Virtual Salon: ICT Access & IoT in Low-Resource Settings

Engineering for Change (E4C) and IEEE are pleased to present a Virtual Salon which focuses on ICT access and IoT in low-resource settings.

E4C’s Virtual Salon series is a partnership with IEEE and IEEE in Africa Strategy. The Salon topics are informed by the professional and regional interests of the sections. To overcome connectivity challenges, the Sections schedule their meeting during this time at locations with high-quality internet connectivity and join the salon via E4C’s webinar platform. The salon is 1.5 hour in length and includes three presenters and a moderator. The goal is to provide a broad cross-section of renewable tech solutions and focus on scaling approaches demonstrating success in the African context.

During the event, each panelist provided a brief overview of their organization or work. This was followed by a live (virtual) Q&A lead by the moderator.

Moderator and Panelists

Mustafa Naseem – Moderator

Mustafa Naseem is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Information at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Mustafa’s interests lie at the intersection of technology and poverty, and his recent work has focused on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) to improve public service delivery in global health, and water and sanitation (WASH) sectors. Mustafa has taught and led ICT, design, and entrepreneurship programs in six countries in Africa, Asia and North America, and prior to joining Michigan, Mustafa was the ICTD Expert-in-Residence at the ATLAS Institute, University of Colorado Boulder. He received his Masters Degree from the ATLAS Institute on a Fulbright Scholarship and was shortlisted among 12 finalist Rolex Awards for Enterprise Young Laureates in 2016. 

Melissa Densmore

Melissa Densmore is the Coordinator of the Hasso-Plattner Institute Research School at the University of Cape Town, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, a member of the UCT Centre in ICT4D. Her “Digital Street Theatre for Maternal Health” project explores infrastructures for bandwidth-constrained social networking to support peer education amongst parents of infants, specifically looking at co-design within communities. This project will leverage her work on iNethi (inethi.net), a platform that supports community-based digital content and service creation for community wireless networks, with a goal of using local ICTs to strengthen communities and understanding internet usage in bandwidth-constrained populations. Melissa completed her PhD at University of California, Berkeley in Information Management and Systems, has an MSc in Data Communications, Networks and Distributed Systems from University College London, and holds a BA in Computer Science from Cornell University.

Matthew Hulse

Matthew Hulse is a professional electrical, computer, and software systems engineer with diverse experience in embedded devices and digital communication technologies, and has bridged the diverse worlds of public policy, technology investment, and mobile access with his technical background. He supports inclusive telecommunications by advancing digital and economic development initiatives, equal and affordable Internet access, and through life saving information for humanitarian assistance.

Matthew’s software engineering work spans satellite data link systems, aircraft guidance and control systems, and OpenBTS: the open-source cellular infrastructure platform. His field radio experience has supported Telecom-over-IP deployments worldwide and trained deployment engineers and operators on telecom equipment in the Latin America, West Africa, and Indo-Pacific regions. Matthew champions inclusive digital development in partnership with market-driven investment to advance an accessible, open, and secure Internet.

Marco Zennaro

Marco Zennaro (mzennaro@ictp.it) is a researcher at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, where he coordinates the wireless group of the Telecommunications/ICT4D Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. from the KTH-Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and his M.Sc. Degree in electronic engineering from the University of Trieste in Italy. He is a visiting professor at the KIC-Kobe Institute of Computing, Japan. His research interest is in ICT4D, the use of ICT for development, and in particular he investigates the use of IoT in developing countries. He has given lectures on wireless technologies in more than 30 countries.