The Institute of Technological Empowerment -- Newsletter in English

The start of the school year marked also the launch of eight projects within the framework of the institute of technological empowerment.  Typically we report on the activities in Hebrew since most of the stakeholders are in Israel, however it is time to issue a newsletter in English for all the international readers who might be interested in this.  The newsletter reflects the current status at the beginning of November 2014.   

More on TOM ISRAEL MAKE-A-THON

After a 10 days vacation in the black forest in Germany, back to work and to blogging. I have written a few weeks ago about the very unique event of preparing prototypes of devices for disabled people.   

Now they released a short video highlighting the event and some of the most impressive projects. 

Our Institute of Technological Empowerment is going to work with the organizers on additional projects in thee area of using technology to aid disabled people. 

IoT and the senior citizen

I have not written for a while,  spent a few days in vacation in Rhodes in a family trip - album is available on facebook, and then I was busy preparing a presentation for the board of directors of the college which sponsors the "Institute of Technological Empowerment" which I am now working on establishment.  The presentation is in Hebrew, have not made a lot of presentations in Hebrew recently, and intend to create an English version to share it with larger audience.  When I'll do, I'll post it on slideshare.

I came across a blog post by Stephenson Strategies entitled: "Seniors and the Internet of Things: Empowerment and Security".   As a matter of fact senior citizen are one of the target populations of the institute I am trying to establish, and we are working with experts in gerontology.  The Internet of Things provides opportunities to empower aging population to maintain independent life in various means, by using smart systems that receives events from sensors and determine actions, which are mostly alerts to the person, family, healthcare taker and more.   The cited post relates to health issues, but this can extend to other issues that can improve quality of life and increase the person's security.  I'll write more about concrete projects we are planning later. 

The Technological Empowerment Institute -- first exposure

I have written a month ago about moving on, I still need to post  a summary of my IBM time, but it will have to wait as I am quite busy in my new role.  The role is an attempt to establish (from scratch) an applied research institute called "The Technological  Empowerment Institute (TEI)".   This is a first of a series of posts about the institute's plan.    

The slide below shows the idea in a nutshell:

The domain that we are looking at is in general, exploiting Internet of Things for societal purposes. 

The mission is to help developing areas, first in the Israeli periphery, in this case, the concentration will be on the northern part of Israel, and developing countries over the world.  

The idea is to create partnership with:

1. Multidisciplinary researchers dealing with technology, the human aspect of creating and consuming smart systems (a topic that anybody  following this blog realized I have been focused in the last couple of years), and the domain oriented research (agriculture, gerontology, healthcare and more). The affiliated researchers will be international.

2. Partnership with high-tech companies for using their platforms and products for the implementation projects (see below).

3. Using students projects and internship program to carry out concrete implementation projects that fit the institute's mission.

4. Partnership with academic institutes in developing countries to collaborate on the above.

In the next series of posts I'll write about each of these items.  I am now spending much of my time in creating all these partnership -- a big challenge, and also fun.