2006-07 Distinguished Speaker Series

Speaker Biography

ERIC BREWER focuses on all aspects of Internet-based systems, including technology, strategy, and government. As a researcher, he has led projects on scalable servers, search engines, network infrastructure, sensor networks, and security. His current focus is (high) technology for developing regions, with projects in India, Ghana, Rwanda and Cambodia among others, and including communications, health, education, and e-government.

In 1996, he co-founded Inktomi Corporation with a Berkeley grad student based on their research prototype, and helped lead it onto the Nasdaq 100 before it was bought by Yahoo! in March 2003. In 2000, he founded the Federal Search Foundation, a 501-3(c) organization focused on improving consumer access to government information. Working with President Clinton, Dr. Brewer helped to create FirstGov.gov, the official portal of the Federal government, which launched in September 2000.

He received an MS and Ph.D. in EECS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a BS in EECS from UC Berkeley. He was named a "Global Leader for Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum, by the Industry Standard as the "most influential person on the architecture of the Internet", by InfoWorld as one of their top ten innovators, and by Forbes as one of their 12 "e-mavericks", for which he appeared on the cover.

"Technology for Developing Regions" Abstract

Moore's Law and the wave of technologies it enabled have led to tremendous improvements in productivity and the quality of life in the industrialized world. Yet, technology has had almost no effect on the four billion people that make less US$2/day. In this talk I argue that the decreasing costs of computing and wireless networking make this the right time to spread the benefits of technology, and that the biggest missing piece is a lack of focus on the problems that matter, including health, education, and government. After covering some example applications that have shown very high impact, I take an early look at the research agenda for developing regions. Finally, I examine some of the pragmatic issues required to make progress on these very challenging problems. My goal is to convince high-tech researchers that technology for developing regions is an important and viable research topic.