[Colloq] REMINDER: Distinguished Speaker - Today, Wednesday, April 11 - Eric Brewer

[Rachel Kalweit]

College of Computer and Information Science Colloquium
Distinguished Speaker Series
Presents:
Eric Brewer
University of California, Berkeley

Wednesday, April 11, 2007
12:00pm
20 West Village F

Title:
"Technology for Developing Regions"
Bio:
ERIC BREWER focuses on all aspects of Internet-based systems, including
technology, strategy, and government. As a researcher, he has led
projects on scalable servers, search engines, network infrastructure,
sensor networks, and security. His current focus is (high) technology
for developing regions, with projects in India, Ghana, Rwanda and
Cambodia among others, and including communications, health, education,
and e-government.
In 1996, he co-founded Inktomi Corporation with a Berkeley grad student
based on their research prototype, and helped lead it onto the Nasdaq
100 before it was bought by Yahoo! in March 2003. In 2000, he founded
the Federal Search Foundation, a 501-3(c) organization focused on
improving consumer access to government information. Working with
President Clinton, Dr. Brewer helped to create FirstGov.gov, the
official portal of the Federal government, which launched in September
2000.
He received an MS and Ph.D. in EECS from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, and a BS in EECS from UC Berkeley. He was named a "Global
Leader for Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum, by the Industry
Standard as the "most influential person on the architecture of the
Internet", by InfoWorld as one of their top ten innovators, and by
Forbes as one of their 12 "e-mavericks", for which he appeared on the
cover.

"Technology for Developing Regions" Abstract
Moore's Law and the wave of technologies it enabled have led to
tremendous improvements in productivity and the quality of life in the
industrialized world. Yet, technology has had almost no effect on the
four billion people that make less US$2/day. In this talk I argue that
the decreasing costs of computing and wireless networking make this the
right time to spread the benefits of technology, and that the biggest
missing piece is a lack of focus on the problems that matter, including
health, education, and government. After covering some example
applications that have shown very high impact, I take an early look at
the research agenda for developing regions. Finally, I examine some of
the pragmatic issues required to make progress on these very challenging
problems. My goal is to convince high-tech researchers that technology
for developing regions is an important and viable research topic.

Host: Ravi Sundaram



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