NSF Funding for this program has not been approved yet. This page is anticipation of the program being funded.
NamSPIRE is an NSF sponsored International Research Experience for Students program that will be hosted in Namibia, Africa at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST). This unique 10-week experience will begin with 1 week at Iowa State University, followed by a 8-weeks at NUST, and then another week back at Iowa State University.
If selected to go you will help professors at ISU and NUST conduct collaborative research projects focused on how technology can aid marginalized communities.
NamSPIRE is only for ISU students who are U.S. citizens. You can be an undergraduate or graduate student. Six students will participate each year.
If you participate, you can expect to build relationships with faculty in both countries, become a co-author on a research paper, and have an impressive international experience along the way.
Dr. Stephen Gilbert, Associate Professor in IMSE and Director of the Graduate Program in Human Computer Interaction (HCI), will travel to Namibia with the group to get them settled. Dr Gilbert has spent a year living in Namibia working to strengthen the HCI presence in Africa with an HCI/ISU alum who is Namibian.
The following research projects are just tentative, but illustrate some of the ways the collaborative ISU and NUST faculty are thinking.
Cybersecurity
Both ISU and NUST care strongly about promoting cybersecurity literacy within communities. Undergraduate projects might include:
Graduate projects might include:
Digital Forensics
ISU’s Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence (CSAFE), and NUST’s Digital Forensics and Information Security Research Cluster (DFISRC) would collaborate. Undergraduate projects might include:
Graduate projects might include:
Participatory Design with Marginalized Communities
Faculty at ISU and NUST care strongly about how technology affects rural and indigenous communities. Participatory design with these community members means they’ll have a part in designing the technology around them, rather than the technology simply “happening to them.” Undergraduate projects might include:
Graduate projects might include:
User interfaces for marginalized populations
Members of marginalized communities may not be as familiar with common user interface design patterns as many users. Participatory design is a key method of designing user interfaces for exactly the needs of the users. Undergraduate projects might include:
Graduate projects might include:
Visualizing infrastructure inequities via historical narrative
Ideally, technology could enable members of marginalized communities to act on existing infrastructure inequities by visualizing the role of their community in the larger majority culture and demonstrating related race- and gender-based dynamics to others. Undergraduate projects may include:
Graduate projects might include:
Namibia is located near the southern tip of Africa on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. NamSPIRE will travel to the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), located in Windhoek, the capital city. Windhoek is similar to Des Moines in many ways, though, of course, different in others.
Namibia is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, and on weekends you’ll be able to take some trips around the country to see incredible sand dunes, ocean, wild animals, and more. Namibia is sometimes called “Africa for Beginners” because in cities like Windhoek, water is drinkable and reliable, and electricity is also reliable. Namibia has 10+ ethnic groups, depending on how you count, each with its own native language. But English is the official language of Namibia, so English is a second language for most people. When you go to the shopping mall, you’ll likely hear 3-4 different languages spoken.
Namibia has a fascinating history. While the US declared independence in 1776, and that seems like dusty history to many Americans, Namibia ended a bloody war of independence in just 1990, throwing out apartheid and rebuilding its government and educational system almost from scratch. Its founders had social justice and gender equity in mind from the start. Did it work? Come and decide for yourself.
For questions, email namspire@iastate.edu