Information and communication technologies (ICTs) often fail to perform well in environments and scenarios that were not envisioned at the time of the ICTs creation. Examples of such failures include poor usability of traditional WiFi networks in resource-constrained rural areas, geographically-dependent performance of centralised networked systems, and context-insensitive behaviour of ubiquitous computing devices.

In my work I aim to understand how the environment and human factors shape ICT performance, but also how, in return, ICTs can be leveraged to impact users’ behaviour. In this talk I will present my research on the analysis of social and technical issues pertaining to rural and remote computer networks. I will present a suite of solutions informed by the above analysis, including community and region-wide traffic localisation systems, a low-cost voice communication system, adaptive software defined radio-based wireless solutions, and human-centered mobile sensing systems.

Finally, increasingly sensor-rich, powerful and highly personal mobile devices have a potential to revolutionise the way ICTs integrate with the user. I will discuss my vision of anticipatory mobile computing, a paradigm where through mobile sensing and machine learning, a device builds a model of the environment, anticipates the impact its actions will have on the future events and state of the environment, and brings autonomous decisions according to the user’s needs.

About Veljko Pejovic

Veljko Pejovic received a PhD from the Department of Computer Science, University of California Santa Barbara. Currently he is a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK. His research is focused on adaptive and resource-efficient mobile technologies and their impact on the society. He is broadly interested in mobile computing and sensing, wireless networks, machine learning, and technologies for development.

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This event will be conducted in English