Principal Investigators

Congratulations to the inaugural batch of SIRCA Grant Awardees! After the rigorous selection process by the SIRCA Grant review Committee, 14 applicants from 8 Asian countries are selected for this round of SIRCA Grant Award.

The Grant Awardees are:

Principal Investigator

Country
V.L.V.Kameswari is with the College of Agriculture at G.B.Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, India. She has supervised execution of e-extension project in the state. The project titled Janadhar provided information to farmers through telecentres located in various parts of Nainital district of Uttrakhand. The project was funded by UNDP and implemented by Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India. She has supervised Masters’ level research work on use of internet and mobile phones for providing agricultural information to the farmer. India
Pham Huu Ty is a lecturer of Faculty of Land resources and agricultural environment at Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry (HUAF), Vietnam. He graduated with Master of Applied Science in Jan, 2008 at Dalhousie University, Canada and is specializing in teaching and researching on soil erosion, landslide, land use planning, GIS and remote sensing. He has participated in many rural development projects in the Central Vietnam and is very keen to contribute to the protection of severe river landslide and the sustainable livelihoods for river-based relying communities. Vietnam
Peou,Chivoin holds a dual appointment as a lecturer at the Master Program of Education and at the Department of Media & Communication, Royal University of Phnom Penh. His initial interest in the development of Cambodia’s education led to his first degree in Education in 2001. Getting fascinated by Cambodia’s development process, he went on to complete his master’s degree in Media Studies at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale in early 2008, with primary research interest in intersecting issues of media and Cambodia’s development. In 2007, he completed a textual study on gender and generational relations in Cambodian film. At present, he is completing a conference paper on the role of Cambodia’s broadcast TV in promoting consumer response. Cambodia
Shefali Oza (Withdrawn) earned her undergraduate degrees in Physics and Anthropology at MIT and a Masters in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She then worked as a research fellow at Harvard University on the epidemiology of noncommunicable disease and childhood illnesses. She has worked on health-related issues in Peru, India, and South Africa prior to her current work in Nepal. Her professional interests are in health systems and engineering with a focus on technology to improve health outcomes and access to healthcare. She is now the ICT research coordinator for Nyaya Health, a medical relief organization providing healthcare services in rural Far-Western Nepal. Nepal
Kanliang Wang is a professor at the Management School of Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. He is the research dean and the director of the Electronic Business Research Center of this school. Dr. Wang is a leading researcher in China in the area of electronic business. He is the vice chair of the AIS China Chapter. Dr. Wang is the holder of several key research programs on electronic business funded by China Science Foundation. He sits in the editorial boards of several top Chinese IS journals. Dr. Wang’s work appears in top Chinese journals and some recognized international journals like Communications of the ACM, Information & Management, Decision Support Systems, Electronic Government, and Quarterly Journal of Electronic Commerce. China

Md. Mahfuz Ashraf was awarded PhD degree (December 2008), sponsored by Australian Government International Post Graduate Scholarship (IPRS) from School of Computer Information Science at the University of South Australia. Ashraf’s scholastic training is broad and encompasses a number of the various areas: Marketing, Information Systems (IS) and Information Technology (IT). On one hand, his honours degree provided him with a sound theoretical understanding of various business subjects with an emphasis on marketing, and on other hand his masters degree and PhD training provided him an opportunity to learn information/technology interaction with human and to understand the complex process of the participants’ attitude, learning and experiences towards information/technology.

http://www.brainstorm-bd.com/

 Bangladesh
Phal Des is the Director of the IT Center of RUPP. His focus is on training students, faculty and staff at RUPP in a variety of modern ICTs and engaging RUPP in participating in regional and international research projects and activities. He is involved in a project looking into building and developing applications based on Mobile Computing and 3G Wireless Networks for health care, education and heritage. In 2007 he was awarded a Obuchi/UNESCO fellowship to work for a project called “System Support for Mobile and Distributed Multimedia Computing“. From 2005 to 2007 he worked on projects such as the Grand Mekong Sub-region Virtual University project and the “Open Source e-Learning” project of Unesco Paris. Cambodia
M. Sirajul Islam graduated in BBA and earned two MBA degrees in Finance and Digital Technologies Management respectively. He has been studying PhD in AMIS at the ?rebro University since October 2006. His career started in a management consulting firm and afterwards devoted in teaching profession in the area of Business and ICT where in due course of time he worked as the Head of Business Department at the State University of Bangladesh. He is the founding President of Bangladesh Centre for E-governance and elected fellow of the UK based World Innovation Foundation. Bangladesh
Mary Grace P. Mirandilla is a consultant on ICT research at the Center for Research and Communication (CRC) and the Asian Development Bank’s Regional and Sustainable Development Department (RSDD). She is a telecommunications and ICT researcher who has been involved in various foreign-funded technical assistance projects on policy reform in the Philippines since 2001, which included the drafting of the first Philippine ICT Strategic Roadmap and a number of policies for universal access. From 2005 to 2006, Ms. Mirandilla served as one of the lead researchers and project manager of a 20-month study on community telecenters, a project under the Center for Research and Communication (CRC) funded through the Pan Asia Networking R&D grant program of IDRC Canada. Concurrently, she provided research assistance in a LIRNEasia study called the “Telecom Regulatory Environment Assessment (TRE) Perception Survey,” which looked at regulatory efficacy as perceived by informed ICT stakeholders, such as regulators, policymakers, legislators, businesses, market analysts, and ICT service providers. Philippines
Balwant Singh Mehta has handled and managed successfully 15 independently and more than 40 social research projects as a team member. The projects are mainly related to various human development issues like employment, Industry (Information technology), education, poverty, rural development, child labour, social security, migration, shelterless people (urban development), health etc.. The projects have been sponsored by various national and international organisations. He has published more than 15 articles in various national/international level journals and books and has worked as a consultant for ILO in their study of labour market conditions in Information and Technology sector in 2001. His M Phil thesis was also related to ICT “Employment and quality of employment in ICT sector in India”. India
Ma. Regina M. Hechanova is the Executive Director of the Ateneo Center for Organization Research and Development (Ateneo CORD) and an associate professor at the Psychology department, of the Ateneo de Manila University. Gina has a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the Central Michigan University and obtained her M.A. in Psychology and B.S. degrees from the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman. She has over 20 years of experience as an HR practitioner and consultant in organizations both in the Philippines and in the US. In 1996, she received the UP Chancellor’s Award for Most Outstanding Faculty. In 2005, Gina was also named Outstanding Young Scientist in 2005 by the National Academy of Science and Technology. She is co- editor of the book The Way We Work: Research and Best Practices in Philippine Organizations which was a finalist at the 2006 National Book Awards. She recently published “Leading Philippine Organizations in a Changing World: Research and Best Practices.” Philippines
T. B. Dinesh completed his Ph.D. in 1992, from the Department of Computer Science, University of Iowa. He spent several years in Amsterdam at CWI, the Dutch national institute for Mathematics and Computer Science. He has had various academic, research and industrial positions where he has worked on object-oriented programming, generation of software and course-ware from specifications, and structuring information for its use on the Internet. He co-founded Pagelets, Inc. in 1999 while in California, which was responsible for the research and development of a community and social software called Pantoto Communities. India
MJR David started as a community broadcaster in Sri Lanka and later moved on to be a senior lecturer of Journalism at the University of Colombo. He is currently a PHD candidate of the University of Pradeniya and has successfully implemented several Development communication projects in Sri Lanka and has been involved with community Radio movements in South Asia. Recently he chaired the Radio Asia Conference on Community Radio hosted by AMIC. He has been a consultant to the Ministry of Media in Sri Lanka and was appointed chairman of the ministerial committee to restructure the state broadcaster. He has been Board member of the Sri Lanka press council and acting head Department of Media studies, Sri Pali campus, University of Colombo. Sri Lanka