Projects

GorillaDB

Gorilla Database with Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International – website

For more than 40 years, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund has carried on international gorilla protection and research programs set in place by its namesake founder, zoologist Dian Fossey. This dedication to gorilla conservation has led to a huge amount of gorilla-related data, ranging from poaching activity in gorilla territory to social interactions between gorilla groups.

With the support of a generous grant from the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, researchers at the University of Maryland and Zoo Atlanta are creating a user-friendly web application to allow for fast and easy querying and filtering of this immense database. The final result of this project will be an accessible, intuitive portal that gives researchers the ability to quickly understand decades of data, while introducing the general public to the world of gorillas.

Please visit the project website for more information and timely updates!

For a brief explanation of The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International's mission, visit their website here.

Project team

• V.S. Subrahmanian, University of Maryland – link
• Tara Stoinski, Zoo Atlanta & Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund – link
• John P. Dickerson, University of Maryland & Carnegie Mellon University – link

WISE

Worldwide Information System for Education – website

WISE, the Worldwide Information System for Education, tracks over 4700 variables related to a host of education outcomes for over 200 countries. WISE's goal is to understand the conditions governing a variety of contextual variables (e.g., health care, conflict, investment, education policy) that influence various educational desirable development outcomes (e.g., enrolment rates, dropout rates, female completion rates).

Using data collected by authoritative sources—such as the The World Bank and UNESCO—WISE uses sophisticated algorithms to automatically learn a class of rules called SOMA-rules. SOMA-rules explain the relationship between contextual variables and outcome variables and present them in an intelligent manner using a simple, easy to use query interface.

Please visit the project website for more information!

For a brief explanation of WISE on the world stage, see the AAAS press release here.

Project team

• V.S. Subrahmanian, University of Maryland – link
• Romain Murenzi, University of Maryland & AAAS – link
• John P. Dickerson, University of Maryland & Carnegie Mellon University – link
• Damon Earp, University of Maryland

STAND

Surveillance, Tracking and Analysis of Nutrition and Diseases Worldwide

With the increasing need to mitigate the negative impact of the global food, and financial crises on children, there is compelling need for fresh data on ECD (in child nutrition, health, early childhood education) to be used in planning for the response and decision making. University of Maryland Professor V.S. Subrahmanian and World Bank economist Marito Garcia have jointly proposed a systematic procedure, accompanied by a supporting software architecture called STAND, to collect and monitor global ECD related data in near-time, analyze that data with human analysts and software tools, and provide policy makers with an experimental environment within which they can learn about and simulate options they need to determine what interventions would provide the highest impact in combating early childhood disease.

With respect to this project, Dr. Hamadoun Toure, Secretary General of the International Telecommunications Union said, "I am delighted by the advances in the research in this field. This will, with no doubt, ensure the improvement of quality of life of millions of people in the developing world where quality health care is not within reach of everybody. Through the use of affordable ICT we can make the world a better place."

Project team

• V.S. Subrahmanian, University of Maryland -- link
• Marito Garcia, The World Bank -- link

Publications

• V.S. Subrahmanian and Marito Garcia. STAND: Surveillance, Tracking and Analysis of Nutrition and Diseases Worldwide. Proceedings of the 4th African Conference on Early Childhood Development, Dakar, Senegal, November 2009. (pdf download)

Country Profiles on Early Childhood Development: Sub-Saharan Africa

. . . for the Global Early Childhood Progress Report

To date, there has been almost no systematic quantitative effort to track the state of early childhood status in Africa, and the state of national and sub-national policies towards children's health, education, and welfare in Africa. In this report generated in cooperation with the RISE Institute, Save the Children (USA), and the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Development, we are pleased tp announce the release of a draft report containing quantitative information on the state of early childhood development in 37 countries in Africa. We are working on the development of a detailed, complete report, together with a web site and social networking environment with detailed analytics that will help early childhood policy makers worldwide better serve children.

Project team

• Emily Vargas-Baron, RISE Institute -- link
• V.S. Subrahmanian, University of Maryland -- link
• John P. Dickerson, University of Maryland -- link
• Regina Lauricella
• Nitika Tolani-Brown
• Lenisa Joseph
• John Dougherty

Improving College Level Education in Nigeria

UMIACS researchers in the Center for Digital International Government worked with the World Bank, the University of Lagos, and the Federal College of Education - Technology, to devise a method to deliver high quality undergraduate programs to Nigerian universities, improve the basic ICT infrastructure in Nigeria, and help form partnerships for research and education between Nigerian faculty and students and university faculty and students elsewhere.

Project team

• V.S. Subrahmanian, University of Maryland -- link
• Fritz McCall, University of Maryland -- link

Organizations

• Center for Digital International Government (CDIG)
• University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS)
• The World Bank
• University of Lagos
• Federal College of Education - Technology