Upcoming Events
Of Turbo-Charged, Heat-Seeking, Robotic Fishing Poles (or, Myths of Technology for International Development)
Speaker: Kentaro Toyama, Moderator: Manish Bharadwaj
March 1, 2012 at 6:30PM
Bldg. 35, Room 225, MIT
Can mobile phones be used to improve rural healthcare? How do you design user interfaces for an illiterate migrant worker? What value is video technology to a farmer earning $1 a day?
Interventionist projects in “information and communication technology for development” (ICT4D) seek to answer these kinds of questions, but the excitement has also generated excessive hype about the power of technology to solve the deep problems of poverty. In this talk, I will (1) present several persistent myths of ICT4D, (2) offer a theory of "technology as amplifier" which explains the gap between rhetoric and reality, and (3) provide recommendations for engineers and scientists interested in contributing to a better world. My hope is to suggest that while technology might not save the world, technologists have much to contribute.
Kentaro Toyama (www.kentarotoyama.org) is a researcher in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. He is working on a book that argues that the intrinsic growth of people and institutions should be the primary focus of global development. Previously, Toyama co-founded Microsoft Research India, where he started an interdisciplinary research group to understand how electronic technology could support the socio-economic development of the world’s impoverished communities. The group’s projects – including Digital Green, MultiPoint, and Text-Free UI – have been seminal in ICT4D research, even as Toyama has gone on to be a vocal critic of techno-utopian hype in development. Prior to his time in India, he did computer vision research at Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA, USA and Cambridge, UK, and taught mathematics at Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana. Toyama graduated from Yale with a PhD in Computer Science and from Harvard with a bachelors degree in Physics.
2012 IAP Sessions
Re-imagining the World in 2050: Equity, Action and Targets
Mobilizing Youth for Transformative Change
What does the world look like in 2012? What will it look like in 2050? How do politics, scientific evidence, social marketing and human rights converge to socially transform what the world chooses to tackle? The goal is to not accept the world as is; but to re-imagine our vision for 2050 – and lay out a plan to meet it. You will serve as key consultants on active problem-solving on to help do just this.
Right now, the world is crowded and unfair. There will be at least 9 billion people in 2050, with 1.1 billion undernourished and another 1 billion overweight. 1 billion people wil be over the age of 60. Resources are dwindling. 9 million children die before reaching their 5th birthday. 36 million die from man-made risks. The richest 16% of the world uses 80% of the world’s drugs. The poorest 17% use 1%. We can barely afford the status-quo; and yet, daily, we are hit with shock after shock. What to do?
These lectures will challenge you. They will force you to to think about a 2050 vision from the lens of Equity, Action and Targets -- key themes in mobilizing for change as university students have done over generations (e.g. civil rights, anti-apartheid movements and the HIV/AIDS movement). All the lecturers who will lead sessions are themselves university student and young professional game-changers. You will work with each other, and you will be put in touch with lecturers in advance and after their talk as teams to help solve problems in real-time.
You will work with a young lawyer profiled on ESPN and NPR, the recipient of a bone marrow transplant and preparing to become Nigeria’s first winter olympics athtlete. He wants to bring a bone marrow registry and cancer care to his home in Nigeria. You will meet a young doctor fighting to rid the world of a man-made, corporate agent that kills 6 million people each year. You will team up with a Duke undergraduate who is spearheading a global, university-centered movement to end the mining of minerals in the Congo; mining in these conflict zones drives a civil war that has cost more lives than any war since World War II.
This won’t be academic. Far from it. Your ideas and recommendations throughout the series on real-life case-studies will help the lecturers form action plans on next steps. We will work on communication of a narrative to compel others to action. Moreover, your ideas will feed into reports for the global organization the Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network, which was represented at the 2011 United Nations General Assembly. We will champion your points in a report prepared for senior UN delegates, ambassadors; but also for the grassroots human rights community. We are looking for the best ideas to put forward concerning the future of our planet.
Will you join us?
The world in 2012 and 2050| Transformation of a Sick Society
Date: January 23, 2012 (5PM-6:30PM)
Venue: MIT Bldg. 2, Room 105
How sick is our society, locally and globally? And who is accountable for it? Together, we will uncover how the distribution of resources and human capital for global health actually works; next, we will identify key opportunities and niches to innovate in the spheres of Equity, Action and Targets. We will do an analysis with thought leaders who drove the grassroots social movement and the “grasstop” political process at a historic United Nations General Assembly session on health/non-communicable diseases in 2011, only the 2nd ever such session of its kind (the first was on HIV/AIDS that changed the world). Will our generation step up?
Dr. Sandeep P. Kishore is a Fellow in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School/Global Health Delivery Project and Co-Chair of the Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network (YPCDN). He is a 2011 Fellow at the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics & Transformative Values at MIT.
Just say yes to drugs | Essential medicines for the world
Date: January 25, 2012 (5PM-6:30PM)
Venue: MIT Bldg. 2, Room 105
How do medicines and vaccines get to people? How does a discovery in a MIT laboratory get translated into a life-saving therapy? And, critically, how do univesity intellectual property decisions and pharmaceutical trade provisions materially affect who gets access to life-saving medicines? Is there a way to reduce the cost of medicines by de-linking the price from R&D costs? Even if we get the cost downs, once how do we ensure that it actually gets to patients who need it most. Together, we will actively work on the new questions pharmaceutical policy reform.
Dr. Sandeep P. Kishore is a Fellow in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School/Global Health Delivery Project and Co-Chair of the Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network (YPCDN). He is a 2011 Fellow at the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics & Transformative Values at MIT.
Seun’s Story | The 2014 Winter Olympics, Nigeria, Cancer and You
Date: January 27, 2012 (5PM-6:30PM)
Venue: MIT Bldg. 2, Room 105
In 2009, while studying law at Yale University, Seun Adebiyi was training to become the first athlete to represent Nigeria at the Winter Olympics (sport: Skeleton) when he was diagnosed with two rare and aggressive cancers: lymphoblastic lymphoma and stem-cell leukemia. He desperately needed a bone marrow transplant to survive. However, like over 83% of African/African-American cancer patients, Seun was unable to find a matching donor. Fortunately, he received an umbilical cord blood transplant, and is now dedicated to building a bone marrow registry in Nigeria in order to increase the diversity of the international donor pool. His lecture will describe some of the challenges of building a registry in a low-resource country and consul you for your input in designing next steps. Seun has been profiled on ESPN and award-winning documentaries as the “Skeleton Man.”
Seun Adebiyi is a cancer survivor, a lawyer and is now training to be first Nigerian athlete in the Winter Olympics. His vision is to build the first bone marrow registry in Nigeria.
Tobacco | A man-made, profit-driven disaster that kills 6 million people annually
Date: January 30, 2012 (5PM-6:30PM)
Venue: MIT Bldg. 2, Room 105
What is the only legal product that knowingly kills over half of its users? And why is the use of this deadly product growing in many of the poorest parts of the world? How did the production and use of an obscure medicinal weed used ceremoniously in pre-Columbian North America get industrialized into a vector for a man-made epidemic of disease that killed 100 million people in the 20th Century, and projected to kill 1 billion this century? And what are the effective strategies that have been pioneered in rich and poor parts of the world to combat this scourge? We will explore these and other vexing questions around tobacco – likely the leading fully preventable cause of death and disability worldwide.
Dr. Asaf Bitton has over 10 years of experience in tobacco control in the devleoping world and is leading efforts to reform America’s primary care system. He is a primary care physician at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
War in the Congo & the push for “conflict-free” electronics | Will universities lead?
Date: February 1, 2012 (5PM-6:30PM)
Venue: MIT Bldg. 2, Room 105
Over 10 years ago, concernted activists notified major electronics manufacturers of a perilous connection between the mining of basic minerals in their cellphones and a deadly civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As major corporations turned a blind-eye, this conflict has rapidly evolved into the deadliest war since World War II – with nearly 6 million Congolese killed in the past decade. Just now, student activists have recently brought this issue global attention, with Stanford undergraduates succesfully lobbying their Board of Trustees to shift investment policy in companies still utilizing “conflict minerals” in 2010. Now, Duke and 50+ schools are considering action. With your help, MIT can become the new leader in the “conflict-free” movement to rid the electronics industry of blood minerals?
Sanjay Kishore is a student member of the “Coalition for a Conflict-Free Duke.” He is a junior majoring in the “Social Determinants of Health.”
Your Turn. Student Roundtable on Solutions to the problems laid out / Recommendations to the UN
Date: February 3, 2012 (5PM-6:30PM)
Venue: MIT Bldg. 2, Room 105
Moderated by Dr. Sandeep Kishore
Working groups report-back and present iterated recommendations for the lecturers and the problems described to ensure follow-through & Drafting of recommendations for the UN under Equity, Action and Target domains.
Dr. Sandeep P. Kishore is a Fellow in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School/Global Health Delivery Project and Co-Chair of the Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network (YPCDN). He is a 2011 Fellow at the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics & Transformative Values at MIT.
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