A team led by Carla Gomes and the Institute for Computational Sustainability that she directs has developed cell phone apps that herders in Kenya are using to track herds and report conditions at grazing sites; the information that is gathered complements satellite imagery. Computer Magazine and Futurity both picked up the article.
In a Cornell Chronicle article, PhD student Yexiang Xue comments on the optimization-problem aspects of trying to incentivize participants to report on under-visited locations, and Gomes notes, "If we can use sophisticated technology to run Amazon, we can use sophisticated technology to help people in Africa".
