About ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics

Jelani Nelson, Professor, University of California, Berkeley, receives the ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions Within Computer Science and Informatics for founding and developing AddisCoder, a nonprofit organization which teaches programming to underserved students from all over Ethiopia. AddisCoder has led many students to higher education and successful careers.

In 2011, Nelson founded AddisCoder to provide a free intensive summer program for high school students in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The program has shown exemplary efficacy in fostering the academic and professional development of over 500 high school students. AddisCoder’s student body is 40% female and includes students from each of the 11 regions in Ethiopia, students from ethnic minorities, and students living in poverty.

Upon joining the program, many of the participating students have little or no background in programming or algorithms. In just four short weeks, the students gain significant knowledge. The program rigorously covers college-level material in algorithms such as binary search and sorting, dynamic programming, and graph exploration. Alumni have matriculated in programs at universities including Harvard, MIT, and Princeton, and some students have joined well-known companies such as Google.

Nelson has not only been an AddisCoder instructor himself, but he has recruited a large team of teachers and raised money from government, industry, and academic institutions to fund the initiative. He recently expanded the program to Jamaica.

Richard Anderson, a Professor at the University of Washington, was named recipient of the Eugene L. Lawler Award for contributions bridging the fields of Computer Science, Education, and global health.

Anderson, his students and collaborators have developed a range of innovative applications in health, education, the internet, and financial services, benefiting underserved communities around the globe. He is one of the founders of the emerging field of Information and Communications Technologies for Development (ICTD), which seeks to develop and apply computing and information technologies to benefit low-income populations worldwide, particularly in developing countries.

Anderson has also led various projects using technological innovations to drive community-led video instruction and achieve success in education, agriculture, and health practice. For example, Projecting Health employs handheld projectors to show locally-produced videos to groups of women, spurring follow-up conversations on maternal and child health. Projecting Health has led to over 15,000 screenings across 180 villages, reaching an estimated 190,000 residents.

The Open Data Kit (ODK) research project is another exemplar of an open source infrastructure project revolutionizing data collection in developing regions and enabling improved learning, health care, and farming. Anderson provided leadership to the project as it transitioned from a university-led project to a free-standing organization, and continues to conduct research on expanding ODK-X, a platform for building data management applications that are having significant impact on humanitarian response, control of vector borne diseases, and country immunization systems.

Other successful partnerships have included a human milk bank project in South Africa; a mobile health communication platform for maternal and child health in Kenya; and a vaccine cold-chain project in Uganda and Pakistan.

In addition to research excellence and humanitarian projects, Anderson has played a core leadership role in bringing together several communities under the umbrella of ACM COMPASS (Computing and Sustainable Societies), and organizing and championing conferences, workshops, and tutorials, many of them in developing countries (e.g., Pakistan, Ghana, and Ecuador). Anderson has fostered a growing community of researchers, practitioners and students engaged in using computing and information technology for humanitarian causes.

The Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics recognizes an individual or group who has made a significant contribution through the use of computing technology. It is given once every two years, assuming that there are worthy recipients. The award is accompanied by a prize of $5,000.

Meenakshi Balakrishnan was named recipient of the Eugene L. Lawler Award for research, development, and deployment of cost-effective embedded-system and software solutions addressing mobility and education challenges of the visually impaired in the developing world.

Balakrishnan, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, has dedicated more than a decade to addressing the challenges of the visually impaired by developing low-cost, computing technology-based solutions. Each of his devices has been developed by the meticulous integration of hardware, software, and firmware. His applications have not only improved the quality of life for countless people, but also have made their day-to-day lives dramatically safer. These technologies are especially valuable in the developing world, where there are fewer resources for the visually impaired.

Perhaps his best-known technology is the SmartCane project, which allows the visually impaired to detect items above their knees within a distance of 3 meters. Balakrishnan equipped the probing cane with ultrasonic ranging, wherein the cane conveys the distance of obstacles using vibrations. Balakrishnan has also worked tirelessly to bring the SmartCane to market at an affordable cost. Working with for-profit, nonprofit, and government organizations, he introduced the SmartCane at 5% of the cost of a comparable product in the West. Within India he has made over 70,000 devices available through government initiatives and 45 partner agencies. SmartCane has also won numerous awards, including the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Mobility and Transport for Elderly and Disabled Citizens (TRANSED) 2010.

Additional technologies Balakrishnan and his lab have developed include the OnBoard bus identification and homing system, which helps the visually impaired identify bus routes and locate the entry door, and The Refreshable Braille, which allows the visually impaired to read digital text line-by-line through a tactile interface.

The Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics recognizes an individual or group who has made a significant contribution through the use of computing technology. It is given once every two years, assuming that there are worthy recipients. The award is accompanied by a prize of $5,000.

Ken Banks was named recipient of the Eugene L. Lawler Award for developing FrontlineSMS, using mobile technology and text messaging to empower people to share information, organize aid, and reconnect communities during crises. A self-described “mobile anthropologist,” Banks has a gift for building technology that benefits humanity. As someone who was writing code and tinkering with computers since he was 13, Banks instinctively saw an opportunity to harness the world’s most-used communication platform—mobile messaging—to help people in the developing world.  In 2005, he designed, coded and launched FrontlineSMS, a mobile messaging platform that allows people to subscribe to groups, receive alerts, and establish communication hubs. FrontlineSMS played an important role in the 2007 Nigerian presidential election, where it was used to monitor, identify and curtail violence and harassment at polling places. Because of FrontlineSMS’s built-in flexibility, it quickly became a standard platform deployed in 170 countries by countless organizations. It has been used to help family farmers in Laos, train rural medics in Ecuador, double the amount of patients receiving tuberculosis care in Malawi, and monitor disease outbreaks across Africa. 

Banks continues his work as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at CARE International. To achieve CARE’s goal of raising more people above the $2 per day extreme poverty level, Banks is leading the development of a new mobile phone application for Village Savings and Loan Associations. Along with his colleagues at CARE, he is also investigating how technology might be used to advance gender equality in Rwanda. His two books The Rise of the Reluctant Innovator and Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation recount his experiences—and those of other global social innovators— and serve as guides for those who are inspired to leverage technology for positive social change.

The Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics recognizes an individual or group who has made a significant contribution through the use of computing technology. It is given once every two years, assuming that there are worthy recipients. The award is accompanied by a prize of $5,000.