Heather Underwood – a 2009 UW CSE bachelors alumna now completing her Ph.D. at the University of Colorado’s ATLAS Institute working with long-ago UW CSE Ph.D. alumnus John Bennett – will be recognized on June 15th at the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Awards Banquet as the First Place Graduate winner in the ACM Student Research Competition Grand Finals for 2013.
Heather’s research innovation is the PartoPen – an application of digital pen technology to enhance the partograph system used throughout the developing world to monitor labor and reduce labor complications. Every day, 800 women die due to preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth. 99% of these deaths occur in the developing world. Heather’s interest in ICTD (Information and Communication Technologies for Development) was sparked by research she carried out as a UW undergraduate.
The ACM SRC attracts 200 students worldwide and runs at major conferences. It is made possible by generous sponsorship from Microsoft Research every year for students to travel to these conferences and present their work.
Learn about PartoPen here. Read Heather’s ACM submission here.
Congratulations Heather!