-3 Image Indic Computing: Open Source Standards and Tools for Indic-language Computing
2000-2 Image Knownet-Grin: Knowledge Network for Grassroots Innovators (with SRISTI and IIM-Ahmedabad)
1997-9 Image WIL: A Compiler Intermediate Language with Explicit Support for Representations (Master's Thesis)
1994-6 Image Cation Binding Selectivity of EF-Hand Sites: Perturbation Dynamics of Galactose Binding Protein (Undergraduate Honors Thesis)

Teaching

2017- Image Remaking the City: Graduate course at Cornell Tech
2017- Image Revolutionary Technologies: Graduate course at Cornell Tech
2009-15 Image ICT for Social Enterprise: Graduate course at the UC Berkeley School of Information
2008-15 Image User Interface Design and Development: Graduate course at the UC Berkeley School of Information
2008-15 Image ICTD Research Seminar: Graduate seminar at the UC Berkeley School of Information
2013 Image Alternative Visions of Technology: Graduate seminar at the UC Berkeley School of Information
2013 Image Distributed Computing Applications and Infrastructure: Graduate course at the UC Berkeley School of Information
2003-7 Image Computing in the Developing World: Graduate seminar at UW CSE (occasionally with Intel Research Seattle and Microsoft Research)
2000-1 Image Gujarat Vidyapith: Lecturer in Master's program in Computer Applications