Silvia Figueira -- Mobile Computing for Social Benefit

Our group is part of the Frugal Innovation Hub at SCU

We develop applications for social benefit, particularly to enable cellular phones to help underserved communities.
We have collaborations with local companies and social enterprises around the world.
If you are interested in joining our group, get in touch with Prof. Figueira.

2022/2023

Twige English: Pictionary game for kids in Rwanda, collaboration with Sheer-Love-Rwanda.
Team:
Home Iga: Homework app for kids in Rwanda, collaboration with Sheer-Love-Rwanda.
Team: Dion Dupree and Devon Dupree
Obujulizi Share: App for enabling people in rural areas to share their stories, collaboration with Rose Aacdemies.
Team: Aastha Khare and Sravani Polkampalli
Home Safe: App to help incoming refugees adjust to life in a refugee cammp.
Team: Meryem Esa, Siddharth Raj
Whether Weather: Machine-Learning solution to provide road conditions according to the weather.
Team:

2021/2022

Wolof World: Educational Games for kids in Senegal, collaboration with Magatte Wade
High-School Team: Jiya Gupta, Kabir Shah, Shuvam Kar, Ilana Nguyen, Trisha Maturi, Lakshana Viswa
GalapaGo, offline: System to assist tourists visiting the islands by providing information on hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions, and cultural customs.
Team: Abhilash Srivathsa, Mian Yang
Santé le Match: Educational game to teach kids in rural areas of Senegal about the importance of higiene and sanitation. Collaboration with SCU Public Health students under Prof. Michele Parker.
Team: Krizia Araracap, Evan Chou, Matthew Tolosa, Shelby Tadaki, Reha Shah, Kristina Yi, Carly Kellner
Cervical Cancer App EWH: App to educate people in rural Uganda about cervical cancer. Collaboration with Rose Academies and SCU Public Health students under Prof. Michele Parker.
Team: Matthew Brunkhorst, Matthew Hall, Patrick Zhang
Large Scale Database Audio Collection of Tuberculosis Patients: System do create a database of coughing sounds to be used for tuberculosis diagnostics.
Team: Jordan Randleman, JT Vinolus, Daniela De La Torre, Aimee Kerr
Wage Wizard: App to enable caregivers to avoid being underpaid.
Team: Brett Rimmer, Kyle Felip Mondina, Jack Davey
AidBase: System to provide info on social enterprises and non-profit organizations.
Team: Jeremy Mekker
BioAI Drug Design: Use AI to design active drug molecules to bind to and inhibit the virulence factor of gram-positive bacteria, removing their capacity to infect mammalian cells. Collaboration with SCU Bioengineergin under Prof. Jonathan Zhang.
Team: Johann Fernando, Cameron Leong, Adam Weaver

2020/2021

Healthy Future: App to educate people in rural Uganda on healthy habits and healthcare. Collaboration with Rose Academies.
Team: Monica Metzger
UFEEL, second version: Tool to help students dealing with mental health problems. Collaboration with SCU Public Health students under Prof. Michele Parker.
CSE Team: Mariah Manzano, Ramya Kothapalli, Vidisha Gummadi
ObulamuEats: App to educate people in rural Ugando on nutrition. Collaboration with Rose Academies and SCU Public Health students under Prof. Michele Parker.
CSE Team: Emma Allegrucci

2019/2020

UkweliCards: Card game to teach children about topics such as higiene in rural Uganda. Collaboration with Rose Academies.
Team: Christine Chye, Olivia Figueira, Yuka Hatori, Aastha Chawla
OmwanaThrive: App to educate mothers in rural Ugando on how to take care of newborn babies to decrease the infant mortality rate. Collaboration with Rose Academies and SCU Public Health students under Prof. Michele Parker.
Team: Story DeWeese, Samantha Sy, Emily Zhang, Tiffany Le
You Learn: App and local repository to provide educational materials to rural Uganda. Collaboration with Rose Academies.
Team: Emma Allegrucci, Jen Luo, Brianna McGovern
Pin&Post: App to enable citizens to report on problems with post. This project was inspired
Team: Aditya Sharma (Cupertino High School), Ishan Goyal (Lynbrook High School)

2018/2019

Cameroon Address System: To solve the lack of addresses in Cameroon, our mobile application will allow users to maintain an address book of others' coordinates and will provide users with the ability to share their location.
Team: Simon Stauber, Stephen Poth, Jake Vargas
GalapaGuide: System to enable tour guides to report on problems on trails.
Team: Paul Ahrens, MasonBruce, Neel Sampemane, Stephen Pacwa
GalapaGo!: System to assist tourists with navigating the island by providing information on hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions, and cultural customs.
Team: Jeffrey Nguyen, Sally Park, Manuel Sanchez
Agora App: Interactive app to provide online courses to educators in Lima, Peru.
Team: Sam Burns, Daisuke Kurita, Casey Xuareb
Remote Image Diagnosis: App to take a picture of physically-visible symptoms and provide a pre-screening check on a medical condition based on Machine Learning analysis.
Team: Gregory Maulick, Juliana Shihadeh
UFEEL -- Understanding Feelings & Effectively Enhancing Life: Mobile application that will allow users to connect to mental health resources at Santa Clara University as well as provide the necessary tools for recovery.
Team: Paul Jin, Bobby Kresge, Dara O'Sullivan
Public Health Team: Dr. Parker, Tatiana Valentine, Claire Capeloto

2017/2018

Cameroon Museum: Virtual museum for Cameroon.
Team: Sonali Chaudry and Alisa Hawthorne
Menstruation Education: App to educate people on menstruation facts. Collaboration with Public Health.
Team: Kelsey Pasco and Sarah Pagnani
Smart Firefighting: System to enable firefighters to use smartphones to communicate and report on the emergency sitation.
Team: JP Hurley, Griffin Moede, Steven Booth, and `
Universal Paper-Sensor Reader: App to determine the concentration level of various contaminants in different fluids, using paper sensors and a cell phone camera.
Team: Jisoo Park, Gerome Yabut, and Steven Hu
FindMe: System to help locate people after a disaster.
Team: Zain Umerani, Kunal Bhimjiyani, Arya Faili
Afrobarometer App: Deploying an app to take Afrobarometer data everywhere. Colaboration with Afrobarometer.
Team: Steve Hoff
Humanitarian Data: System to provide info on research papers and projects in humanitarian technology.
Team: Stefan Zecevic
SMS Report from Diagnistic Equipment: App to read, OCR, and send SMS report on results obtained from digital disgnostic equipment.
Team: Nisarg Sohagiya, Rutvi Kotak, and Hinal Panchal

2016/2017

AquaSift: A low-power low-cost water analyzer for emerging markets.
Collaboration with Dr. Ashley Kim and Dr. Shoba Krishnan to develop a low-cost low-power water analyzer with a mobile interface and a mapping tool.
Team: Nathan Kerr and Gurneev Sareen
Afrobarometer: Get Afrobarometer data available in tablets to be placed in malls everywhere in Africa to educate people.
Team: Adrienne Tiña, Sean Thomas, Christen Nguyen
FAVL: Develop a library system for the libraries created and maintained by FAVL, Friends of African Village Libraries.
Team: Michael Walsh, Jose Santilan, Matt Walsh
Catholic Charities: Develop a webpage to help Catholic Charities' clients to navigate their programs and services.
Team:

Summer 2016

Looma

Develop educational games for Looma.
Team: Druv Pai, Axel Perez, Manoj Adhikari, Tracy Sun, Juliana Shihadeh

Catholic Charities

As part of the SIHC workshop, develop mobile apps to help Catholic Charities' clients.

Housing4All, Helping the Housing Process in Silicon Valley
Team: Jack Cooper, Christian Hunter, Rushil Mehra, Rishabh Meswani, Pranad Reddy
ClickHealth, an App to Provide Info on Healthcare to the Homeless
Team: Erin Song, Puja Maheshwari
Talk2Me, Helping People Deal with Depression
Team: Dilip Venkatesh, Biswadeep Chatterjee, Victor Lu

2015/2016

Looma: Collaboration with Village Tech Solutions to develop a tool to enable educational materials to be uploaded to Looma, which will be used in classrooms in Nepal.
Team: Elise Herrmannsfeldt, Suparna Jasuja, Kate Lassalle-Klein, Roshan Ramankutty
FixItUp: Collaboration with the City of San Jose to help citizend to report problems, such as potholes and broken signs.
Team: Amanpreet Dhoor, Melissa Portillo, and Kevin Ta
Field-Worker Tracker: Web/mobile application to track field workers
Team: Kirk Iserman and Christine Rohacz
MUMS: Web/mobile system to perform an automatic uninalysis.
Team: Blair Koeneman, Amy Miller, Joe Neumeyer, and Jake Prince
Glaucoma Diagnosis: Mobile solution to diagnostic glaucoma using special contact lenses.
Team: Ryan Lowe and Samuel Holeman
Urban Harvester: Collaboration with Urban Harvester> to provide an autamatic way to connect food suppliers with food donors.
Fall Team:
Mobile4All: Mobile apps for homeless needs.
Collaboration with Sparrow.
Summer Team: Swathi Prasad, Vishvesh Shah, Zian Huang
Winter Team:
HOME: Develop the HOME app.
Team:
AquaSift: A low-power low-cost water analyzer for emerging markets.
Collaboration with Dr. Ashley Kim and Dr. Shoba Krishnan to develop a low-cost low-power water analyzer with a mobile interface and a mapping tool.
Team: Sambhavi Raghuraman, Rachana Deolikar
BikePool: Apps to help to encourage more people to bike to work.
Collaboration with Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition.
Team: Suraj Pulla, Prameya Kirtikar, Pranay Bhandarkar, Xiao Xiao, Harshini Chandrashekar
Wakabi: Tool to provide farmers in remote regions in Uganda with access to possible transportation for people and goods.
Collaboration with Tyler Vanherweg.
Team: Pratyusha Joginipally, Sowmya Chandrashekarappa, Rahul Ramachandra, Sharadha Ramaswamy

2014/2015

Water Contamination Projects

AquaSift -- Danny Beyers, Brandon Young, Jasper Tan: Collaboration with Dr. Ashley Kim and Dr. Shoba Krishnan to develop a low-cost low-power water analyzer with a mobile interface and a mapping tool.
Paper-Based Water Analyzer II -- Sarek Sotelo: Smartphone-based tool to take a picture of a wet paper and determine the level of concentration of substances in water.

Internet Everywhere

3WDroid: Mesh of Android phones to extend the reach of cellular signal in remote areas in Africa
Collaboration with Peter Emanuel
Team: Abhishek Birjepatil, Vijay Jatti, Prajakta Patil
Beacon Pack II -- Aidan Barbari, James Terry, James Mack, Thomas Martin: Collaboration with Beacon Pack to deliver educational materials to villagers in Ghana.

Helping Homeless People

Collaboration with CTA

StreetConnect III -- Darshan Shah
HOME -- Chetan Hibare, Saurabh Sathaye, Soomal Choudhary, Shilpi Singh, Ajay Pande, Swathi Prasad
Mobile4All -- Hack for the Homeless 2015

Collaboration with YTH

Youth StreetConnect II -- Nagasushma Devarapalli, Arjun Ramesh, Apurva Thomas, Angela Laar, Rachan Deolikar, Sowmya Chandrashekharappa, Priyanka Tayade
Mobile Health Solution for Under-Served Young Women

Helping Social Enterprises

Wakabi -- Michael Brew and Bryant Larsen: Tool to provide farmers in remote regions in Uganda with access to possible transportation for people and goods.
Collaboration with Tyler Vanherweg.
Ikamva -- Ann Parden, Joo Hoon Sa, and Weihan Li: Tool to connect with vonlunteers and students.
Sankara -- Amy Truong and Francis Cuenca: Tool to track children's eye health through their school years.
iKure -- Astha Singh, Mason Maeshiro, and Daniel Mendoza: Tool to provide a map of the places visited by health workers in India.
Esoko -- Roshan Ramankutty: Compression library for the SMS-based system.
Solar Ear, World Wide Hearing, and Rags2Riches -- Nagasushma Devarapalli: Help to deploy an SMS-based mobile system to gather test results and provide data analysis.
Ziqitza -- Ritesh Hiremath: GPS locator for emergency services.
Salauno -- Apurva Thomas and Jay Sheth: SMS-based mobile system to interact with clients.
Nazava -- Akshay Gadegone, Nishant Bisen: SMS-based app to improve product distribution.
Clinicas del Azucar -- Guilherme Carvalho and Arjun Ramesh: Mobile system to educate people about diabetes.

2013/2014

Lab in a Chip II -- Aditya Ganapathy and Udit Ramawat: Collaboration with Dr. Ashley Kim and Dr. Shoba Krishnan to develop a low-cost low-power water analyzer with a mobile interface and a mapping tool.
StreetHelpline -- Neil Chintala: Collaboration with Natalie Linnell, SCU Math/CS, and Allan Baez, CTA, San Jose.
Deploying the Homeless Helpline mobile system (developed at the Hack for Homeless Hackathon) at Innvision.
Mobile Security -- Nagasushma Devarapalli: How safe is our API-based mobile world?
Energy Profile for Mobile Usage -- Udaya Yalamanchi: Identifying power drains in mobile devices.
App para Salud Migrante -- Vincente Ciancio, Christine Rohacz, and Cesar Hernandez
Beacon Pack -- Aidan Barbari, Bryant Larsen, Jimmy Mack, James Terry, Thomas Martin: Collaboration with Beacon Pack to deliver educational materials to villagers in Ghana.
Fertil Days Ahead -- Astha Singh: App to predict a woman's fertil days, developed for feature phones in emergin markets.
App for Artisans -- Nishant Bisen: App to allow artisans in developing countries to upload jewelery onto the SOKO platform, receive orders, and be notified of completed orders.
Citizen Tree Mapping -- Guilherme Carvalho and Tian Zhang: Helping Prof. Virginia Matzek, SCU Environmental Science Dept, to develop a tool to enable citizens to contribute to a tree mapping project.
Educating about Homelessness -- Rohit Kalindini, Anusha Kasum, Urja Patel, Jay Sheth: Tools to educate people about the impact of cellular phones on homelessness.
Mobile Interface for a Low-Cost/Low-Power Underwater Robot -- Amanda Chong, Noel Hardesty, Thomas Martin, Alec Shaffer, and Manish Karney: Using a tablet or a phone to control/interact with the robot, in collaboration with the SCU Robotics Lab.
Mobile Health Solution for Under-Served Young Women -- Kaitlin Kirasich, Katie Le, and Kelsey Dedoshka: System for the medical triage and follow-up of homeless young women, in collaboration with YTH and CTA.
Text to Learn -- Melissa Bica and Elizabeth Donahue: Enabling training materials to be downloaded via SMS from the cloud into any phone, in collaboration with iMerit, India.
Hearing Loss Detector -- Shweta Panditrao and Kevin Nguyen: Using cellular phones to detect hearing loss.
Volunteer Connection -- Samira Almendras, Jesus Gonzalez, and Stefan Zecevic: Website for Orphanage without Borders.
Stress-Reliever for High-Risk Families -- Stephanie Cervi and Patrick Neill: Stress-reliever tool for moms and children in high-risk families, in collaboration with Prof. Barbara Burns, SCU Psychology Dept.
StreetPhone -- Sean Kinzer and Daniel Marks: Design for a low-power/low-cost cellular phone with minimum requirements for homeless people, in collaboration with CTA.
Tree Mapping -- Jonathan Ahumada and Rashmi Nagaraju: Collaboration with HP and Conservation International to develop a tool for mapping trees.
Paper-Based Water Analyzer -- Jesus Gonzalez and Jonathan Sotelo (St. Edward's University, Texas) and Sarek Sotelo: Smartphone-based tool to take a picture of the wet paper and determine the level of concentration of substances in water.
Lab in a Tablet -- Tracey Acosta: Tablet-based interface to receive signals from a sensor-based water analyzer and determine the level of concentration of substances in the water.
Hearing Aid -- Prashanthan Surendran and Jesus Gonzalez: Smartphone-based hearing-aid device.
StreetConnect II -- Nicholas Fong: Collaboration with Natalie Linnell, SCU Math/CS, and Allan Baez, CTA, San Jose,
to provide homeless people and low-income families with access to helpful information.
IhaveIneed Mechanism -- Aaraadhya Narra: Phone application to enable individuals in under-served communitites to sell and buy goods within their own community.

2012/2013

StreetConnect -- COEN 129 students, Spring 2013: Collaboration with Natalie Linnell, SCU Math/CS, and Allan Baez, CTA, San Jose.
to provide homeless people and low-income families with access to helpful information.
We were featured in their newsletter.
eBooks for all -- Maya Hough, Victorial Hall, Elysia Chu, and Urvashi Reddi: Web-based editor to export books to any phone. This project is a collaboration with Anudip/iMerit in India.
Mobile Education Forum -- Alexandria Shearer and Suzanne Lien: Collaboration with Equal Access to enable the broadcast of educational materials onto simple text-based phones in emerging markets.
Mobile Vocal Pattern Analyzer -- Samantha Pham and Rohini Deb (BIOE): Smartphone-based application to record a vocal pattern, analyze it, and identify possible voice-related diseases.
Dynamic Poverty Heat Map -- Jonathan Ahumada, Kurt Jurgens, and Jasmine Farias: Collaboration with Fundacion Paraguaya to develop a web-based application to analyze poverty indices in an attempt to improve resource distribution.
Lab in a Chip -- Rapid and Affordable Point-of-Care Water Monitoring -- Allison Kamiya (BIOE), Adib Zuhayr Elahi, John Seubert: This project is a collaboration with students in Bio and Electrical to develop a frugal water analyzer.
Android-Based Farming Info Tool -- Geeta Bisht: Collaboration with M-Farm to help farmers in Kenya.
Skipping the Computer Age -- Shreya Kunjir: Evaluating the usage of phones and tablets as computers in emerging markets.

2011/2012

MedRec -- Sonam Sharma: jQTouch-based mobile application for medicine-adherence control.
Humanitarian Market Place -- Amanda Chong: This project entails the research for the creation of a Mobile Market Place for Humanitarian Applications.
mHealth Lab -- Ryan Davidson: This lab is part of a project led by NetHope to analyze and develop solutions for mHealth.
Water Analyzer -- Android Interface -- John Seubert and Connor Carey: This project is a collaboration with students in Bio and Electrical to develop a frugal water analyzer.
eRescue -- Rosemary Pham, Casey Larson, Kristen Muramoto, and Timothy So: This project entails the development of an app to locate CPR-certified users within a region where they are needed.
Where Am I? -- Monica Camorongan and Joseph Schneider: This project will provide an app to help people with mental disabilities find their way around the streets.

2010/2011

mHealth Demo Lab -- Arturo Posadas and Sanjay Rao: This lab was created as part of a project led by NetHope to analyze solutions developed for mHealth: openXdata, DHIS 2, and openMRS.
Mobile Application for Fair Wage Guide -- Rosalie Tolentino, Eva Jensen, and Ryan Davidson: This project was a collaboration with World of Good.
Mobile Application for Providing Fairly-Priced Phone Calls to Africa -- Arturo Posadas: This project was a collaboration with Palm Call.
Mobile Applications for Emerging Markets, a Taxonomy -- Rosalie Tolentino and Eva Jensen: This project was a collaboration with Radha Basu and Andy Lieberman,
from the Center for Science, Technology, and Society, at Santa Clara University.