Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Development 2019 - Doctoral Consortium

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports student participation at the Tenth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD). ICTD studies and seeks to improve the impact of technologies on social, political, and economic development, particularly in lower-resource contexts and countries. Such contexts pose unique constraints and opportunities that can highlight assumptions about how we build and design technology; addressing these assumptions can improve our ability to design and deploy beneficial technology both in the U.S. and abroad. The funds will primarily support U.S. students selected for the conference's doctoral consortium who do not have other available funding to support their attendance. As colloquium participants, these students will receive valuable feedback about their dissertation research and have opportunities to interact with a number of ICTC scholars, particularly the doctoral consortium mentors. This, in turn, provides opportunities for their professional development and strengthens the ICTD research community. The organizers will make a particular effort to reach students traditionally underrepresented in computer and information science and engineering in order to broaden the impact of the workshop. The colloquium will take place on Jan 4, 2019. Before the colloquium, students and mentors will prepare by reading each others' materials. The bulk of the colloquium will consist of small-group discussions in which mentors and students interactively discuss the focus, contributions, methods, and ethics considerations around each participant's dissertation proposal. There will also be full-group discussion of professional issues, such as navigating the job market, developing and funding a research program, and negotiating work-life balance. Applications will be reviewed by three of the organizers and selected based on the relevance and clarity of their research to the conference topics, students' career stages, and financial need. The organizers will also work to ensure diverse attendance and mentorship in terms of research topics, methods, locations, institutions, and student's personal and intellectual backgrounds. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.