Kentaro Toyama

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Kentaro Toyama
Kentaro Toyama (cropped).jpg
Alma mater Yale University (PhD)
Harvard University (AB)
Awards2025 SIGCHI Societal Impact Award
ACM SIGCHI Academy Class of 2025
2022 ACM Fellow
2016 PROSE Award in Business, Finance & Management
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions Microsoft Research
University of Michigan
Thesis Robust vision-based object tracking  (1998)
Website kentarotoyama.org

Kentaro Toyama is a computer scientist and international development researcher, who works on the relationship of technology and global development. He is the W. K. Kellogg Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information [1] [2] and author of Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology. [3] [4] [5]

Contents

Toyama was founding assistant director of Microsoft Research India, a Bangalore-based computer science laboratory, where he established the Technology for Emerging Markets group which conducts interdisciplinary research in the field of "information and communication technologies for development" (ICT4D). [6] [7] [8] Together with AnnaLee Saxenian and Raj Reddy, he co-founded the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, a global platform for rigorous, academic, interdisciplinary research in ICT4D. [9]

Education

Toyama received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Yale University, and an A.B. in Physics from Harvard University. [8]

Research and career

Toyama's research spans several disparate areas, including ICT4D, development studies, computer vision, human-computer interaction, geographic information systems, and multimedia. [6] [7] [10] [11] He is best known for his research in ICT4D, which includes technology projects such as MultiPoint, [12] [13] Text-Free User Interfaces, [6] Warana Unwired, [6] and Digital Green, [13] as well as observational studies of rural telecenters, [14] [15] mobile phones in developing countries, [16] and the limits of technology for international development. [17]

He is an outspoken critic of the "technological utopianism" that he sees in initiatives such as One Laptop Per Child, and argues that technology only magnifies existing human intent and capacity. [10] [17] A two-part essay making this point appears in a Boston Review forum. [18] [19] The argument is expanded upon and extended further in Geek Heresy. [3] He is also a faculty affiliate of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) program at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. [20]

Toyama's research in computer vision involves automated tracking of objects in video. In 2002, he taught calculus at Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana. [21]

Awards and honors

In 2025, Toyama was inducted into the ACM SIGCHI Academy and also won a SIGCHI Societal Impact Award. [22]

Toyama was also named to the 2022 class of ACM Fellows, "for contributions to the innovation and critique of digital technology for socio-economic development and social justice". [23]

At the University of Michigan, Toyama has won several awards, such as the University of Michigan School of Information Michael D. Cohen Outstanding Service Award (2021), [24] the University of Michigan Public Engagement Faculty Fellowship (2020), [25] and the University of Michigan School of Information Diversity Award (2019). [26]

Toyama won the 2016 PROSE Award in Business, Finance & Management for his book Geek Heresy. [3] [27]

A paper he co-authored with Andrew Blake was awarded the Marr Prize at the 2001 International Conference on Computer Vision. [28] [29] That work was a precursor to some of the technology in Microsoft's Kinect product. [30]

References

  1. 1 2 Kentaro Toyama publications indexed by Google Scholar OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  2. ↑ McDonald, Amy. (2014) "How Google and Facebook are helping the underprivileged — or not". Deseret News National. Aug. 13, 2014
  3. 1 2 3 http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/book/hardcover/geek-heresy/9781610395281%5B%5D [ ISBN missing ][ dead link ]
  4. ↑ "Toyama's ICT4D Jester blog on technology in international development". Archived from the original on 2010-11-14. Retrieved 2010-10-15.
  5. ↑ "The Myth of Scale" video on YouTube
  6. 1 2 3 4 Bahree, Megha. (2008) "Computing at the Bottom of the Pyramid". Forbes Magazine. Sept. 29, 2008.
  7. 1 2 Radjou, Navi. (2009) "Microsoft reinvents its global R&D model". Harvard Business Review Blogs. June 25, 2009.
  8. 1 2 Microsoft Research. (n.d.) "Kentaro Toyama". Retrieved Oct. 15, 2010.
  9. ↑ Microsoft News Center. (2009) "Research & (Economic) Development". Apr. 17, 2009.
  10. 1 2 Stross, Randall. (2010) "Two billion laptops? It may not be enough". The New York Times. Apr. 17, 2010.
  11. ↑ O'Connell, Pamela Licalzi. (2003) "Online Diary: Location Shot". The New York Times. Oct. 23, 2003.
  12. ↑ Roush, Wade. (2006) "Microsoft in India". Technology Review. June 1, 2006.
  13. 1 2 Vance, Ashlee. (2008) "Microsoft goes far afield to study emerging markets". The New York Times. Oct. 26, 2008.
  14. ↑ Toyama, Kentaro and Ken Keniston. (2008) "Telecenter Debates". [ permanent dead link ] In Telecentre Magazine. March, 2008.
  15. ↑ Kuriyan, R., Ray, I., and Toyama, K. (2008) "Information and Communication Technologies for Development: The Bottom of the Pyramid Model in Practice". The Information Society 24(2):93-104. Mar. 2008.
  16. ↑ Smyth, T. N., Kumar, S., Medhi, I., and Toyama, K. (2010) "Where there's a will there's a way: mobile media sharing in urban india". In Proceedings of the 28th international Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI '10. ACM, New York, NY, 753-762.
  17. 1 2 Toyama, Kentaro. (2010) "The Myth of Scale". TEDxTokyo. May 15, 2010.
  18. ↑ Toyama, Kentaro. (2010) "Can Technology End Poverty". Boston Review, Nov/Dec 2010.
  19. ↑ Toyama, Kentaro. (2010) "Response". Boston Review, Nov/Dec 2010.
  20. ↑ "Faculty Affiliates".
  21. ↑ Ashesi University. (n.d.) "Visiting Faculty". Archived 2010-07-13 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved Oct. 15, 2010.
  22. ↑ "Kentaro Toyama earns ACM SIGCHI Societal Impact Award". March 6, 2025. Retrieved 2025-08-22.
  23. ↑ "Global computing association names 57 fellows for outstanding contributions that propel technology today". Association for Computing Machinery. January 18, 2023. Retrieved 2023-01-18.
  24. ↑ "Faculty awards recognize outstanding instruction, leadership and community-engaged research". University of Michigan School of Information. September 16, 2021. Retrieved 2025-08-26.
  25. ↑ "18 faculty members chosen for Public Engagement Faculty Fellowship". University of Michigan. April 22, 2020. Retrieved 2025-08-26.
  26. ↑ "Third annual UMSI DEI awards announced". University of Michigan School of Information. March 27, 2019. Retrieved 2025-08-26.
  27. ↑ 2016 Winners, Association of American Publishers, retrieved 2025-08-22
  28. ↑ Toyama, Kentaro; Blake, Andrew (2002). "Probabilistic Tracking with Exemplars in a Metric Space". International Journal of Computer Vision. 48 (1): 9–19. doi:10.1023/A:1014899027014. ISSN   0920-5691. S2CID   271041.
  29. ↑ IEEE Computer Society. (n.d.) "CVPR and ICCV Best Paper Awards". Retrieved Oct. 15, 2010.
  30. ↑ Rowan, David. (2010) "Kinect for Xbox 360: The inside story of Microsoft's secret 'Project Natal'". Retrieved Dec. 15, 2014.
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