Advancing knowledge and practice wherever people interact with information and technology

Professor Josh Blumenstock was recently published in Nature, the leading multidisciplinary science journal. Blumenstock describes the potential for big data to make tangible improvements in the lives and economics of people in developing economies, as well as the pitfalls. 

“Today, 95 percent of the global population has mobile-phone coverage,” he writes, “and the number of people owning a phone is rising fast. With phones generating troves of personal data on billions of people who live on a few dollars a day, aid organizations, researchers and private companies are envisioning ways in which the ‘data revolution’ could transform international development.”

Timothy Slade is the recipient of the Fall 2018 Jack Larson “Data for Good” Fellowship. Since 2012, his work with work the nonprofit RTI International has contributed to improving the literacy of more than 6 million children in 25,000 schools in Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, and Kenya.

Slade believes that data scientists are uniquely equipped to improve the lives of the most disadvantaged members of society. “Put simply,” he said, “data science should be used to facilitate the democratization of opportunity.”