Kurtis Heimerl

Contact info:

440 Soda Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-1760

kheimerl@cs.berkeley.edu
twitter: @kheimerl

Faculty Application Materials

Curriculum Vitae

I'm Kurtis Heimerl. I work on technology for developing regions with Professor Eric Brewer in the TIER group, as well as with Professor Tapan Parikh in the Represent group. I also moonlight as a developer and open-source community manager at Range Networks, supporting the open release of OpenBTS.

My thesis topic is the The Village Base Station(VBTS), a low-cost, low-power GSM basestation (based off OpenBTS). Our goal is to provide community cellular: local, community-owned cellular networks in areas without existing cellular coverage. Write-ups of our progress are here.

I have a few older projects which have completed. These include Umati, the crowdsourcing vending machine, PANTS/NetAPI, a modern sockets implementation, and mPhone, a message-oriented phone system.

My Master's thesis was a project called Metamouse (not to be confused with this), which allows for more equitable sharing of existing educational content. You can see a video demonstration here. I also gave a CITRIS talk on this research which you can see here.

I also worked on the python implementation of the DTN bundle protocol.

Publications

Also see my profiles on: Google Scholar or ACM DL.

2013

Local, Sustainable, Small-Scale Cellular Networks
Kurtis Heimerl, Shaddi Hasan, Kashif Ali, Eric Brewer, Tapan Parikh
 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) '13
 We develop and deploy a small-scale rural cellular network in Papua, Indonesia, showing that it is economically sustainable and benefits the local population.
 Conference Paper

Expanding Rural Cellular Networks with Virtual Coverage
Kurtis Heimerl, Kashif Ali, Joshua Blumenstock, Brian Gawalt, Eric Brewer.
 10th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI)
 We demonstrate and implement a novel technique for saving power in rural cellular networks, called "Virtual Coverage".
 Conference Paper, Community Award

Poster and Demonstration of Expanding Rural Cellular Networks with Virtual Coverage
Kurtis Heimerl, Kashif Ali, Joshua Blumenstock, Brian Gawalt, Eric Brewer
 10th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation Demonstrations(NSDI)
 Demonstration of Virtual Coverage
 Demonstration

Convergence of Position Auctions under Myopic Best-Response Dynamics
Matthew Cary, Aparna Das, Benjamin Edelman, Ioannis Goitis, Kurtis Heimerl, Anna Karlin, Scott Kominers, Claire Mathieu, Michael Schwarz
 ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation '13
 Journal Paper

2012

Communitysourcing: Engaging Local Crowds to Perform Expert Work Via Physical Kiosks
Kurtis Heimerl, Brian Gawalt, Kuang Chen, Tapan Parikh, Björn Hartmann
 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) '12
 Developed and evaluated CommunitySourcing; using physical kiosks to engage local crowds of users to perform high-value work for localized rewards
 Conference Paper, Best Paper

Communitysourcing: Engaging Local Crowds to Perform Expert Work Via Physical Kiosks
Kurtis Heimerl, Brian Gawalt, Kuang Chen, Tapan Parikh, Björn Hartmann
 Interactivity at ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) '12
 Demonstration of CommunitySourcing
 Demonstration

How Users Understand Cellular Infrastructure
Kurtis Heimerl, Tapan Parikh
 Series of interviews with people from both developed, developing, urban and rural areas about how they understand their cellular infrastructure
 Technical Report

2010

A Case Study on Designing Interfaces for Multiple Users in Developing Regions
Kurtis Heimerl, Janani Vasudev, Kelly G. Buchanan, Tapan Parikh, Eric Brewer
 1st Annual Symposium on Computing for Development
 Provided case study of a real-world development and deployment of single display groupware in a low-income school in Bangalore, India.
 Conference Paper

Metamouse: Improving Multi-user Sharing of Existing Educational Applications
Kurtis Heimerl, Janani Vasudev, Kelly G. Buchanan, Tapan Parikh, Eric Brewer
 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) '10
 Developed, deployed, and evaulated a novel technology for bringing single-display groupware to existing educational games in developing regions
 Conference Paper

The Village Base Station
Kurtis Heimerl, Eric Brewer
 ACM Workshop on Networked Systems for Developing Regions (NSDR) '10
 High level "white paper" on eventual VBTS plans. Detailed needing to save power and build a platform for community cellular systems
 Workshop Paper

2009

Message Phone: A User Study and Analysis of Asynchronous Messaging in Rural Uganda
Kurtis Heimerl, RJ Honicky, Eric Brewer, Tapan Parikh
 ACM Workshop on Networked Systems for Developing Regions (NSDR) '09
 Field study of mPhone asynchronous voice system
 Workshop Paper

Metamouse: Multiple Mice for Legacy Applications
Kurtis Heimerl, Divya Ramachandran, Joyojeet Pal, Eric Brewer, Tapan Parikh
 Demo at International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD)
 Demonstration of basic Metamouse features and technology
 Demonstration

Metamouse: Multiple Mice for Legacy Applications
Kurtis Heimerl, Divya Ramachandran, Joyojeet Pal, Eric Brewer, Tapan Parikh
 Work In Progress at Computer-Human Interaction (CHI)
 Early Metamouse user study in Bangalore
 Work in Progress

Transforming Community-based Healthcare with CommScape
Kuang Chen, Kurtis Heimerl, Tapan Parikh, Christine Robson, Beth Trushkowsky
 Technical Report

Enabling Innovation Below the Communication API
Ganesh Ananthanarayanan, Kurtis Heimerl, Matei Zaharia, Michael Demmer, Teemu Koponen, Arsalan Tavakoli, Scott Shenker, Ion Stoica
 Technical Report

2007

Greedy Bidding Strategies for Keyword Auctions
Matthew Cary, Aparna Das, Benjamin Edelman, Ioannis Giotis, Kurtis Heimerl, Anna R. Karlin, Claire Mathieu, Michael Schwarz
 ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce 2007
 Conference Paper

Press