About George Boateng

George Boateng is a computer scientist, engineer, and educator from Ghana. He is a PhD Candidate at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, where he is developing a smartwatch-based machine learning model for multimodal emotion recognition among romantic couples for diabetes management. He is the President and Cofounder of Nsesa Foundation, an educational nonprofit whose vision is to spur an “Innovation Revolution” in Africa — a movement in which young Africans are building innovative solutions to problems in their communities using STEM (nsesafoundation.org). George’s work with Nsesa Foundation has been featured in the Dartmouth Engineer Magazine and the Dartmouth News. George has a B.A. in Computer Science and an M.S. in Computer Engineering from Dartmouth College.

About the Lecture

This summer, I ran Project iSWEST 2019, my organization’s 6th annual 3-week intensive innovation boot camp for high school and university students in Ghana. This year’s theme centered on developing technologies to address issues in Ghana’s healthcare sector and received sponsorship from ETH Zurich’s Center for Digital Health Interventions. Over the course of 3 weeks, 25 students (52% female) were given hands-on training in Programming, Arduino and Innovation. Five teams of students then developed prototypes of technologies addressing various healthcare issues such as lack of enough blood at the blood banks and ineffective communication between deaf patients and health workers. They presented and demoed their solutions to a panel of judges and the public at our pitch day event. In this lecture, I will talk about our unique programming and innovation curriculum, our teaching and mentoring approach, the outcomes and various lessons learned which could be applicable to developing innovations to address healthcare issues in different parts of the world.

When & Where?

Thursday, August 29, 2019
ETH Zurich, Weinbergstrasse 56/58, Room J414, 3:15 – 4:45 pm

You are invited to join this lecture by

Prof. Dr. Tobias Kowatsch
Assistant Professor for Digital Health, University of St.Gallen
Scientific Director, Center for Digital Health Interventions (CDHI), ETH Zürich & University of St.Gallen

Prof. Dr. Elgar Fleisch
Professor of Information Management, ETH Zürich
Professor of Technology Management, University of St.Gallen
Advisory Board Member, CDHI, ETH Zürich & University of St.Gallen

Prof. Dr. Florian von Wangenheim
Professor of Technology Marketing, ETH Zürich
Advisory Board Member, CDHI, ETH Zürich & University of St.Gallen