The Humanitarian FOSS Project

Pauline Lake ’13 helps develop Mobile App to Track Sanitation Facilities (Trinity College Press release)

“Random Hacks of Kindness” Event to Zero in on Sanitation Issues

For original press release click here.

(3/21/2012) First hand account from Pauline Lake on her work with HFOSS project and App Inventor Android Programming platform was recently showcased on MIT's App Inventor website at:

Click Here for complete story

HARTFORD, CT, August 8, 2011 – In yet another sign that the Humanitarian Free and Open Software (HFOSS) project has been hugely successful, a team of Trinity faculty and students has developed a mobile application for Android phones that will be used by a nonprofit organization to monitor and distribute food to needy women and children in Haiti.

HARTFORD, CT, May 26, 2011 – HFOSS@Trinity College will be one of 15 global sites to sponsor a Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) gathering of volunteer software developers on June 4 and 5, an initiative designed to help find technology solutions for natural and man-made disaster response.

To register for the Hartford event, please visit: http://rhokhartford.eventbrite.com.

The Humanitarian FOSS (HFOSS) Project is pleased to announce the availability of Fifteen (15) undergraduate internships for the 2011 H-FOSS Summer Institute. The summer interns will be part of a development team to build free and open source software for use by humanitarian organizations.

“Work it Off!” is Winner of "Apps for Healthy Kids" Challenge

HARTFORD, Conn. – Two HFOSS students – Pauline H. Lake ’13 and Nina I. Limardo ’11 – were feted in Washington D.C. Wednesday, September 30, after winning in the competition designed to promote nutritious food choices and physical activity for children as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative.

When temperatures rose to stifling levels in New York City in the middle of July, emergency aid groups opened up "cooling centers" for city dwellers seeking refuge from the heat. And they had a cool new piece of software, created by a group of college students, to help. The local branch of the Salvation Army monitored 19 cooling centers throughout the city with Collabbit, an emergency-management program that told the staff how many people came in and out and how much water remained at each site.

By Sophia Li ,August 1, 2010, Technology Section of the Chronicle of Higher Education

Trinity Grad Thomas Lazay tells HFOSS Students to pursue their Dreams

The HFOSS Project 2010 Summer Institute student presentations will be held at Wesleyan University Science tower (rm. 058) on July 30th 2010.

Presentation are scheduled by students from Bergen Community College, Connecticut College, Mount Holyoke College, Oregon State University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Trinity College and Wesleyan University and will broadcast via dimdim.

HFOSS Alumni Chris Fei, Trinity College class of 2010 featured in college video.

HFOSS members Christopher Fei'10, Prasanna Gautam'11 from Trinity College  placed 2nd for their poster "Ad-Hoc Networking on the Android Platform" and Samuel DeFabbia-Kane'11 from Wesleyan University placed 3rd for "Detecting Denial of Service Attacks on a Simulated Tor Network" at the 15th Annual Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Northeastern Coference, CCSCNE 2010, student poster competition.

 

 

Rachel Foecking ’11 from Trinity College received honorable mention in this year's national Goldwater Scholarship competition. Goldwater Scholars are chosen for their promise of a career in scientific research.  Competition for the Scholarship is exceptionally intense.  Universities are allowed to nominate only four undergraduate students per year to receive the final Scholarship. As a result, the Scholarship is widely considered the most prestigious award in the U.S. conferred upon undergraduates studying the sciences.

Announcing 2nd Annual Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS) Symposium 2010
“Growing the Humanitarian FOSS Community”
March 10, 2010, Milwaukee, WI

Not being content with celebrating Software Freedom Day for only one day in September 19, Trinity College students decided to have three days worth of events to share the awesomeness of open source software starting November 17.

There will be three days of events involving a panel discussion on "Open Source at Trinity College", a movie screening of "Revolution OS" and a talk by Leslie Hawthorn titled "Free Your Mind: Social Change starts with Software" . All events FREE and OPEN to the public.

visit sfw.trincoll.edu for details

Aid agencies turn to open-source software - 03 October 2009 by MacGregor Campbell (Magazine issue 2728)

A VIRTUAL emergency response centre dubbed Collabbit could be just what relief agencies need to coordinate their aid efforts in the aftermath of a disaster when speed is crucial...

We are happy to announce that the HFOSS project has received another round of funding from the National Science Foundation to support our activities through August 2011. The NSF awarded approximately $800,000 (the maximum for this type of CPATH II grant) to the three sponsoring schools, Trinity College, Wesleyan University, and Connecticut College. This will enable HFOSS to pursue its three main goals over the next two years:

• Expanding the HFOSS Chapter model to include new colleges and universities for the project, initially through the summer internship program.
• Developing an HFOSS Certificate program to recognize and certify the educational achievements of students that participate in a significant way in the program.
• Establishing a sustainable organizational and financial model that will allow the project to function at a national level in subsequent years.

Announcing 2nd Annual Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS) Symposium 2010
“Growing the Humanitarian FOSS Community”
March 10, 2010, Milwaukee, WI

Open Mobile Camp: Open Source Mobile Tools And Code for Social Change

Saturday, October 24, 2009 from 10:00 AM - 9:00 PM (ET)
Open Mobile Barcamp is organized by the Open Mobile Consortium, its members, and The Humanitarian Foss Project.

Press Release, Trinity College Hartford, Conn. – Summer student interns in the Humanitarian Free Open Source Software (HFOSS) program, from Trinity College (Conn.), Wesleyan University, and the University of Connecticut, recently developed a software application to assist with crisis prevention efforts in New York City.  The program, “Virtual EOC,” was built on the Trinity campus from the ground up in two weeks, and is aimed at facilitating convenient and organized online communication between more than thirty agencies in the event of a disaster in the City.

Sixteen unlocked G1 dev phones were received by the Humanitarian FOSS Project to be used for the POSIT Project and Spring 2009 Computer Science courses. POSIT (http://2009.hfoss.org/posit), a portable open search and identification tool, for the Google Android phone, is an application that will allow rescue workers to use the phone's GPS, camera, online database, and communication technology to assist in disaster recovery efforts.

This one-day symposium, held as SIGCSE-2009 pre-conference activity on March 4th, brought together educators, FOSS practitioners, and curriculum designers to discuss successful strategies for incorporating FOSS, as an object of study, into the undergraduate curriculum. Click here for complete media coverage including video interviews, blog posts to complete audio recordings of the days activities.

 

The Humanitarian FOSS Project "Integrating FOSS into the Undergraduate Computing Curriculum" Symposium Accepting Registrations.

What: Chamindra de Silva, the director of the Sahana project – an award-winning global disaster management tool that grew out of the 2004 Asian tsunami disaster -- will deliver a lecture on using open source software in the management of disasters.

When: Thursday, December 11 at 7:30 p.m.

Where: Rittenberg Lounge in Mather Hall on the Trinity campus.

Feature story by the University of Hartford's News Service about the Humanitarian FOSS project panel "Engaging Students in the Free Open Source Movement Through Civic Engagement" at Grace Hopper Women in Computing 2008 Conference.

Story in the Wesleyan Connections campus newsletter showcasing Wesleyan University students work from the 2008 Humanitarian FOSS Project Summer institute. (Click here for full story)

 

The Chronical of Higher Education Wired Campus has short story on the Humanitarian FOSS Project Summer institute. Click here for complete story

The 2008 Humanitarian-FOSS Summer Institute recently held its final project presentations by the participants from the summer 2008 H-FOSS Institute.

Hartford, Conn. – During a presentation sponsored by the Humanitarian FOSS Project, the Trinity College Computer Science Department, and the Trinity College Science Center; Richard Stallman, the leader of the Humanitarian Foss Project for building free open source software, said Proprietary (non-free) software is unethical and striping the freedom of computer users.

Free Software in Ethics and in Practice

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
7:00 - 9:00 PM

McCook Auditorium
Trinity College
300 Summit Street
Hartford, CT 06109

Abstract. Richard Stallman will speak about the Free Software Movement, which campaigns for freedom so that computer users can cooperate to control their own computing activities. The Free Software Movement developed the GNU operating system, often erroneously referred to as Linux, specifically to establish these freedoms. (Click Here for PDF flyer)

"Humanitarian projects and open source: Working together to revitalize computer sciences" article about H-FOSS Project on Linux.com, by author Tina Gasperson on March 26.

Bowdoin is the newest site of The Humanitarian FOSS Project.

Prof. Ralph Morelli and Trishan de Lanerolle will be giving a lecture titled " Building free and open source software (FOSS) to serve our communities and revitalize computer science education" from 2:00-3:00, at Searles Science Building Rm 315, Bowdoin College Maine.

The talk is sponsored by the Computer Science Department and the Lectures and Concerts Committee, Bowdoin College and open to the public with no admission charge.

The 2008 SIGCSE Conference will be held March 12-15 in Portland Oregon. We will be presenting a workshop on Wednesday, March 12, 7:00-10:00 PM. "Teaching and Building Humanitarian Open Source Software"

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HFOSS.org goes live!!!.