NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

In 2007, Joerg Doerflinger received his diploma in Communication and Media Engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Offenburg. Since then he is participating in the Ph.D. program at SAP Research Karlsruhe (Germany) working on his “doctor engineer” in information science under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Tom Gross (University of Bamberg). During more than 4 years of research in several research projects in the area of technologies for emerging economies he gathered extensive knowledge in the ICT4D research field and published his results at numerous international conferences.

Focus of his research work is on technical ICT4D, the computer science topics of ICT4D research, methodologies and tools supporting researchers and software developers in building appropriate ICT solution for the specific ICT4D context. This includes appropriate software development methodologies and software architecture and application concepts adapted to cope with the ICT4D specific infrastructural, cultural, and governmental context.

Within the various ICT4D research projects he is developing software architectures, client-server applications, and mobile applications coping with the ICT4D context specific challenges. This includes for example appropriate UI and application designs for low IT literate users, synchronization mechanisms for multiple occasionally online clients, and application designs for the cultural specifics like multiple SIM cards and users per mobile.