Yearly Archives: 2009

Q&A about the Wireless Innovation Project – Dec. 10th

Workshop to Explore the Wireless Innovation Project™ – Grant Program

Sponsored by UCSF Global Health Sciences, UCSF Corporate and Foundation Relations and Vodafone Americas Foundation™

UCSF Mission Bay Campus – Genentech Hall, Byers Auditorium    |    600 16th Street   |   December 10, 2009   |   10:30am PST

Goal

The goal of the Workshop is to share the Vodafone Americas Foundation’s Wireless Innovation Project™ (a grant program) with interested applicants (engineers, scientists, technology and healthcare experts) from diverse backgrounds who have innovative wireless technology ideas that can be applied to social purpose. For more information on the project, go to: [site URL] More →

Wireless Innovations Saving Lives

Innovative technology has the potential to save lives, and wireless technologies hold a special promise for vexing global problems.  In some resource-limited areas, access to reliable wireless service is among the only infrastructure platforms available.

That’s why the Vodafone Americas Foundation™ was delighted to give away more than $700,000 through our first Wireless Innovation Project™, a competition that identifies and funds unique innovations using wireless related technology offering the best potential to address critical social issues around the world.

Too often promising social innovations languish because they don’t have a platform for effective and efficient delivery.  We designed the competition to encourage cross-disciplinary cooperation within universities and encouraged non-governmental organizations and non-profits to apply. We also wanted to add the private sector rigor to the process of competing—a daunting online application forced teams to challenge academic and theoretical assumptions with real-world data. More →

Launch of the Humanitarian Technology Challenge

The United Nations Foundation and Vodafone Foundation Partnership, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest association of technical professionals are announcing the launch of a new initiative called The Humanitarian Technology Challenge (HTC).  HTC is a project that is designed to identify and help develop technology-based solutions to current challenges facing humanitarian workers and others working in resource-constrained environments. They are matching humanitarian professionals and technologists who are interested in contributing their time and expertise to help develop technological solutions to challenges that aid workers and development experts face working in the field.

Stay tuned for a list of keynote speakers and panelists selected from among the humanitarian and technology communities, and a complete agenda covering the two-day event. We expect this event to create challenge working groups and set in motion a process for facilitating web-based collaboration on solution development that will continue after the conference closes. More →

2009 Winners Announced

Today, the three winners of the Vodafone Wireless Innovation Project™ have been announced. The three winning innovations will share in prizes totaling up to $700,000 USD to support their next phase of advancement and implementation.

The winners are:

  • Energy Harvesting Active Networked Tags (EnHANTs) for Disaster Recovery Applications – A system that uses wireless devices to track and locate survivors trapped by fires and structural collapse. The system is based on energy harvesting tags using ultra low power communications. Developed by Professors Gil Zussman, Peter Kinget, Ioannis (John) Kymissis, Dan Rubenstein, and Xiaodong Wang of Columbia University.
  • CelloPhone – A lensfree imaging platform on a cellphone for disease detection and diagnostics usingdigital holograms of the cells or bacteria, that is capable of monitoring HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and various other diseases. Developed by Dr. Aydogan Ozcan, Dr. Neven Karlovac and Dr. Yvonne Bryson of the University of California at Los Angeles.
  • CellScope: Mobile Microscopy for Disease Diagnosis – Transforms a conventional cell phone into a compact, high-resolution, handheld microscope with the capability of on-site disease diagnosis and wireless transmission of patient data to clinical centers for remote diagnosis & treatment. Developed by Dr. Daniel Fletcher, Dr. Erik Douglas and Dr. Wilbur Lam of the University of California at Berkeley. More →