Google awards $1.35 million grant to UW professor

In the February issue of Seattle Business Magazine, Stuart Glascock described the Puget Sound region’s prominence in the business of developing new devices and applications for mobile internet devices. In keeping with this trend, Google Inc. announced Feb. 2 that it awarded University of Washington professor Gaetano Borriello $1.35 million to fund research that could increase the use of mobile internet devices in developing regions.

Boriello and UW doctoral students Carl Hartung, Yaw Anokwa and Waylon Brunette are developing a free suite of open source tools called Open Data Kit (ODK), an application for data collection and management on mobile devices. Environmental and public health nonprofits are currently using ODK to gather data in developing regions that lack reliable telecommunications infrastructure. Grameen Foundation, a Washington DC-based nonprofit with an office in Seattle, is using ODK to evaluate its own suite of information-sharing mobile phone applications in Uganda.