ICTD Open Session
Developing an ICTD Research Agenda for Digital Financial Services
Sunday, June 5, 2:30-4:00pm, Vandenberg Room, 2nd floor
Increasing access to Digital Financial Services can have a dramatic impact in reducing global poverty. However, many challenges have been identified in the introduction of Digital Financial Services including improving proximity payments, reducing the vulnerability of transactions to cyberattacks, and developing analytics to improve management of agent networks. This session aims to bring together ICTD researchers interested in developing a research agenda in Digital Financial Services.
Structure
The open session will be a moderated panel session. During the first 60 minutes, the panelists will present their views on research on Digital Financial Services, beginning with brief presentations, and followed by round robin questions from the moderator. The final thirty minutes be open questions from the audience to the panelists.
Panelists
- Richard Anderson (Moderator) is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, where he leads the UW ICTD lab. He recently established the UW Digital Financial Services research group.
- Himanshu Nagpal is a Senior Program Officer, Financial Services for the Poor at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In his role as the Emerging Technologies Lead for the team, Himanshu is focused on finding ways to accelerate adoption of new technologies and techniques to address the barriers that exists in providing better financial services to the poor.
- Jonathan Donner is Senior Director, Research at Caribou Digital. For over a decade, Jonathan has published extensively on the growth in mobile telephony in the developing world, focusing on its implications for socio-economic development and inclusion in the information society. Prior to joining Caribou Digital, Jonathan was a researcher in the Technology for Emerging Markets Group at Microsoft Research, India.
- Jacki O’Neill is a researcher in the Technology for Emerging Markets Group at Microsoft Research, India. Her research interest is in designing technologies to support human agency, with a current focus on digital money and financial management for populations with low incomes, and the technologically-mediated workplaces of the future.
- Lakshminarayanan Subramanian is an Associate Professor in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU. His research interests are in the areas of networked systems, computing for development (ICTD) and big data analytics. He co-leads the Center for Technology and Economic Development and is a member of the NYU Systems group. He is affiliated with the Center for Data Science, Global Institute of Public Health and NYU WIRELESS.