Keynote Speakers

Deborah Estrin

Professor, UCLA Computer Science Department

Talk abstract

Participatory mHealth: Opportunities and Challenges

The most significant health and wellness challenges in the United States and many other developed nations involve chronic illnesses, from diabetes, hypertension, asthma and epilepsy to depression, insomnia, gastrointestinal disorders and skin problems such as acne and psoriasis. And three lifestyle behaviors -- poor diet, lack of exercise and smoking -- contribute to many of these conditions around the world. Participatory mHealth leverages the power and ubiquity of mobile technologies to assist individuals and their cliincians in monitoring and managing symptoms, side effects and treatment for chronic illnesses outside the clinical setting, and to address the lifestyle factors that can bring on or exacerbate these conditions. By empowering individuals to track and mange their key health-related behaviors and outcomes, this approach has the potential to greatly improve people's health and quality of life, while simultaneously reducing societies' overall healthcare costs.

Four technology-themed issues are key to the impact of Participatory mHealth interventions.

Engagement. Establishing and sustaining engagement among participants is critical to the success of any Participatory Sensing initiative. Applications must ensure that participants can see the impact of their data through integration with social media and emerging persuasive technologies

Data Analysis and Visualization. Data analysis methods range from simple analysis and charting applications to mashup like spatial visualization of fused data sources. The greatest opportunities for high impact advancement at this time is in the development, evaluation, and continuous improvement of how we make sense of these data streams.

Privacy. Particularly when contributing data about their health and living patterns, many participants are understandably concerned about privacy issues. The challenges for system designers is to balance Participatory Sensing's inherent benefits - sharing, collaboration, and easy of use - against the risk of revealing too much personal information to third parties.

Open Systems. Ultimately, Participatory mHealth will become supportable by commercially available tools on people's everyday smartphones. As the technology and methodology are jointly shaped in this nascent period, an open, shared architecture is essential to support a learning and innovative ecosystem. Just as published APIs and App stores have made it easy for third-party developers to innovate and proliferate, an open architecture paves the way for rapid exploration and innovation through shared modules, as well as continuous iterative improvement, particularly in the area of sense-making and efficacy.

Biography

Deborah Estrin is a Professor of Computer Science, holds the Jon Postel Chair in Computer Networks, and is Founding Director of the NSF-funded Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS). She received her Ph.D. (1985) in Computer Science from M.I.T., and her B.S. (1980) from U.C. Berkeley.

Estrin's early research focused on the design of network protocols, including multicast and inter-domain routing. In 2002 Estrin founded the NSF funded Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (http://cens.ucla.edu) which focused on environmental monitoring technologies and applications. Most recently Estrin and collaborators are developing and deploying participatory sensing systems, leveraging the location, image, and user- contributed data streams increasingly available globally from mobile phones. Ongoing projects include self-monitoring applications in support of health and wellness (http://openmhealth.org) and Participatory Sensing campaigns for community data gathering (http://urban.cens.ucla.edu), citizen science (http://whatsinvasive.com), and STEM education (http://mobilizingcs.org).

Professor Estrin was is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007) and the National Academy of Engineering (2009). She is a fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and AAAS. She was selected as the first ACM-W Athena Lecturer in 2006, awarded the Anita Borg Institute's Women of Vision Award for Innovation in 2007, inducted into the WITI hall of fame in 2008, and awarded Doctor Honoris Causa from EPFL (2008) and from Uppsala University (2011).

Daniel Galpin

Developer Advocate, Android, Google

Talk abstract

Building Billows - The present, and future of gaming in the mobile cloud

Ever since a game designer realized that it was more fun to build cities than it was to blow them up, we've seen a revolution in gaming. The web and cloud took this revolution and made it more universally accessible than ever before, changing the fabric of our culture in the process. Building Billows is about where we've come from, where we are, and where, perhaps, we are going.

Biography

Dan Galpin is a Developer Advocate for the Google Android team focused on Games. He works extensively with both the Dalvik and NDK environments. Before joining Google, Dan developed several Android media applications, created an Android instructional video, and was a technical reviewer for a popular Android book. He has spent the last ten years working in the mobile space, developing at almost every layer of the phone stack. In his spare time, he performs opera, operetta, and musical theater.