USAID Higher Education Solutions Network 2nd Annual Technical Convening
“Connecting to Accelerate Global Development”
November 8 – November 10, 2014
University of California, Berkeley
In collaboration with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and its Global Development Lab, UC Berkeley’s Development Impact Lab (DIL) will host the second annual Higher Education Solutions Network Technical Convening (TechCon) in the San Francisco Bay Area November 8-10, 2014. The three-day public event will bring together academic experts with other leaders in international development to address how science and technology are shaping international development.
The event will feature: international development innovators and innovations, including those spinning out of the private sector; NGOs; and eight university-based labs comprising USAID’s Higher Education Solutions Network (HESN), including:
- University of California, Berkeley’s Development Impact Lab
- Duke University’s Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator
- MIT’s International Development Innovation Network
- MIT’s Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation
- College of William and Mary’s AidData Center for Development Policy
- Texas A&M University’s Conflict and Development
- Michigan State University’s Global Center for Food Systems Innovation
- Makerere University’s Resilient Africa Network, based in Uganda
Confirmed speakers include Janet Napolitano, President of the University of California; Nicholas Dirks, Chancellor of UC Berkeley; Lynelle Cameron, President and CEO of the Autodesk Foundation and the Senior Director of Sustainability at Autodesk, Inc.; Chuck Slaughter, Founder and CEO of LivingGoods; Kate Bergeron, Senior Director of Product Design at Apple; Richard Blum, Founder and Trustee of the Blum Center for Developing Economies; and Eric Brewer, Vice President of Infrastructure at Google.
Presenters will address the potential that science and technology holds in responding to global development challenges. The event will also focus on university approaches to innovating, testing, and scaling for international development.
November 8 and 9 will take place at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco in Burlingame, CA, and include Tech4Dev (technology for development) product demonstrations and panels on measuring product demand in emerging markets, using data science for social impact, impact investing, scaling global health technologies, and human-centered design.
November 10 will take place at UC Berkeley’s California Memorial Stadium and include TED-style talks from leaders in development and tech, plus an Innovation Marketplace, an expo that showcases young innovators, and innovations tackling challenges in international development.
For more information, please visit: http://bit.ly/HESNTechConReg
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About the Development Impact Lab:
The Development Impact Lab (DIL), an innovation lab at UC Berkeley, creates scalable strategies for effective and reliable technologies to address pressing global challenges. Using the competitive advantage of a world-class university, DIL’s approach sources potential transformative innovations and enables their design, evaluation, and eventual spin-out. DIL supports its innovators through novel grants, consulting, and access to networks as well as through hands-on classes and skill building. A West Coast consortium, DIL is managed by the Blum Center for Developing Economies and the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), with support from the Global Development Lab powered by USAID.