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MIT Legatum Center Announces Inaugural Class of Legatum Fellows

MIT Legatum Center Announces Inaugural Class of Legatum Fellows

Published 05-29-08

Submitted by Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, The

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 29 /PRNewswire/ -- The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has announced its first class of Legatum Fellows for the 2008-2009 academic year.

"The Legatum Fellowships bring extraordinary men and women to MIT to pursue enterprise solutions to some of the most difficult challenges facing low-income countries," noted Iqbal Z. Quadir, Director of the MIT Legatum Center. "By empowering entrepreneurs, the business plans created by Legatum Fellows will serve to catalyze organic, bottom-up development."

The twelve students who form the inaugural class hail from across the globe, from Rwanda and Nigeria to Colombia and the United States. Their projects cover a range of endeavors, from generating clean, low-cost energy and increasing market access to food producers to developing mobile medical diagnostic devices and water treatment solutions.

Founded in September 2007, the MIT Legatum Center serves as a launching pad for a new generation of entrepreneurs who want to develop the technologies and skills necessary to launch innovative businesses in developing markets. The competitive Fellowship is aimed at incoming and current MIT graduate students; and provides funding and exclusive opportunities to engage with world-renowned entrepreneurs, thought-leaders and investors. The application for the 2009-2010 Legatum Fellowship will be posted online in September.

For more information about Legatum Center activities: http://legatum.mit.edu.

The 2008-2009 Legatum Fellows:

Amy Banzaert, a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering and Design, is developing an alternative form of charcoal -- made from sugar cane waste products -- that can provide affordable clean cooking fuel in underserved regions.

Robin Bartling's previous work in Indonesia employed market-based solutions to promote micro-insurance policies for micro-borrowers. He is focused on building a business that provides small and medium producers from lesser-developed countries access to the U.S. market.

Derek Brine is pursuing dual master's degrees in City Planning, at the School of Architecture and Planning, and in Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is interested in incubating innovations in Kenya that help local enterprises to catalyze deeper social-structural change.

Craig Doescher will examine ways to leverage supply chain management and micro-distribution strategies that enhance the efficiency and operations of local shop-owners. Previously, he helped launch, a Honduran company that manufactures toys for Western markets -- providing opportunities for local woodcutters and tradespeople.

Nicola "Niki" Gomez will explore two enterprise solutions with a focus on promoting sustainability in her native Sri Lanka: increasing the recycling of technology products in low-income countries and investigating the viability of a cultural organization that promote art and artists in South Asia.

Murali Govindaswamy developed the WiMAX Common Software Platform while an engineer at Ericsson. He aspires to bring WiMAX-based internet connectivity throughout rural India and, in so doing, increase access to education, medical care, improved agricultural techniques, cottage industry markets and
e-governance in rural communities.

Nada Hashmi, a PhD candidate at the Sloan School of Management Technology Innovation Entrepreneurship Program, plans to develop remote diagnosis technologies to assist city hospitals in communicating with rural village clinics in the Middle East.

Ravi Inukonda, a former Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, plans to build an IT infrastructure based on mobile phone usage in India that will foster growth of small businesses.

Jean Pierre "John Peter" Nshimyimana's previous work includes a cholera awareness campaign and multiple sanitation and water quality activities in Rwanda. Upon completing the Legatum Fellowship, he plans to return to Rwanda to start a company that provides engineering solutions to a range of
water-related problems.

Natalia Maya Ortiz plans to spend her Legatum Fellowship focusing on ways that Information and Communications Technologies can increase agricultural production and expand access to markets in Colombia.

Adnan Shahid is a Sloan Fellow in the Master of Science in Management Technology in the Innovation and Global Leadership Program at the Sloan School of Management. He is focused on creating a technical incubation center for mobile technologies in Pakistan that will advance commercially viable enterprises.

Oladapo Tomori received his medical degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and completed graduate residency training in psychiatry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. As a Legatum Fellow, Oladapo plans to leverage mobile technologies to enhance healthcare monitoring, diagnosis and drug delivery in Nigeria.

The MIT Legatum Center

The MIT Legatum Center is overseen by an Executive Committee, which includes MIT Chancellor Phillip L. Clay; Charles L. Cooney, the Robert T. Haslam (1911) Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT; Bengt Holmstrom, the Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics at MIT; Iqbal Z. Quadir, Director of the MIT Legatum Center; and Antoinette Schoar, the Michael M. Koerner Associate Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

The MIT Legatum Center is led by Iqbal Z. Quadir, Director, who formerly founded GrameenPhone in Bangladesh and taught at Harvard University before joining MIT in 2005. Michael F. Maltese, previously a Visiting Scholar and Lecturer at MIT, is the Center's Managing Director. Anna Omura is the Center's Operations Manager.

About MIT

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- a coeducational, privately endowed research university -- is dedicated to advancing knowledge and educating students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century. The Institute has more than 900 faculty and 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students. It is organized into five Schools -- Architecture and Urban Planning; Engineering; Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; Sloan School of Management; and Science. The website is located at http://www.mit.edu.

About Legatum
Legatum is a private, international investment organisation whose mission is to promote excellence in both global investment and sustainable development. Based in Dubai, with an office in London, Legatum is composed of four divisions: Legatum Capital, Legatum Global Development ("LGD"), the Legatum Institute, and the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT ("LCDE").

Legatum Capital is a long-term, value-oriented portfolio investor with a special emphasis on global emerging markets. With over twenty years of experience investing proprietary capital, Legatum provides capital to companies and governments across the globe in various industry sectors. The website is located at http://www.legatum.com.

Legatum Global Development promotes global prosperity by applying
market-based solutions to long-term development problems. The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship ("LCDE") is part of LGD and is collaboration between Legatum and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ("MIT") to promote business development and entrepreneurship in the developing world. The website is located at http://www.legatum.org.

The Legatum Institute ("the Institute") is an independent policy, advocacy and advisory organization, whose mission is to research and promote the principles that drive the creation of global prosperity and the expansion of human liberty. The Institute undertakes original and collaborative research, and publishes case studies and ancillary literature, including the Legatum Prosperity Index. Please visit the website of the Legatum Institute at http://www.li.com; and of the Prosperity Index at http://www.prosperity.com.

Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, The

Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, The

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