Kentaro Toyama is a computer scientist and

international development International development or global development is a broad concept denoting the idea that societies and countries have differing levels of economic or human development on an international scale. It is the basis for international classifications ...

researcher, who works on the relationship of technology and global development. He is the W. K. Kellogg Professor at the

University of Michigan School of Information The University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI or iSchool) is the informatics and information science school of the University of Michigan, a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It offers baccalaureate, magisterial, and doc ...

McDonald, Amy. (2014
"How Google and Facebook are helping the underprivileged — or not"
''Deseret News National''. Aug. 13, 2014 and author of ''Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology''.http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/book/hardcover/geek-heresy/9781610395281 Toyama was founding assistant director of

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

India, a Bangalore-based computer science laboratory, where he established the Technology for Emerging Markets group which conducts interdisciplinary research in the field of "information and communication technologies for development" (ICT4D).Bahree, Megha. (2008
"Computing at the Bottom of the Pyramid".
''Forbes Magazine''. Sept. 29, 2008.Radjou, Navi. (2009

''Harvard Business Review'' Blogs. June 25, 2009.Microsoft Research. (n.d.
"Kentaro Toyama".
Retrieved Oct. 15, 2010. Together with

AnnaLee Saxenian AnnaLee Saxenian is a professor and the current Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Information, known widely for her work on technology clusters and social networks in Silicon Valley. She received her BA from Williams College in 1976 and her PhD fr ...

and

Raj Reddy Dabbala Rajagopal "Raj" Reddy (born 13 June 1937) is an Indian-American computer scientist and a winner of the Turing Award. He is one of the early pioneers of artificial intelligence and has served on the faculty of Stanford and Carnegie Mello ...

, he co-founded the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, a global platform for rigorous, academic, interdisciplinary research in ICT4D.Microsoft News Center. (2009
"Research & (Economic) Development".
Apr. 17, 2009.

Education

Toyama received a Ph.D. in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

, and an A.B. in

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Research and career

Toyama's research spans several disparate areas, including ICT4D,

development studies Development studies is an interdisciplinary branch of social science. Development studies is offered as a specialized master's degree in a number of reputed universities around the world. It has grown in popularity as a subject of study since the e ...

computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...

, human-computer interaction,

geographic information systems A geographic information system (GIS) is a type of database containing geographic data (that is, descriptions of phenomena for which location is relevant), combined with software tools for managing, analyzing, and visualizing those data. In a br ...

, and

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...

.Stross, Randall. (2010
"Two billion laptops? It may not be enough"
''The New York Times''. Apr. 17, 2010.O'Connell, Pamela Licalzi. (2003

''The New York Times''. Oct. 23, 2003. He is best known for his research in ICT4D, which includes technology projects such as MultiPoint,Roush, Wade. (2006
"Microsoft in India".
''Technology Review''. June 1, 2006.Vance, Ashlee. (2008

''The New York Times''. Oct. 26, 2008. Text-Free User Interfaces, Warana Unwired, and

Digital Green Digital Green is a global development organization that empowers smallholder farmers to lift themselves out of poverty by harnessing the collective power of technology and grassroots-level partnerships. Digital Green is an independent non-governmen ...

, as well as observational studies of rural telecenters,Toyama, Kentaro and Ken Keniston. (2008
"Telecenter Debates".
In ''Telecentre Magazine''. March, 2008.Kuriyan, R., Ray, I., and Toyama, K. (2008
"Information and Communication Technologies for Development: The Bottom of the Pyramid Model in Practice".
''The Information Society'' 24(2):93-104. Mar. 2008. mobile phones in developing countries,Smyth, T. N., Kumar, S., Medhi, I., and Toyama, K. (2010
"Where there's a will there's a way: mobile media sharing in urban india".
In Proceedings of the 28th international Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI '10. ACM, New York, NY, 753-762. and the limits of technology for

.Toyama, Kentaro. (2010
"The Myth of Scale"TEDxTokyo
May 15, 2010. He is an outspoken critic of the "

technological utopianism Technological utopianism (often called techno-utopianism or technoutopianism) is any ideology based on the premise that advances in science and technology could and should bring about a utopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian i ...

" that he sees in initiatives such as One Laptop Per Child, and argues that technology only magnifies existing human intent and capacity. A two-part essay making this point appears in
Boston Review forum
Toyama, Kentaro. (2010
"Can Technology End Poverty"

Boston Review ''Boston Review'' is an American quarterly political and literary magazine. It publishes political, social, and historical analysis, literary and cultural criticism, book reviews, fiction, and poetry, both online and in print. Its signature form ...

, Nov/Dec 2010.Toyama, Kentaro. (2010
"Response"

, Nov/Dec 2010. The argument is expanded upon and extended further in ''Geek Heresy''. He is also a faculty affiliate of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) program at the

Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy The Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, often referred to as the Ford School, is the public policy school at the University of Michigan. Founded in 1914 to train municipal administration experts, the school was named after University of Mi ...

. Toyama's research in computer vision involves automated tracking of objects in video. In 2002, he taught calculus at

Ashesi University Ashesi University ( ) is a private, non-profit university located in Accra, Ghana. The mission of Ashesi University is to educate ethical, entrepreneurial leaders in Africa; to cultivate within students the critical thinking skills, the concer ...

Accra Accra (; tw, Nkran; dag, Ankara; gaa, Ga or ''Gaga'') is the capital and largest city of Ghana, located on the southern coast at the Gulf of Guinea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. As of 2021 census, the Accra Metropolitan District, , ...

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...

.Ashesi University. (n.d.
"Visiting Faculty".
Retrieved Oct. 15, 2010.

Awards and honors

Toyama was named to the 2022 class of

ACM Fellow ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing ...

s, "for contributions to the innovation and critique of digital technology for socio-economic development and social justice". A paper he co-authored with Andrew Blake was awarded the

Marr Prize The International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) is a research conference sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) held every other year. It is considered to be one of the top conferences in computer vision, ...

at the 2001

International Conference on Computer Vision The International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) is a research conference sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) held every other year. It is considered to be one of the top conferences in computer vision, ...

.IEEE Computer Society. (n.d.
"CVPR and ICCV Best Paper Awards".
Retrieved Oct. 15, 2010. That work was a precursor to some of the technology in Microsoft's

Kinect Kinect is a line of motion sensing input devices produced by Microsoft and first released in 2010. The devices generally contain RGB cameras, and infrared projectors and detectors that map depth through either structured light or time of flig ...

product.Rowan, David. (2010
"Kinect for Xbox 360: The inside story of Microsoft's secret 'Project Natal'".
Retrieved Dec. 15, 2014.

References

External links

Personal website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Toyama, Kentaro American computer scientists Science and technology studies scholars Computer vision researchers Living people Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Harvard University alumni University of Michigan faculty Academic staff of Ashesi University Year of birth missing (living people) Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery