- Posted by Jana Melpolder on August 4, 2015 in the categories: News
The Inveneo team has been privileged this summer to welcome onto its staff Mariela Machado Fantacchiotti, a graduate student currently enrolled in the Master of Public Administration in Development Practice department at Columbia University. Mariela came to Inveneo highly recommended from the program’s manager, Ms. Debi Spindelman.
Mariela is a telecommunications engineer with 5 years of work experience in the ICT sector and describes herself as “passionate about applying ICT for development issues of education, health, agriculture improvements and poverty reduction”. This passion started back in 2006 when she worked for an ICT for development project for the Peruvian NGO EHAS, where she designed and implemented an Internet and IP phone for a local health center. In addition, she speaks five languages and previously earned a Master’s Degree in Information and Communications Technologies in Spain.
Throughout her Inveneo internship, Mariela will be spending most of her time working alongside the engineering department, developing a new M&E approach for new existing Inveneo projects and studying drones for Inveneo’s upcoming Drones 4 Good project. Inveneo has also asked her to research current Internet connectivity in Cuba, including national policies and laws related to ICT and freedom of speech. Additionally, she will be testing the new promise of ICT4D for rural areas called Lantern from Outernet. This device claims to provide Internet connectivity from the satellite for educational purposes, providing offline libraries to rural settings that lack ICT infrastructure. The results will be published on ICTworks.
In her spare time this summer, Mariela is also conducting research for the Earth Institute together with Jeffrey Sachs that will be presented to the United Nations General Assembly this fall. She is looking into how ICT could be an enabler to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) related to health, education, energy and financial inclusion. She is focusing on the health sector and how ICT innovations could help improve health outcomes in the world. Be sure to look for a snapshot of her research and findings on ICTworks, coming early this fall.
Welcome to the team, Mariela! We’re so glad to have you on board!
- Posted by Jana Melpolder on June 24, 2014 in the categories: Education, News
The Inveneo team has been lucky to bring on four new interns this summer. Hailing from Harvard, Northwestern, and UC Berkeley, these four individuals are bringing innovative ideas and fresh insight to our current ICT projects. They are helping our engineers by conducting online research, surveys, and technical documentation. A few are also providing assistance to the editorial team for both the Inveneo and ICTworks websites and newsletters.
We are very happy to have these four individuals join the Inveneo staff for the summer. Check out who recently joined our team!
Atul Adhikari was born in Cambodia, where he spent the first five years of his life. He then went to Nepal and lived in the capital city Kathmandu for 13 years. He is currently in the U.S. studying Computer Engineering and Economics at Northwestern University. He loves to travel, read, and meet new people. Having recently interned at two different education development organizations in Nepal, he is very excited by the idea of introducing technology to rural parts of the world in order to address problems and improve the quality of life for communities everywhere.
At Northwestern, he is part of Engineering World Health and the NUSTARS satellite team where he has been involved with several interesting projects, one of them being the development of a multi-parameter tester for hospital equipments in Rwanda. He loves startups and hopes to create one of his own after graduation. Currently he is working with a startup group of Northwestern MBA students named Reachey. You can reach him by email.
Corbin Halliwill studies Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley, with an additional focus in Global Poverty and Practice. In addition to working at Inveneo this summer, Corbin is building a mobile app that empowers students to connect with each other to walk home at night. This app will aggregate data about crime and street lighting to find safer walking paths and integrate existing campus safety tools with an intuitive user-experience at its core.
Corbin was recently a finalist at the Big Ideas at Berkeley Contest. He is also a webmaster and an executive board member for Engineers without Borders at the UC Berkeley Chapter. He spends his free time outdoors as much as possible sailing, backpacking, and skiing.
Happily trekking from the east coast to the west coast, Danielle Schulkin is a recent graduate of Harvard University (’14) where she studied the History of Science and Government. At school, she worked for the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where she fostered an interest in the ways new technologies can be harnessed for the public good. She is looking forward to delving into the many ways Inveneo leverages ICT4D and expanding her understanding of the intersection between innovation, law, and society.
In the past she has interned at The Washington Post and has worked as a student coordinator for Harvard’s 2013 Hack IP Challenge. Upon completion of her Inveneo internship she will be travelling to Tel Aviv, Israel as a fellow for the prestigious Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Fellowship Award. You can follow her on Twitter.
Eric Zan is interested in how information can play an empowering role in human lives by enhancing a person’s agency and freedoms. Eric was first introduced to the ICT4D world after he quit his software engineering job to help start an ICT4E program in Cameroon with Helps International. He then attended graduate school at UC Berkeley where he spent much of his time researching best practices for ICT4D projects, telling stories with data, and designing products for social impact. His affinity for nature and conservation led him to use his newfound skills as a product designer and user researcher to improve the visitor experience in California’s public places and the United States’ National Parks.
He is a co-founder of Sahay, a social enterprise leveraging information technologies to empower domestic help workers through greater access to job opportunities in India. Eric has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas and a Master’s Degree in Information Management from UC Berkeley’s School of Information. He is currently working on his startup, Sahay, and enjoys helping the great people at Inveneo for the summer. You may find Eric hiking, biking, or kayaking Northern California or virtually at LinkedIn, Twitter, on the web, or by email.
Mariela is a telecommunications engineer with 5 years of work experience in the ICT sector and describes herself as “passionate about applying ICT for development issues of education, health, agriculture improvements and poverty reduction”. This passion started back in 2006 when she worked for an ICT for development project for the Peruvian NGO EHAS, where she designed and implemented an Internet and IP phone for a local health center. In addition, she speaks five languages and previously earned a Master’s Degree in Information and Communications Technologies in Spain.