I am the director of the Community Aware Networks and Information Systems (CANIS) Lab at Northern Arizona University. Please visit my lab page for updates on our ongoing research projects.
Research focus:
- Network and data analytics
- Community-centric network design
- People-centric network design
- Networks in resource-limited contexts
- Information technology and society
Indigenous Internet
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While efforts to increase broadband penetration rates have focused on developing regions in Southeast Asia and Africa, there is an invisible digital divide that is persistent and acute and it exists in the United States and Canada. Fewer than 15% of residents in Tribal areas have access to fixed or mobile broadband. While the digital divide in these communities has existed since the introduction of telecommunications infrastructure, the consequences and rate of disenfranchisement increases as web technology becomes more advanced. In this work, we are the first to analyze and measure existing broadband services on Tribal lands with a focus on identifying the unique broadband needs and usage patterns present in these communities. The overall goal of this work is to develop innovative technologies that increase participation in the creation and sharing of digital Indigenous culture by addressing issues of connectivity as well as concerns for intellectual property rights. We are extremely fortunate to be partnering with the Southern California Tribal Chairman's Association and the Tribal Digital Village network project.
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Publications and Presentations
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Indigenous Knowledge Online
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Indigenous peoples comprise an exceptional class of citizenry in the United States and Canada. As they are continually marginalized from mass media outlets, Indigenous peoples are increasingly turning to social media outlets as alternative platforms from which to broadcast and exchange information pertaining to Indigenous interests and communities. Research in this space seeks to (i) identify the Indigenous knowledge communities that precipitate online (especially on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram), (ii) characterize the information and content that is exchanged within and between these communities, and (iii) understand how these communities and information exchanges relate to on-the-ground realities faced by Indigenous peoples. The research takes a mixed methods approach by combining qualitative analysis techniques, empirical data analysis techniques, and graph analysis techniques.
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Publications and Presentations
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VillageShare
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VillageShare is a project that aims to provide a file storage and file sharing solution for communities with limited connectivity. A significant problem with bringing the next 3 billion people online is the disparity between the language of the majority of Internet content (predominantly English) and the language of Internet users. This issue is further aggravated by factors associated with limited upload capacity and media-rich web content. Due to failing upload capacities, oral-based communities are often prevented from sharing their local culture in appropriate media formats online. VillageShare seeks to 1) provide a locally owned and controlled means of curation for these digital artifacts and 2) enable global sharing of these artifacts. This project is faciliated through ownCloud, custom ownCloud modules written to provide multi-server capabilities, and custom ownCloud modules written to interact with Facebook. In addition, we are creating specialized Android ownCloud clients that provide support for our added modules as well as support for use in areas with limited connectivity. We plan to deploy this system in late 2014 in a township in Cape Town, South Africa.
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Publications and Presentations
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ODK Submit
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Researching and developing ODK Submit, a tool for UW's Open Data Kit which handles all incoming and outgoing communication over the network. The goal of this work is to create a communication module which uses on-device radio sensors and connectivty history to intelligently route data in a manner that considers financial cost, communication time, network availability, and user preferences. By the end of the summer, I hope to have a working prototype of ODK Submit to be used with existing ODKv2 tools. The most updated ODK code repository can be found here.
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Publications and Presentations
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