Dr. Lesh to speak at Columbia University

Neal will be speaking at Columbia on Tuesday, March 17th.  The summary of the talk is below.

Tuesday, March 17th, at 5:30pm in LC-504
Dinner will be served.

Speaker bio: Neal Lesh received a PhD in computer science from the University of Washington in 1998.  As a Senior Scientist at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory (MERL) in Cambridge, MA, he worked in a variety areas related to human-computer interaction.  In 2004, Neal got a Master in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.  Since then, he has been working and living mostly abroad. In Tanzania, he has worked on data systems for a large Harvard-supported AIDS treatment program with tens of thousands of patients in care or treatment.  He worked with Partners in Health during the early stages of their operations in rural Rwanda, helping to build reporting systems and laboratory systems.  In South Africa and Tanzania, he is investigating the use of handhelds to deliver standardized care to improve the treatment of common causes of child mortality and triaging of HIV+ patients.  He is starting work in Bangladesh to deliver essential information over mobile phones.  He has been active in the OpenMRS and OpenROSA open source communities, as well as collaboration among groups working on mobile health applications in Tanzania. His primary focus now is on the CommCare project to equip community health workers with phone-based applications to help them plan their day, manage household visits, and report their data.

Directions to LC-504: Enter the medical school building and make a right at the end of the hallway, then take the elevators at the end of that hallway to the 5th floor. LC-504 is directly across the hall from the elevators.